Don Davis - Hyperspace (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) '2022

Tracks list

       Dragon’s Domain Records presents the long out-of-print orchestral
score to HYPERSPACE, composed by Don Davis. One of the first feature length STAR
WARS parodies, HYPERSPACE came out in 1984. Known in England as GREMLOIDS and as
GREMLORDS in France and Germany, HYPERSPACE was writer/director Todd
Durham’s second and last film as director, working with ambitiously
cost-conscious low-budget producer Earl Owensby. The movie was released in
September 1984, but it wasn’t until 1988 that the film received a wider
release on home video.

Starring comedians Chris Elliott and Paula Poundstone and filmed in North
Carolina, HYPERSPACE imitates STAR WARS in context and execution from its
opening text crawl into infinity to its inscrutable helmeted monarch of menace,
Lord Buckethead (played by Robert Bloodworth, but voiced by Barry Cooper). Lord
Buckethead is hot on the trail of vital radio transmissions stolen from the
corrupt Galactic Alliance by members of an allied resistance force. Buckethead
intends to get them back, aided by diminutive, Jawa-robed minions known as
gremloids. However, unbeknownst to him, he has made a serious navigational
error, and rather than reaching his intended destination he lands instead upon
the Earth, where he and his gremloid faction march into the closest small town
and proceed with their mission.

A purposefully STAR WARS-esque orchestral score was provided by newly-minted
composer Don Davis, in his first feature film score. Performed by a live,
56-piece orchestra, Davis’s music provided the film with its missing
gravitas; and it made enough of an impression among Hollywood film music folk
that it led to a lasting and respectful career scoring films and television,
including TV’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and SEAQUEST DSV and blockbuster
films like THE MATRIX series and JURASSIC PARK III.

“Obviously the movie was a parody of STAR WARS, so the only approach to
music I could logically take was similarly a parody of John Williams’s
work,” said Davis in an exclusive new interview for the album notes.
“I got as close to STAR WARS as I could get without it being STAR
WARS.” Davis provided the right kind of feeling to the music which gave
the score a suitably grandiose dynamic and aided in the film’s parodist
nature.

The composer’s approach to supporting the film’s inherent humor
was based on “not writing funny music,” but scoring the movie with
absolute seriousness, thereby allowing the parody to exist within the film and
among its characters in a world where even the most farcical of circumstances
are treated with genuine integrity.  “The concept of playing it straight,
as if the show were not a comedy, was what we wanted to do with our
movie,” said Davis. “We treated it as if it really was STAR WARS and
everything was completely serious.”

The film came and went without much ado or remembrance, but the music was
noticed and that gave Davis an auspicious debut in this, his first opportunity
to make the jump into… HYPERSPACE.
The score was first released on an 11-track CD in 1993, paired with another
Davis score. This expanded reissue from Dragon’s Domain Records includes
eight previously-unreleased tracks. HYPERSPACE is a limited edition release of
1000 unit

1.01 - Don Davis - Hyperspace Main Title / Pin Head (2:22)
1.02 - Don Davis - Meet the Mutants / Real Live Munchkins / Dad’s Gland /
Basement Snoids (4:22)
1.03 - Don Davis - Alien Enzyme (2:00)
1.04 - Don Davis - Buckethead’s Promenade (2:01)
1.05 - Don Davis - Swamp Dog / Mister Ugly / March of the Carrot People / Wild
Bill Schwartz / Avoid the Droid /My Favorite Mutant (5:12)
1.06 - Don Davis - One Step Forward (0:57)
1.07 - Don Davis - Tree Trek (1:21)
1.08 - Don Davis - Old McDonald Had a Farm Dirge (2:26)
1.09 - Don Davis - Neurotic Karen / Mutants in Bondage / Terminate the Princess
/ Zapping Aliens (2:01)
1.10 - Don Davis - Ship Witch / Life in Gland Land / Laser Trail (3:05)
1.11 - Don Davis - Just Browsing / After the Brian Drain (4:55)
1.12 - Don Davis - Max’s Coronary / Let’s Zap Ed / See You Laser
(1:09)
1.13 - Don Davis - There She Is (0:45)
1.14 - Don Davis - Ding Dong Daddy (1:16)
1.15 - Don Davis - Max Incognito / Humanoids from Pacomia (3:38)
1.16 - Don Davis - Rugburn / Broiled Snoids (1:49)
1.17 - Don Davis - Imbeciles from Uranus (1:06)
1.18 - Don Davis - Droid McNoid / Buckethead’s Remorse (4:00)
1.19 - Don Davis - Hyperspace End Credits (3:24) 

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