An American Tail & Fievel Goes West (James Horner, 1986/1991) [FLAC]

As requested:

<font face="serif">AN AMERICAN TAIL<br>(1986)</font>

<font face="serif">AN AMERICAN TAIL<br>FIEVEL GOES WEST <br>(1991)</font>

http://i.imgur.com/JF9ctsC.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/WTdeNl9.jpg

Music by James Horner and Barry Man.<br>Lyrics by Cynthia Well.

Music by James Horner.<br>Lyrics by Will Jennins.

Performed by London Symphony Orchestra.

There’s a host of wonderful music here. The fifty minutes of music on the album boast a large number of great, memorable themes. Of course, the most well-known is the melody from the song "Somewhere Out There", which despite the obvious nod to The Wizard of Oz is a gem of a song, the most lovely ballad Horner’s ever written. The film version, sung by children, is as cloying as anything you’ll ever hear, but this is a rare case where the pop version (sung by Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram) is superior – this, despite the cheesy 80s-style production. Fortunately, the songs from adult performers are wonderful – the witty, delightful "There are No Cats in America"; the cheery "Never Say Never", which creates the same mood as the classic Disney songs of old; and "A Duo", while the most minor of the songs, still manages to raise a smile and feature a pleasant tune. Horner co-wrote the songs with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and it’s a great pity that he moved on to Will Jennings for his later songs – talk about loweing standards. (…)

The underscore is really something worth writing home about, too – this was 1986 and Horner was in a rich vein of form when it came to full-bodied, exciting music, and there’s some of his very best here. "The Storm" is a quite magnificent piece, grand and vibrant, recalling the finest moments of Willow and Krull; "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor" impossibly dramatic and enthralling. There’s a softer side too, of course, with a lovely little theme in "The Market Place" making for vintage Horner. The composer shows a rarely-heard witty side, too, in the delightful "Releasing the Secret Weapon", where he lays everything on with a spade, and does it with a massive grin on his face. It goes without saying that there’s a sweet finale, and "Reunited" is as sweet as they come, and quite gorgeous, reprising the grand main theme from the opening title piece. There’s even more beyond that, with the sweeping, beautiful end title piece, a marvelous way to finish proceedings.

──
After the success of An American Tail in 1986, a sequel was somewhat inevitable. It took five years to arrive, and Don Bluth didn’t direct it, but Fievel Goes West finally turned up, sending our rodent heroes off out west for further adventures. James Horner – who provided so much life to the first film with both his songs and his score – returned for the ride. He hasn’t scored many westerns – maybe two or three – and I believe this is the only one which has been released on CD, so even though it might come from a cartoon it still gives his fans a somewhat unique opportunity to explore a different side of the composer. (…)

From start to end, Fievel Goes West really is a treat – recapping enough from the first score to be pleasingly familiar, but with plenty of new material besides. Highly recommended.

(From two reviews by James Southall, movie-wave.net (http://www.movie-wave.net))
Tracklist:

An American Tail (1986)

21M 01 – Main Title [05:11]
9,5M 02 – The Cossack Cats [02:18]
16M 03 – There Are No Cats In America
[John Guarnieri, Warren Hays, Nehemiah Persoff] [03:03]
18M 04 – The Storm [04:03]
9,8M 05 – Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor [02:48]
12M 06 – Never Say Never [Phillip Glasser, Christopher Plummer] [02:27]
11M 07 – The Market Place [03:05]
14M 08 – Somewhere Out There [Betsy Cathcart, Phillip Glasser] [02:42]
21M 09 – Somewhere Out There [James Ingram, Linda Ronstad] [04:01]
19M 10 – Releasing The Secret Weapon [03:40]
13M 11 – A Duo [Dom DeLuise, Phillip Glasser] [02:41]
13M 12 – The Great Fire [02:57]
19M 13 – Reunited [04:47]
28M 14 – Flying Away / End Credits [06:00]

Conducted by James Horner and performed by London Symphony Orchestra.
Total play time: 49′ 43”
—

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)

26M 01 – Dreams To Dream (Finale Version) [Linda Ronstadt] [04:43]
30M 02 – American Tail Overture (Main Title) [07:09]
37M 03 – Cat Rumble [07:28]
9,7M 04 – Headin’ Out West [02:36]
9,9M 05 – Way Out West [01:47]
24M 06 – Green River / Trek Through The Desert [05:43]
11M 07 – Dreams To Dream (Tanya’s Version) [Cathy Cavadini] [02:34]
14M 08 – Building A New Town [02:43]
11M 09 – Sacred Mountain [02:22]
8,6M 10 – Reminiscing [02:12]
9,3M 11 – The Girl You Left Behind [Cathy Cavadini] [01:42]
9,3M 12 – In Training [01:49]
25M 13 – The Shoot-Out [05:29]
32M 14 – A New Land / The Future [08:16]

