“Complete Songs & Poems” by The Tolkien Ensemble

In April of last year I was contemplating the future of HQCovers. I’ve stated some ideas about redesigning and restructuring this blog. Or the possibility of offering custom covers beside my professional passion for soundtracks and scores. However my most wanted addition would be guest entries. I’ve come to know a lot of talented people over the past years, who deserve to be spotlighted. And it’s my pleasure to take a backseat for once and leave the stage for one of my favourite artists. He’s a fellow Austrian, he goes by the name rotane and he’s an absolute whiz with font design.   When heidl asked me to appear as…

“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…

“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” by Howard Shore

Over the last couple months I slowly started working on The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, knowing there would be a rich bouquet of source material I’ll be able to choose from. But the surprising lack thereof made it a lot more difficult to come up with high-quality stuff. In my opinion the official posters lack of devotion and imagination. I can’t explain why Warner made no use of such great locations like “Dol Guldur” or the eponymous desolation of Smaug. So this time I had to grab a little deeper into my box of tricks. Yet, incredibly, I ended…

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by Howard Shore

My main reason for looking forward to Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit was all the new music composed by Howard Shore. I even was happy about the fact, that suddenly there should be three movies instead of two – meaning that even more music would be composed and released as soundtracks (and probably Complete Recordings) in the wake of the films. Another fun aspect for me of course, was designing custom covers. Looking back at the fun I had with all the The Lord of the Rings soundtracks and it’s various covers, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the…