Razorback Music Credits
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original music composed and performed by Iva Davies music recording Spencer Lee 'Blue Eyes' written and composed by Elton John and Gary Osborne and released by The Rocket Record Company Limited usage by permission of Happenstance Limited and Big Pig Music Limited 'New Moon On Monday' written and performed by Duran Duran courtesy of EMI Records published in Australasia by Chappel & Co. (Australia Pty. Ltd.) 'Reckless' (Don't Be So) written by James Reyne © Wheatley Music courtesy ℗ EMI and Geffen Records 1983 'Hey Little Girl' video segment provided courtesy Chrysalis Records Iva Davies is a well known performer and composer of popular music, with a large number of charting singles, though he has composed other music, such as his works Boxes and Berlin for the Sydney Dance Company, and The Ghost of Time, performed with Richard Tognetti and the Sydney Symphony orchestra. Davies won an APRA award and an AFI nomination for his work on the film's score. There is a lengthy interview with Davies here, and this is excerpted as he talked about his work at the time and his use of the Fairlight to compose the score: Iva Davies: Icehouse stopped actively performing in 1994, but resumed again in 2010. However from 1994 on I was involved in a series of quite high profile projects. I had written my first contemporary ballet score, "Boxes" for the internationally renowned Sydney Dance Company in 1985 (using mainly Fairlight). I had also, in 1984, (using mainly Fairlight once again) composed my first score for a feature film Razorback (directed by Russell Mulchay, who was probably the world's leading director of music videos at the time). In 1995, after I had stopped actively touring, I wrote another ballet for the Sydney Dance Company, "Berlin". The two ballets, "Boxes" and "Berlin" are the Sydney Dance Company's most successful works to date. When Graeme Murphy, the creator of the company, Artistic Director and choreographer retired in 2007, he chose a return season of "Berlin" to finish with…. ...CAROL DUNCAN: What gave you the confidence to leap into these new technologies? IVA DAVIES: Perhaps it was more out of ignorance than anything, I certainly didn't see any risk involved, but the main driver for me was that these were new toys. Every time something new was invented, my eyes would light up and I'd think, 'Imagine the possibilities!' I remember expressly that conversation I had with our management where, out of sheer co-incidence they'd moved offices from where they were in Bondi Junction to the top storey of a two-storey building in Rushcutters Bay and the ground storey was where they made Fairlights, believe it or not. Management were oblivious to this, they had no idea what was going on down there. But I did and I came to the managers one day and said, 'I desperately want to get one of these machines, they are amazing.' Of course, I was proven correct because they revolutionised music forever. I think apart from the technology of recording, the sampler - which is what a Fairlight was - was the single most influential piece of technology ever created. I said this to my management, that I was desperate, that I'd really like one, but the catch was they were $32,000. That was in 1981 or 1982 so you can imagine how much money that was then - it was half a small house. But I got one, and interestingly enough my management were quite philosophical about it. They said, 'Well, it's a lot of money, but according to our calculations you'll pay for this with the first two projects you use it on.' And they were right. The first project I used it on was my very first film score for Russell Mulcahy's 'Razorback', which is about 95% Fairlight. The great irony of that was that I kept producing bits of music, because Russell Mulcahy was out in the desert filming scenes and he kept dragging up Peter Gabriel's fourth album, the one with Shock The Monkey on it, and they were out in the desert with this blasting away on a ghetto blaster and I got it into my head that this was what Russell likes. So I kept producing Gabriel-esque soundscapes and so on, and the producers of the movie kept coming back to me and saying, 'No, no no - that's not what we want, we don't want this.' In the end I was getting various clues from them but didn't really know, but I had another go along the lines of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' - a fairly mad piece of classical music. I constructed all this with the