“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” by Howard Shore

Day in, day out there are always two specific entries in my page ranks, that stand out from the crowd. My two cover series for An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. They generate by far the most traffic on my site. Strictly speaking they rule out everything else when it comes to site stats, as the following screenshots impressively prove: Posts Clicks Search terms So one could say that Howard Shore’s Middle Earth music dominates my little blog right from its beginning. I wonder what movie/score is going to fill that spot by the end of next year? Probably Star Wars. Or my old Lord of the…

“Interstellar” by Hans Zimmer

I was looking forward to Interstellar for a very long time. Back when it still was a Steven Spielberg (and therefore a John Williams) project, I’ve already anticipated every bit of information I could find and reading the plot synopsis about a science fiction film based on Kip Thorne’s theories on gravity and wormholes exalted my imaginations beyond limits. Seeing it coming together as a Christopher Nolan flick made me worried at first. But now, after having seen the movie, I can faithfully say, that this may be the best and truest adaptation I could have ever dreamed of. Even now, days later, I’m still pumped for the…

“Alien” by Jerry Goldsmith

Faithful followers of my blog might remember an already existing entry to Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien. Indeed, I’ve already published custom covers to this soundtrack as one of the very first posts on HQCovers. But I always wanted to revise them some day and finally this day has come. Actually I’d like to take this opportunity to overhaul the whole Alien saga. But first things first, here’s one of the true classics in Sci-Fi cinema and film music history: Alien. H.R. Giger’s space creature serves both as source of many nightmares, as well as an inspiration to many, incredibly creative works…

“Gone Girl” by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

The official announcement for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ soundtrack album to Gone Girl came quite late in the game. It was merely a good week before release that the Null Corporation announced a tracklist and the official artwork. But because I started working on this series in early September I had no knowledge of the design direction the label would follow. That fact made these custom covers really challenging. It almost felt like an official assignment to me and I approached it with appropriate care. Retrospectively my early draft (#2) for the primary cover artwork came pretty close to the official one (#1). Yet, opposed to its two predecessors, this time the label added an extra Soundtrack From The Motion Picture…

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

When Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released in December 2011, the online film music fanbase had just calmed down from ranting and raving about the duo’s first foray into the holy realm of film scoring, The Social Network. Feelings ran high, especially after they snatched the 2011 Best Original Score Oscar from all the other honourable composers. So when Reznor announced a massive two and a half hour long 6-LP-Set for Dragon Tattoo, soundtrack critics around the world must have been completely baffled. And indeed they were… Regardless of the debatable quality of the music, the package it came…