New Releases: February 2021

Though February is the shortest month, there was certainly no shortage of new epic music. Below you will find a selection of the recent trailer music releases that I got to listen to in February. Enjoy!

Amadea Music Productions

The UK/Bulgaria-based trailer music company, founded by Lyubomir Yordanov, has been very productive since its inception in 2019. In 2020, Amadea Music Productions released on average two albums per month, and the three new albums I write about below came out just this February.

Terror, the first of the three releases, is pure intense horror sound design. Sebastian Haas composed these 10 "horrific, epic, trailer tracks infused with power and aggression. Grimace in fear with ominous, creepy, and hauntingly scary sound design. Only pain and death await as the gripping music surrounds you. The booms of voices in your head, creaking doors, chains, screams, and unnerving string effects make this deadly album a tension forerunner." If Amadea Music Productions' description and the cover art don't give you the chills already, listening to the album surely will deliver the promised terror.

>> Terror is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and for purchase on Bandcamp.

---

On a more hopeful note, Amadea Music Productions' next release offers 10 epic and fantasy adventure tracks with inspiring and emotive themes. The album Hopeful Skies, composed by Daniele Fazio, is introduced on their website with the following words: "Appreciate our beautiful planet. Allow this magical music filled with soothing strings, pianos, and mellow percussions to bring a cinematic escape to your day. Embrace nature, appreciate the sunsets and sunrises and follow your own mysterious path with this stunning album. Hopeful Skies is perfect for documentary soundtracks, evocative trailers, and emotional adventure games."

>> Hopeful Skies is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and for purchase on Bandcamp.

---

Finally, Amadea Music Productions' overall 37th release is called High Altitude and features 11 epic adventure tracks, some with dramatic tension build-ups, and others with hopeful and triumphant climaxes. Written by Martin Buitenweg, this album presents "an invigorating journey of epic adventure music that is both action and orchestral. Live life on the edge of danger with bruising brass, sharp ostinato, smooth strings, and action drums. Trek through snowy mountains, summits, and over the edge. This album is perfect for action documentaries, adventure programs, and immersive games."

>> High Altitude is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and for purchase on Bandcamp.

Atom Music Audio

Atom Music Audio, another trailer music company founded by Lyubomir Yordanov, and based in Bulgaria, started releasing music in 2017. Here I introduce their first two albums of 2021.

As the title suggests to anyone familiar with Greek mythology, Aegis is an epic battle music release. It contains 15 epic orchestral tracks with a great deal of sound design and with choir often joining in for the final act. Atom Music Audio says: "Prepare your shield for battle with thundering drums, high percussion, storming brass, and driving ostinato. Revere in your victory with epic choirs, sombre, yet powerful strings, and stunning sound design. Bring honor to the fight and influence the war with this menacingly orchestral and brutal masterpiece. Aegis is perfect for action, adventure trailers and games, and epic TV shows." The album was written by the Danish composer and sound designer Jannick Damkvist.

>> Aegis is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and for purchase on Bandcamp.

---

Storm: Superhero Themes continues the series of "themed" releases by Atom Music Audio, with the previous three being Sinner: Antihero Themes (2019), Leviathan: Monster Themes (2020), and Exogen: Metahuman Themes (2020). Storm is a collection of 18 modern epic and hybrid action, and adventure tracks. Atom Music Audio invites you to "listen to epic strings, brutal brass, and unique sound design whilst you await your rescue. Melodic epic music coupled with the impact of trailer music makes this album perfect for blockbuster trailers, heroic soundtracks, and action/adventure games." Composers contributing to this album were Samarth Bellur, Sebastian Haas, Armin Gutjahr, Will Manning, Avery Berman, Christoffer Isefält, David Michael Tardy, Danny Rayel, Gregory Tan, Edu Jimenez, Gareth Thomas, Chris Shutt, Caroline-Jayne Gleave, and Carlos Jimenez.

>> Storm: Superhero Themes is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and for purchase on Bandcamp.