Fairlight, it was a quasi-orchestral thing. I took it back to them and they said, 'Yes! That's exactly it!' and I said, 'Well, if you wanted that sort of thing why didn't you go and get a classical composer.' In its day, 'Rite of Spring' was a controversial piece of music, and Iva Davies shares a birthday with Stravinsky. Considering that it was 1913 when that piece first hit the stage for Diaghilev's ballet company. It wasn't just the music; it was actually the subject matter of the ballet that I think was fairly upsetting to a lot of people. It's all about primal sexualism, basically, so you can imagine that to an audience of 1913 that sort of idea was fairly horrifying. CAROL DUNCAN: In 1984, you've got Razorback, also 'Sidewalk' - the third album from Icehouse, at this point did you consider that you didn't actually have to be a pop star? IVA DAVIES: No, I had a very strange life prior to that because I had a completely Jekyll and Hyde existence. I took up the guitar when I was 13, and taught myself, and it was probably also the year that I started taking oboe lessons. I had these two parallel lives and completely separate lives. I had a set of classical people - when I was in high school I played in a wind quintet and we used to rehearse every Saturday morning. We all had our first cars at that point. They were my friends and we went off and won the City of Sydney Eisteddfod and so on. They never, ever met the guys that I was in the acoustic band with. Ever! Because I just had these two lives. So my course was fairly accidental all the way through, it was probably always going to be accidental. To this day, I keep remembering things that I did. I remembered that I was in the orchestra that was primarily made up of members of the Sydney Symphony and the senior Conservatorium orchestra, of which I was a member, for the staging of the two first Australian ballets in the Opera House. I would have been about 19 and, of course, that's a fairly big moment for the Opera House to have a night featuring Australian opera in that building, and I'd completely forgotten about it. There are things from both lives that I've forgotten about. Davies wrote the music for the film in a front bedroom studio in a house in the inner western suburb of Sydney (he also wrote the music for Primitive Land (including 'Great Southern Land') in the house, which he sold in 2013 after living in for 32 years. Davies has an informative website here, and a wiki here. The soundtrack album is listed on his website here. Details of the album, which was widely published as an LP and as a CD, and remains widely available, including streaming: As featured on the Icehouse website: LP EMI P-430006 1984 Gatefold Music Composed and Performed by Iva Davies Produced by Iva Davies Engineered by Spencer Lee Mixed by Tim Kramer Recorded at Studio 301, Sydney, Australia Mastered at Studios 301 utilising the “Maxicut Process.” Pat. App. Guitars on “Saltlake Walk” and “The Desert” by Bob Kretschmer Bass Guitar on “The Desert” by Guy Pratt Sound Effects courtesy of Greg Bell and Associates Iva Davies appears courtesy of Regular Records I.D Music - Cat Songs except * Reprise SIDE 1: Theme From Razorback (4'12") Sarahʼs Theme (2'46") Hatchet (0'18") Saltlake Walk (2'27") Jakeʼs Virgil (1'13") Kangaroo Shoot (6'10") SIDE 2: Jakeʼs Death (3'10") The Desert (1'53") “Jesus Wept” (2'13") The Visit (2'22") Bethʼs Rape (5'16") Petpak (2'30") Theme From Razorback (Reprise) * (2'37") The music was released on a two CD set, with the second CD featuring Davies' work for 'Boxes', the 1985 score for the work performed by the Sydney Dance Company. Universal DIVAU1009 2014 "Razorback / Boxes" Theme From Razorback Sarahʼs Theme Hatchet Saltlake Walk Jakeʼs Virgil Kangaroo Shoot Jakeʼs Death The Desert “Jesus Wept” The Visit Bethʼs Rape Petpak Theme From Razorback (Reprise) The score was also given a release on Milan, and in Japan, and it remains available via iTunes and other streaming services, indicating that, relative to other Australian movie scores, it remains popular: Iva Davies' website carries this biography: One of the most iconic Australian bands ever ICEHOUSE was formed by Iva Davies, the front man and musical creative force, that lead the band to an amazing 28 platinum albums, eight top 10 albums and over thirty Top 40 singles. Iva was born as Ivor Davies on the 22nd May 1955 in NSW, Australia. He later adapted to Iva after there was a misspelling on the label of a single released prior to the formation on Flowers/ICEHOUSE.