COMPARISON CORNER #2:
by Skødjö
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THEY LIVE
Music Composed and Performed by John Carpenter
in association with Alan Howarth
Continuing a theme, and because of what was revealed from the side-by-side I did with the previous Carpenter/Howarth score I compared, I'm going to plow straight ahead with They Live and will plan to follow with comparisons of both Halloween and The Fog soon (now
those should be interesting!)
I only have two vinyl editions of They Live to compare, as well as the movie on Blu as a base-line. And again, I'm only going to direct compare the main title track ('Coming to LA') for the purposes of a detailed cross comparison that may or may not suggest further differences across the rest of the score - I guess that's for us all to find out! (I did skim through and A/B a few other tracks, and they pretty much sounded the same fwiw.)
1. Enigma Records (1988, 7733671)
They Live E.jpg (895.67 KiB) Viewed 4765 times
Against the movie version, it's immediately clear that the soundtrack release is a different (lower) pitch - by only a micro-tone, but quite distinctly. In every other way that I can discern, however, it appears that the music which we hear in the film is what we get on the record. Hurray, great start! This LP is 30 years old, and is super quiet and very full sounding. I like it.
2. Death Waltz Recording Co. (2019, DW130)
Formaldehyde Face variant (Reverse Purple and Blue Splatter)
They Live DW.jpg (409.68 KiB) Viewed 4765 times
The track listing is virtually the same, with the exception that the first two cues on Side A have been switched - 'A Message' now plays before 'Coming to LA' on the DWRC release.
The same version of the title track here, again slightly lower pitch. The only discernible difference is that the DW mastering is slightly quieter/less punchy than the Enigma. But it's also a nice quiet pressing, and sounds great.
As I haven't seen anything stating that this is a new master, I guess we can assume it's the same as the previous DW reissue?
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So to sum up: I'm fairly confident in stating it seems that all vinyl releases of the score are taken from the actual recordings/mixes heard in the movie (praise be!) with minimal (if any) discernible tweaks. If you don't already have a copy, considering how wonderful and bananas the packaging is on the new DW reissue, I'd say that's the one to go for unless OGs are particularly your thing. I do love the sleeve on the Enigma personally, and am happy to have both in the collection. Of course, there's also the previous DW edition though I myself was never especially crazy about Gary Pullin's minimalist take on the sleeve art for that one.