Brand X Music

Brand X Music's release Neoclassical offers dark, intriguing and suspenseful, but also emotive, neoclassical drama with a building tension. Its 14 tracks are centered around virtuosic violin themes backed by orchestra for an epic climax, and complemented by subtle sound design. "Slow haunting solos, as well as frenetic and frenzied full orchestra, give you a range of options that fit perfectly with contemporary drama, period pieces, and even modern suspense and political thriller," Brand X Music writes about the album. "Neoclassical is a trip to the modern concert hall where energy, emotion, and the raw power of a string soloist are on display as never before." The composers behind this album are Tom Gire, Marti Noguer, Torsti Spoof, Roberto Terreiro Prado, Christian Ugenti, Gabriel Saban, Sergey Azbel, and Mark White. My favorite tracks are Royal Generation, Next in Line, and Misfortune.

>> Neoclassical is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Directors Cuts

After a drastic drop in the number of albums produced in 2020 down to just seven, Directors Cuts - Extreme Music's label focusing on orchestral and electro-orchestral trailer music - has recently released a couple of new albums. With their first album of this year, Post Classical 3, having come out back in early January, there is a ray of hope that Directors Cuts will be back to its pre-COVID cadence of twenty or so albums a year.

The first of the two new albums, Dark Mystery 3, was composed by Geoff Zanelli, responsible for soundtracks to movies like Disturbia, Gamer, and the most recent installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series - Dead Men Tell No Tales. Zak McNeil, Phill Boucher, and Kyle McNeill collaborated with Geoff on one or two tracks each. The result is a 10-track album of slow-burning dark tension underscores creating suspense and evoking mystery with ominous string swells and ostinatos, and the occasional haunting piano or music box melody.

>> Dark Mystery 3 is an industry-only release available for preview and licensing on the Extreme Music website.

---

The other one, Industrial Drama 5, is more of a futuristic suspense thriller album of 7 tracks made of dark electronica and relentless rhythms. It was written by the Swedish electronic music composer duo Johan Skugge and Jukka Rintamäki (a.k.a. No Science), best known for composing the soundtrack of the video games Battlefield 3 and 4.

>> Industrial Drama 5 is an industry-only release available for preview and licensing on the Extreme Music website.

Earth Tones

Extreme Music's label Earth Tones continues to release music aimed at nature documentaries, tailoring each of their albums to a different ecosystem, ranging from grasslands to mountains to cities, the latter of which I wrote about in the January post. The February release, Tundras, takes us beyond the Arctic Circle, to the silent lands roamed by reindeer and Arctic foxes. The album is all about ethereal, mysterious and suspenseful themes playing over slow and spacious drones or percussion, ideal for accompanying documentary footage of frozen landscapes. Its 16 tracks were written by the Bleeding Fingers collective, namely Anže Rozman, Kara Talve, Sara Barone, Ho-Ling Tang, Kyle Hartman, Sylvia Navarro, Daniel Futcher, Austin Hammonds, Jonathan Shanes, Jacopo Trifone, Romain Paillot, Forest Christenson, David Christopher Naroth, James McWilliam, Bruce Fingers, and Billie Ray Fingers.

>> Tundras is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

Elbroar

Among Elbroar's latest batch of releases, Mega Contest is worth mentioning in the context of epic trailer music. What you'll find on this album is fast-paced epic action with dramatic choir and some tracks with electric guitar melodies. Warner/Chappell Production Music offers a very rich and apt description: "Absolutely epic choir meets testosterone-drenched hybrid orchestral action, seriously grinding drones, heroic brass, bracing strings and cinematic drum explosions in this dramatic, life-and-death collection. Think victorious, epic, courageously unstoppable." All 10 tracks were written by Ivan Bertolla, with one vocal track featuring Marco Cinque.

>> Mega Contest is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Joseph William Morgan

The composer duo Joseph William Morgan, releasing their music under the Position Music label, now have their second full-length "solo" album out that is not part of the label's Production Music Series. It's called Dimensions. Jose Villanueva and Matthew Morgan present 11 tracks of epic orchestral adventure with huge percussion, dramatic choir, and suspenseful sound design in this release. "Four years in the making, we poured every bit of ourselves into these epic and emotional tracks," Joseph William Morgan say in their Facebook message revealing the album's release to their fans. "We hope you enjoy!"

