General Article name: Escape from New York [Original Film Soundtrack]
Genre: Stage & Screen Product type: CD Label: Silva America Number of tracks: 28 Duration: 57:17 Tracklist CD - 1 1. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Main Title 3:53 2. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~The Bank Robbery 3:30 3. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Prison Introduction 0:20 4. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Over The Wall / Airforce One 2:22 5. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~He's Still Alive / Romero 2:12 6. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Snake' Plissken 1:41 7. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Orientation 1:47 8. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Tell Him 1:46 9. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Engulfed Cathedral 3:31 10. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Across The Roof 1:14 11. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Descent Into New York 3:37 12. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Back To The Pod - Version #1 1:34 13. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Everyone's Coming To New York 2:24 14. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Don't Go Down There! 0:19 15. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Back To The Pod - Version #2 / The Crazies Come Out 2:09 16. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: I Heard You Were Dead! 0:09 17. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Arrival At The Library 1:06 18. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: You Are The Duke of New York 0:16 19. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~The Duke Arrives / Barricade 3:35 20. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~President At The Train 2:28 21. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: Who Are You 0:27 22. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Police Action 2:27 23. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Romero And The President 1:43 24. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~The President Is Gone 1:53 25. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~69th Street Bridge 2:43 26. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Over The Wall 3:42 27. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Dialogue: The Name Is Plissken 0:25 28. John Carpenter - Escape from New York, film score~Snake Shake 3:58   Description Description

John Carpenter is a rarity among film directors in that he is also a composer who writes the musical scores for his movies. Carpenter's 1981 film Escape from New York was a kind of genre hybrid, a science fiction crime thriller with suggestions of a spaghetti Western thrown in. Set in a near future when Manhattan has been converted into a no-man's-land prison, the movie needed an appropriately futuristic soundtrack, and Carpenter came up with a score for synthesizer that he played with his sound designer, Alan Howarth. Despite the instrumentation, however, the composer retained a style familiar from such earlier works as Halloween. He favored simple, repetitive keyboard figures, generally two per sequence, set in a fast-slow counterpoint. The Escape from New York score had a few changes of pace, notably a borrowing from Debussy and an ersatz Broadway show tune, "Everyone's Coming to New York" ("Shoot a cop with a gun/The Big Apple is plenty of fun"), written by Nick Castle, but most of the music sounded like earlier Carpenter scores, similarly creating a tense, ominous tone much of the time. The high-tech sound was sometimes at odds with the bombed-out sets in the film, but it helped maintain a tense mood in a movie that sometimes threatened to become comical because it was so stylized. Two decades later, when the soundtrack was reissued on an expanded CD, the synth sound was no longer futuristic but very much of its early-'80s time. Howarth, who had constructed the original 37-minute LP, re-edited and retitled the previously released material and came up with an additional 20 minutes' worth of cues and excerpts from the film's arch dialogue. There was music from two cut scenes and an unused closing-credit theme, all of it in a consistent style with the previously heard material. ~ William Ruhlmann

William Ruhlmann

Contributors Artist: John Carpenter Artist: Alan Howarth Record Label: Silva America Composer: John Carpenter