Conducted by James Horner.
Total play time: 56′ 33”

Links:
� FLAC: An American Tail (http://ulozto.net/xDJK4j6N/aat-7z) (257.1 MiB) | An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (http://ulozto.net/xtzkDneW/aatfgw-7z
) (284.5 MiB). To extract the files type fieveltale

� Bonus: Don’t miss this remaster of the first album by JHFan, with much improved sound. In his own words:

A couple of details as to what I did to ‘remaster’ the album:
I used both Audacity and Adobe Audition.
In Audacity, I duplicated the audio track and ran a ‘high-pass filter’ on the duplicate to bring out the details and make the recording a bit more clear and alive (like I did with "A Beautiful Mind").
In Audition, I used a custom extractor I call "LFE creator" to make a low-frequency channel, something I do when I make 5.1 upmixes.
I then downmixed it and the high-pass into the audio track. That’s why the music will sound much clearer, but have a much deeper bass to it.

https://mega.co.nz/#!h91VjLiZ!3Wl8KDHQZNAc5R6f1iBqsjWM5UDjoeuJSgpV7G2 eaPg
Saved as (my usual) Apple Lossless.

Enjoy.

Thanks.

Thank you

I’ve owned the first album on CD for years (got it for $8 brand new about 12 years ago) so I can check it out.

Edit: When I started backing up all of my CDs to BD-R (as WAV files for archiving), I did a bit of a remaster for this to bring out some of the finer details in the music, as the album does have a muted, dull quality to it probably due to the era it was produced in.

Good that you can check that, JHFan, thank you; it would be nice to know for sure what is this one, whatever the result. And it would be cool to find out that this was your own remaster.

Let me know if there’s anything I can help with.

No, I never uploaded my version anywhere. I’m running EAC right now to extract the original CD to WAV to check it out.

———- Post added at 12:09 PM ———- Previous post was at 11:55 AM ———-

Here’s a screenshot of my computer screen:

Photobucket compressed it, it’s hard to read. I’ll upload the picture to something else:

http://postimg.org/image/4r6msel9f/full/

Thanks; that’s different from what Audacity shows () for this set, but I see that the scale of frequencies in your Audition is not linear. My screenshot of logarithmic spectrum (this one ()) would not have the same appearance, as it progresses differently. Can you change the logarithmic scale to linear for a new screenshot?
—
Edit: that is, if you are not in the mood of uploading the lot right now, which I think everybody would appreciate in any case: no more guessing or doubts. 🙂

I’ll make the spectrum linear for that cue (if I can figure out how to change the view in Audition!), and I’ll post my ‘remastered’ version as well. I’ll add it to this thread here.

I’ll just make several screenshots using different views, with the help of my good friend Mr. Google showing me how.

(EDIT)

Actually, there’s no need for me to make several, because this one (using ‘full linear’ as a spectral view) confirms the cut-off you describe, and this is from my physical CD I ripped with EAC:

http://postimg.org/image/6l83gejch/full/

Fantastic, JHFan. No hurries, take your time.

Good stuff. Thank you.

You’re welcome, friends.

this one (using ‘full linear’ as a spectral view) confirms the cut-off you describe, and this is from my physical CD I ripped with EAC:

View image: American Tail spectrum full linear (http://postimg.org/image/6l83gejch/full/)

Then it seems there’s no need to replace that set. And I’m pleased to know for sure that sometimes official releases may have that small -and unaudible- area absent, because I had found that to be the only case for some other lossless sets "everywhere". Has been interesting, thanks for the help.

Looking forward to enjoy your edit of this.

———- Post added at 08:17 PM ———- Previous post was at 07:51 PM ———-

Updated the first message with the remaster of "An American Tail" made and shared by JHFan. Once again, thank you.

thanks a lot kooke!!!

Thanks.

Thank you!

This is when James Horner was on top of his game…. 2 amazing scores……

thank you share!

It’s odd that the London Symphony Orchestra was never credited on the sequel score, so most assume it was recorded elsewhere.

You’re welcome, friends.

@JHFan: Coincidentally, I am listening to your edit at this moment (never played the original again, lol). Yes, for the sequel there’s no mention of the orchestra or even contractor and they wouldn’t have missed to credit LSO, so that must be some ad-hoc orchestra.

