The thriller Sky Riders (in which a woman played by Susannah York is kidnapped by terrorists and rescued by her ex-husband, played by James Coburn, who hang-glides onto a Greek island) made little impression on filmgoers when it opened in the U.S. in the spring of 1976, and no soundtrack album containing
Lalo Schifrin's score was released. Thirty-three years later,
Schifrin himself, on his own Aleph Records label, corrects this oversight. His music may be, as annotator Julie Kirgo claims, superior to the movie in which it was used, but it is still a fairly conventional effort making use of expected effects. Of course, there is plenty of suspense music to accompany the action sequences, especially later on. But
Schifrin also takes advantage of the setting to use a bouzouki and suggest Greek folk music in "Climbers," after having taken advantage of the presence of the flying circus recruited by Coburn in the rescue for the opening "Flying Circus." A big difference in this album, assembled under the composer's own auspices, is that it provides a more coherent sense of his music as composition, with lengthy tracks running seven, eight, and nine minutes, instead of as the usual short cues that tend to be used on soundtrack albums, reflecting the way the music is actually used in films, in short bursts without development or context beyond the visuals being accompanied. Here,
Schifrin's musical segments have beginnings, middles, and ends, which means this disc works better as a piece of music -- however varied -- than a 1976 soundtrack LP would have been likely to do. ~ William Ruhlmann