“With its too short tracks, Deadly Care only shows that Franke and Froese still had some juice left in the creative neurons...”
1 Deadly Care Main Theme 4:56 2 Paddles/Stolen Pills 2:55 3 A Strong Drink/A Bad Morning 2:05 4 Wasted and Sick 1:24 5 Hope For The Future 4:04 6 The Hospital 5:44 7 In Bed 1:54 8 Annie & Father 1:28 9 More Pills 1:28 10 In The Head Nurse's Office/At The Father's Grave 1:28 11 Clean and Sober 4:57 Silva America SSD 1013
(CD 32:23) (V.F.) (E-Pink Rock)
The 1987 year! It's the release of Tyger. The world of the EM is in a kind of bad patch. The new equipment which drown the market since a couple of years changes the sound and bring the kind towards a kind of electronic synth pop. There is well the birth of England School, but it didn't reach this side of the planet yet, except for Mark Shreeve's Legion. The New Age has already flood over in the North American market. EM migrates more and more towards the digital and the samplings era. They are now the main adornments of EM which switches from the analog warmth for the coldness of the digital. It's also the period where the Dream is coveting the USA with the signature on Peter Baumann's label; Private Music. But in the meantime, Franke and Froese continue their raids in the paying world of soundtracks. It's same Edgar who admitted that the making of this theme music has for purpose only to undertake the construction of a mega studio recording. And these movie music parade. Since 1984, about ten of those were recorded and this is without counting titles of White Eagle and Le Parc which were playing in television programs.
Many of these albums will go out only years later, while the Mandarin Dream warms the waves of Californian radios. It's the case for this DEADLY CARE. Initially composed in 1987, it's nevertheless in 1992 that Silva America will release it in a stride of a massive realizations of soundtracks of the trio which became a duet and then became again a trio while keeping a name which has a nobility only its gigantic past. Turned for the American television, Deadly Care is in this trail of works for visual supports which wear down the creativity of the duet Franke/Froese, if not its legend. Nevertheless, this DEADLY CARE is not really that bad. The music presented is just too short. The ideas and the spirit of this movie for teenagers are present, but that is horribly too short. In fact, the longest titles such as Deadly Care Main Theme, The Hospital and Clean and Sober are very charming with this mixture of Tyger, Near Dark and Legend. Other titles present good structures which, once better developed and imprisoned in of long steams of improvisations, would sound as the heavy and dark Dream that we have hoped for since ages now. But it's not the case. So we kind of grow tired of being on the alert hoping for something that never come. And in the end of the day the frustration rises by noticing all the potential lost behind this insipid soundtrack. In short, DEADLY CARE is a frustrating exercise where we remark that the duet Franke and Froese had well and truly some juice in 1987. Juice which will have turned sour in the time to say it …Too bad!
Sylvain Lupari (September 11th, 2010) ***½**