Tron Legacy (2010) CD Review

Label: Walt Disney Records (50999 9472892 7)

Track List

Introduction

Not only is this one of the few movie soundtracks I own, but it's one of the few imports (of any media type) I own. While this European import is technically out-of-print, you can still pick it up on sites like eBay. Why did I purchase the import? Because it contains an additional CD with five additional tracks not available in the U.S. Looking closely at the picture, you'll notice the set also comes with some very nice liner notes. For those TRON fanatics, you can also obtain an ADDITIONAL three tracks not available on disc--but more on that later.

Audio Quality

Bottom line: this soundtrack is a sonic masterpiece. The deft mixing of pop/funk and classical music genres is nothing short of magnificent. The story goes that director Joseph Kosinski “stuck his neck out” with Disney to bring Daft Punk on board this movie project, and Disney was rewarded with one of their best selling movie soundtracks of all time. Rumor has it that both Kosinski AND Daft Punk will return for a third installment of the franchise. There's a little bit of everything on this soundtrack: classic Daft Punk (Castor, Derezzed), pounding percussion (Rinzler, Fall), sweet strings (Adagio for Tron, Father and Son), brilliant brass (C.L.U., Finale), and meticulous synthesizer sequencing (The Son of Flynn, Sea of Simulation). In fact, this disc contains some of the best orchestral percussion I've heard in a long time (think 1812 Overture). You can see why the (Blu-Ray) movie really “brings the boom” since many of the musical cues are duplicated note for note on the soundtrack. Now for more on those additional tracks I mentioned, a couple of which show up in my “favorites” list.

Summary

Extra songs available for individual purchase:

28) Father and Son (iTunes exclusive)

29) Outlands, Part II (iTunes exclusive)

30) Sea of Simulation (Amazon exclusive)

I'm not a fan of MP3's where audio quality is concerned, but since that's the only way to obtain these extra tracks, you don't have much of a choice. At least they're encoded at 256 kbs, which is about as good as you'll get from MP3's. If you burn a CD-R with all available songs on it, you'll have over 80 minutes of great music! (Note: your burner hardware and software need to be able to “over-burn” a disc. Plus, I'll give you a hint: since there's a mix of MP3 and WAV files, you'll probably want to use iTunes—which supports “over-burn”—to burn the audio CD). I actually did some re-arranging of my own (like grouping Father and Son, Parts 1 and 2 together among other things), to come up with a great custom mix.

Scorecard

Audio Quality: 5/5

Features: 5/5

Overall: 5/5

Reference Equipment

• Yamaha DSP-A1 Natural Sound A/V Amplifier (Stereo Mode)
• Pioneer Elite CLD-99 Reference LD Player
• Polk Monitor 10B Speakers (x2)