Yes, for the sequel there’s no mention of the orchestra or even contractor and they wouldn’t have missed to credit LSO, so that must be some ad-hoc orchestra.

Actually, it is indeed the LSO, and I found that out a few years ago when I looked at a complete discography PDF file they used to have on their official website from 2009. It was the one score I was surprised to find was actually performed by them after thinking it was the only Horner animated score that wasn’t.

I dug the file up on my computer, and this is the information for it:

>1684 �An American Tail II: Fievel Goes West� film soundtrack
Pr: James Horner 20-23 Nov 1990
Eng: Shawn Murphy Abbey Road Studio 1
composed and conducted by James Horner
led by Alexander Barantshik
CD: (Nov91) M.C.A. Records MCASD10416.

Download link for the LSO discography (https://mega.co.nz/#!lsEl2RyZ!LgGtLHPB4WbaDjC4gCai0K3ghuC671sfyMRWnv7 _R40)

Speaking of which, do you think Fievel Goes West should also get a remastered version too?

Thanks, it’s a very interesting document, although I’m still a little confused because the omission on the album credits seems too gross a neglect. Is it possible that the album was recorded with some kind of "second-flavour" of LSO, with many of its players but not the principal ones? Something like that would be easier for me to understand the ommission of the orchestra in the artwork, where we can read even the name of the engineer that mastered a cassete single. Or perhaps a question to MCA or the LSO archivist Libby Rice here: Contact Us | London Symphony Orchestra (http://lso.co.uk/contact-us).
—
julayla: I leave the answer to that to the experts. 🙂

That’s largely how "The Mask Of Zorro" was recorded. It featured musicians from the LSO but it was recorded in different locations.

I’ve rarely listened to "Fievel Goes West" so I’m not sure if it’s in any need of improvement. I’ll revisit it and find out.

Yes, it seems something like that may have been the cause: according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Barantschik), the concertmaster on that recording, Alexander Barantshik, started to lead the LSO three years later, in 1989.

Listening to the "American Tail Overture", I can say the album absolutely does NOT need any kind of remaster. It sounds excellent.

Thank you share!

great post thanks

Yes, for the sequel there’s no mention of the orchestra or even contractor and they wouldn’t have missed to credit LSO, so that must be some ad-hoc orchestra.

Although it’s true that the CD doesn’t credit the London Symphony Orchestra for "An American Tail: Fievel Goes West", the all-import film’s end credits (from an authoritative standpoint; i.e. the legal action on "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids" at the influences of Horner’s music had both the music cue sheets and film’s end credits modified after the fact) do:

(http://postimage.org/)

You’re welcome, friends. And thanks for the additional info, dr_watson. The lines "AND MUSICIANS OF THE A.F.M. LOCAL 47" seem to fit well with the previous comments that it was not a pure-LSO album (it had some non-principal players at the time) as, now confirmed, they used also other players hired from AFM". I guess that the omission on the album is easier to understand now.

Thank you for the upload. What is the password? (I can’t find it in the original post.) Thanks!

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

cornercase: the password is at the right of the links, in bold text: fieveltale

Thanks so much!

Thank you for two wonderful Horner scores. I look forward to comparing the re-master with the original album once I set up my sound system properly.

You’re welcome.

cornercase: the password is at the right of the links, in bold text: fieveltale

Missed that. Thank you!

Thank you, my son.
I wanted to see the sixth!

Always so kind, my friend, thank you; but here’s my suggestion: take advantage of that fantastic Summer place and have some drinks to see lots more. How about that? xD

I have spent 35 summers here and I still haven’t seen them all.

Great job! 🙂

Thank you very much.

You’re welcome, friends. If any of you has a problem with the download, I -or anyone else- can upload the files to another server. Feel free to do it; I’ll add the link to the first message.

Thanks

Thanks for sharing…

Thank you!

gracias

Thank you, very exciting scores. Love them

thank you kooke

Yeah thanks. Hey, do you think there’s gonna be a remastering of the Fievel Goes West album too?

You’re welcome, friends.

julayla: JHFan explained in message #24 that Fievel Goes West sounds well and doesn’t need it.

Okay, I guess that makes sense.

Thanks a bunch!

Thanks!!

Thank you … I was *sure* I had these, but I didn’t

Thank you so much!

Thanks 🙂

Thanks for your share!

Thanks for the share!

Thank you very much! 🙂

Thanks

Thanks.

grateful thanks for sharing

Interesting, I will have to give these a try. Thanks for the share!

Thanks!

Many thanks for sharing…Very much appreciated.

Thank you!

Thanks a lot!

Thank you

Thanks 🙂

Thank you! 🙂

Thank you very much!