Close Encounters of the Third Kind

AMG Review of Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Steven McDonald
All Music Guide

The CE3K score was a masterful mixture of eerie suspense and tremendous emotive bombast, complete with hair-raising moments and the great big playful musical conversation between the mothership and the humans. The album, alas, was a fairly pitiful affair, poorly mixed, sequenced lamely, and missing most of the conversation. This splendid CD edition has been designed to remedy the mistakes just after the twentieth anniversary. Most of the music from the film is included on the disc, along with an alternate cue and some music edited out of the film (much of which has found its way back into the special editions). Happily, the complete musical conversation is here, too, delightful and magnificent. The remixing and remastering has resulted in tremendous sound improvement, making this CD an essential acquisition.