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Dragon's Domain Records presents THE MARK SNOW COLLECTION, VOLUME 2, featuring two consummate scores composed by Mark Snow (THE X FILES, SMALLVILLE, GHOST WHISPERER) for select television movies from the 1990s while Snow was working on THE X FILES. Both films have a common theme, each is driven by the actions of a femme fatale, women using any means available to get what they want from their unsuspecting partners. The first, CAROLINE AT MIDNIGHT, begins with the end of Caroline, killed by her friend Victoria who is now trying to lure in an unsuspecting crime reporter to take the fall for her; the second, SEDUCED AND BETRAYED, details the lengths a beautiful but equally deadly widower will go to as she draws a dedicated family man into her web, threatening to destroy his life in the process of getting what she wants.
CAROLINE AT MIDNIGHT is a 1994 feature film released straight-to-video via Roger Corman's New Horizons production company. It's a convoluted potboiler disguised as an erotic film noir, starring Caroline Barclay, Mia Sara, Clayton Rohner and Tim Daly. Mark Snow's theme for CAROLINE AT MIDNIGHT is an ominous mix of tenuous piano and pulsing violin, counterpointed against jagged strings, which opens into a sultry, teasing figure for mute trumpet that is a musical celebration of the femme fatale. Snow's score accompanies the story with a variety of sensual atmospheres, menacing sonic voicings, and aggressive tonalities. Some of those are similar to the suspenseful Synclavier impressions that he began doing the previous year on THE X FILES and would hone dexterously throughout its eleven seasons (to date).
SEDUCED AND BETRAYED is a 1995 TV movie directed by Felix Enriquez Alcala, a prolific director of mostly episodic TV, with director credits on some seven dozen shows, and a fistful of TV movies including the TV remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE. The film stars Susan Lucci as a classic femme fatale consumed by using any means to get what she wants. Here, she manipulates a married man (David Charvet) into a world of deceit, betrayal, and a liaison he can't manage to break out of. When it came to the music, the filmmakers wanted something like BASIC INSTINCT by way of FATAL ATTRACTION, which Snow accommodated by composing a similarly flavored underscore favoring piano, but with a much different melodic structure; adding an equally menacing atmospheric Herrmannesque influence throughout.
Mark Snow is primarily known for his work in the medium of television, including many seasons of music scoring for shows such as THE X-FILES, MILLENNIUM, SMALLVILLE, GHOST WHISPERER, BLUE BLOODS, NOWHERE MAN and many others. In 1993, composer Mark Snow began a fruitful creative collaboration with producer Chris Carter on THE X-FILES, which culminated in a unique marriage of music and macabre storytelling. Snow's work on THE X-FILES put him on the Hollywood scoring map, offering up a unique mix of atmospheric sound design and affecting layers of ambient melody on a weekly basis and this sound became very much in demand in the industry. Mark is considered one of television's most capable composers. The large percentage of his musical output has centered around the subjects of the supernatural, the macabre and outright science fiction or dark fantasy but there have been occasions for him to break out and work on other projects, such as PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES and WILD GRASS for Alain Resnais, the legendary French director.
Mark Snow has worked on more than two hundred television movies and series, PC games and feature films including THE X-FILES, MILLENNIUM, SMALLVILLE, GHOST WHISPERER, BLUE BLOODS, and NOWHERE MAN, among others, returning to THE X FILES recently when the series made its triumphant return to television in 2016. Mark has been nominated for 14 Primetime Emmy awards since 1984 and won at least 19 ASCAP awards. The composer is also a founding member of the legendary New York Rock'n'Roll ensemble, along with fellow composer Michael Kamen. The band was signed to Atlantic Records and Mark toured and recorded with them for 5 years before turning his focus to writing music for film and television.
Both CAROLINE AT MIDNIGHT and SEDUCED AND BETRAYED are very interesting works, provided here in their entirety for the first time on CD. They are mostly synthetically achieved but with an inventive use of piano and sampled strings. Portions of both scores show the composer employing the kind of striking Mahleresque suspense figures and brooding creepiness that he was experimenting with in THE X FILES and finding them useful in musically sculpting the debased madness of the femme fatale.
Dragon's Domain Records presents THE MARK SNOW COLLECTION, VOLUME 2, featuring the original television soundtracks to CAROLINE AT MIDNIGHT and SEDUCED AND BETRAYED, featuring music composed by Mark Snow. THE MARK SNOW COLLECTION, VOLUME 2 is a limited edition release of 2000 units.
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