>> Dimensions is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Ninja Tracks

Ninja Tracks are back with a new aggressive and disturbing sound design album with epic percussion, called Dreadnought. It features 15 full-length tracks composed by Alexander David Norman, Rafael Frost, Arvids Saulitis, Bradley James White, Eric Tannery, Sebastian Haas, Luke William Standridge, and Richard Risto Dunn. Although Dreadnought is an industry-only release, at least for now, Ninja Tracks have recently released most of their previous industry albums to the public! You can listen to them on your favorite streaming platform, including Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. The public selection now includes pretty much all of Ninja Tracks' releases except for a handful of the purely percussion/sound design ones. To wrap up the news about Ninja Tracks, their custom music was featured in the recent trailer for Raya and the Last Dragon, premiering world-wide and on Disney+ (with Premier Access) the first week of March.

>> At the time of writing, Dreadnought is an industry-only release available for preview and licensing on the Ninja Tracks website. However, with Ninja Tracks' recent release of the majority of their catalog to the public, chances are Dreadnought will eventually also join the ranks.

Position Music

While many production music companies were without a doubt affected by the pandemic and forced to slow down their production, the LA-based Position Music released close to 50 albums in their Production Music Series alone in 2020, which is quite a bit more than in any of the previous years. And based on the number of albums pumped out in the first two months of this year, it seems like Position Music's goal is no less ambitious this year!

Even in their Production Music Series, Position Music regularly releases cinematic albums. One of them, released in February, is Magnetic Symphonies. Its 14 tracks are mostly suspenseful and mysterious, but at times dramatic, adventure themes with Middle Eastern elements. You'll also find a couple of ambient and docudrama tracks among them. The album was composed mostly by Tommy Barbarella, with three tracks by Tommy Walter, in collaboration with Richard and Andrew Meyer.

>> Magnetic Symphonies is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

---

Another trailer music release in the Production Music Series is Fantastic Orchestral Adventures, which too was written primarily by Tommy Walter, Tommy Barbarella, Richard Meyer, and Andrew Meyer, with one contribution each from Levi Brown, Adi Yeshaya, and Ed Smith. As the title suggests, it's packed with fantasy adventure and percussion-driven battle themes with military drums. The album's 23 tracks range from triumphant and hopeful to tense and dark. At the time of writing, a few tracks appear to be missing on the Position Music website, where the track numbers go up to 26, but tracks #1, #24 and #25 are not listed.

>> Fantastic Orchestral Adventures is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

Seventh Sense

Seventh Sense has released another 7-track album, Sound Design Trailers 2, composed by Zelig Sound and Michael Maas. Universal Production Music says the album offers "more sonically stunning trailer cues with terrifying soundscapes, pulsing synths and pounding drums". Unlike what the title suggests, this is not a purely sound design release, but rather a blend of sound design-heavy dramatic thriller, hybrid action, and sci-fi drama. Though in most of the songs the menacing sound design is accompanied by more melodic strings or synths, their mood remains dark and tense.

>> Sound Design Trailers 2 is an industry-only release available for preview and licensing on the Universal Production Music website.

The 13 Brotherhood

Gargantuan is The 13 Brotherhood's 31st release, and it delivers what the title promises: heroic orchestral tracks with huge choir and powerful drums, and infused with intense sound design. A few of the 16 modern epic action and adventure tracks even feature what sounds like an Eastern European folk choir, reminiscent of Thomas Bergersen's works on his solo albums, which I personally find to be a beautiful fusion. These particular tracks were written by Andrew James Christie, but several other composers from the Bleeding Fingers ensemble contributed to the rest of the album: Adam Lukas, Anže Rozman, Kara Talve, Francis James Ralls, Laurentia Editha, Dylan Price, Jacopo Trifone, Sara Barone, Bruce Fingers, and Billie Ray Fingers.

>> Gargantuan is publicly available for streaming on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.

I hope you'll find something of interest among the above February trailer music releases. But regardless, come back for more in early April, whether it is to satiate your growing hunger for brand new trailer music after another month has passed, or to improve your appetite. Čau!

Jurik