Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email


2025 November 24 • Monday

George Garvarentz's music for Panic Button is the 884th Soundtrack of the Week.

Maurice Chevalier and Jayne Mansfield made a movie together? Apparently so.

The "Opening (Generique)" is a fairly aggressive jazz number, beginning with timpani solos before swinging into a high-energy complicated melody featuring female voice singing wordless vocals, sometimes in unison with horns. Then it settles down into a more easy-listening mood, followed by a bluesy section.

"Flight to Rome" sounds like movie for an industrial film, with strings and horns soaring and blaring over a fairly uptempo jazz pulse.

From Rome it's on to "Venezia (Venice)", in which Garvarentz acquits himself quite well in a Mancini-ish vein, with a nice melody played by strings backed up by a gently swinging rhythm section.

The orchestra then breaks out a bunch of light and chirpy sounds for "Traffic in Rome", another mid-century arrangement that's sort of fast-paced and woozy at the same time.

A different mood, something almost balletic, orchestral without any jazz vocabulary, comes next, in "Un Clochard Ma'dit", which sounds like it go well with a Christmas celebration scene.

"Mediterranean Samba" is a bit like the song "Brazil", and has a lively, muted, staccato, electric guitar galloping through it.

More lofty strings and horns, this time over a fast walking bass and some occasional comic interludes, keep energy up for "The Chase" while "Change in Venice" mostly has stereotypical "musical sounds of Venice".

Surprisingly, "Love Is Wonderful" isn't a love ballad but more a nimble sort of dance number, perhaps a foxtrot?

The jazz combo gets to cut loose for "Panic Button", with the whole band wailing over some really good grooves.

A very late night feel pervades the slow jazz/blues "Venezia (Nite Club)", which even has an electric guitar solo.

"On the Balcony" is more or less a take on "classical music" for just the strings and plays around with counterpoint and fugue.

After which the "Finale" reprises the "Opening".