Awards 2010 - Best Customer Service

Today, we can finally put it to rest that we now finally know WHO has the best customer service.

And that person is...Andreas!

Full tally of scores below:

Andreas IIIII III
Joshy IIIII
Victoria III
Matt II
Marta II
Atia II
Anis I
Hamza I
Cahit I
Wayne I
Shafa I
Arif I
Isabelle I
Saifur I
Jay I

Tune in soon to find out: WHO is the BEST MANAGER

Awards 2010 - Most Funniest

Today we find out the winner of the most coveted and important prize of all: who is the funniest employee? It gives me great pleasure to announce the winner is...A TIE. Congratulations Matt and Tufail!

The full voting list is below:

Matt IIIII IIII
Tufail IIIII IIII
James R IIII
Shafa IIII
Christine III
Tajinder III
Atia III
Anis III
Sarah-Michelle II
Khus II
Lira II
Alex II
Andreas II
James T I
Amel I
Jennifer I
Mo I
Neville I
Delicia I
Emma I

Next we learn who gives the best customer service?

Awards 2010 - Most Cleverestestest

The one, you've all been waiting for, the answer to the most pressing question submitted to Brompton Road - who is our cleverest employee?

The answer is...Matt!

The full list of scores in this category below:

Matt IIIII IIIII
Anis IIIII III
James T IIIII I
Joshy IIII
Saifur III
Atia III
Cahit I
Arif I
Dan I
Marta I
Kitty I
Tajinder I

Next...find out: who is the funniest employee?

Awards 2010 - Most Talented

Over a million people voted, and only about 40 got counted, and your winner of the coveted Most Talented prize is...

...David!!

The full tally of results
David IIIII II
Natalie IIII
Kitty III
James T III
Loic III
Delicia III
Marta II
Matt II
Khus II
Linda II
Anis II
Arif I
Larkin I
Atia I
Andreas I
Saifur I
Jay I
James R I
Victoria I

Awards 2010 - Most Likely To Make You Smile

Kicking off with the Employee Most Likely To Make You Smile...the winner is Tufail!

Full tally of nominations and votes:

Tufail IIIII I
Matt IIIII
Andreas IIIII
Shafa IIII
Anis IIII
James R III
Tajinder III
Atia III
Delicia II
Marta II
Alex II
Sarah-Michelle II
Amel II
Linda I
Francisco I
Lira I
Wayne I
Hamza I
Dan I
Loic I
Tobe I
Isabelle I
Arif I

Next...Most Talented

ILtL: S2 - Signs and Meanings

Introductions: Learning to Look
Session Two
Signs and Meanings
Semiotics or semiology is the science or study of signs or sign systems. You heard me.
The study was put forward by Swiss linguist Ferdinand Saussure
Pierce applied the study to make it scientific
Barthes applied the study to pop culture and media
Semiotics is vital for seeing how a message is communicated.
Essentially, this study gave credence to the belief that language is constructed by people so meaning is not fixed. Like how Buddha says there is no ‘I’ because we are always changing.
There are three types of signs:
1.) Symbol – made up of words and letters
2.) Iconic – which uses pictures and graphics to send a message
3.) Indexical – relying on knowledge of future causality i.e. inferred by body language
Signs are a dyadic model; there are two aspects to a sign: the signifier (the form that the sign will take) and what’s signified (the message communicated)
When I write my essay, I must find the signifiers and what’s signified and use them to back up my point.
Signs adhere to codes and conventions. The ingredients to a sign system are initially meaningless, but when applied with a structure and order, the message is clarified. For example 314151 may look like ascending numbers spaced with 1s, but add a decimal point: 3.14151 it becomes
Repetition helps us get used to this, and it becomes automatic and reflexive despite irregulars e.g. the past tense of ‘I go’ should be ‘I goed’ but it’s actually ‘I went’
Signs communicate through a system of difference. Saussure maintained that a solitary word has no meaning, and it is their relation to other words that give it a definition. For example dark is not an applicable term without the knowledge of light.
Similarly, Barthes describes signs as dyadic because they work two ways, with a denotation (the initial visual) and its connotation (cultural knowledge)
This sign ∝ is simply a squiggle, but its connotations give it a depth. It means ‘proportional to’ but also means vesica piscis, the Jesus fish, not only stopping there, it is Aphrodite’s symbol, and also connected to the Syrian sea goddess Atargatis, and in Ancient Egypt, the fish was often associated with Isis and Horus.
The link between signifiers and what’s signified is arbitrary.
Most things work through convention and our established understanding, our cultural knowledge.
Semiology is linked to Structuralism, a term coined by Levi Strauss, which like semiotics is all about an established order of society and its binary oppositions. For young to be a relative term, there must be old. There are rules of exclusion and associations, which don’t allow for much autonomy is society. For example if you are a woman, you are required to be dominated by a guy.
Semiotics has been criticised for simplification, as has structuralism. This criticism is what’s known as post-culturalism and post-modernism. Semiotics is not great in that it doesn’t assess what the audience ends up doing, only the implicated message.
Following on from this, signs are polysemic – it means there are many possible scenarios through the signs.
To prevent the sign from being polysemic, measures are taken to make the sign easily comprehensible and understood. This measure is known as anchorage. Anchorage is quoted as being there ‘to fix the floating chains of signifieds’ by Barthes. This is sometimes rather brazen and shamelessly unsubtle.
Adverts regularly resort to myth, thus perpetuating myth. For example, to sell alcohol, you must market it towards men because men are typically boozy beer-soaked swilling drunkards.
Brap! Donezo.

IM: S1

Introducing Multimedia
Session One

What is the internet, good or bad?
The internet is good because...
...it provides entertainment e.g. downloading.
...it is a source of information e.g. journeyplanner
...enables immediate communication e.g. msn
...no censorship – freedom of speech
...FREE
...provides realms for personal development and education e.g. Wikipedia
...people with difficulties get opportunities
...it makes everything faster e.g. Michael Jackson’s death
...you can keep track of everything easier e.g. online banking

The internet is bad because...
...no censorship – too much freedom!
...digitising everything causes job loss e.g. Sayonara, Borders
...it’s untrustworthy e.g. Michael Jackson's death again
...turns being unengaged into a Zen-like experience
...unsafe – lack of security e.g. identity theft, fraud
...limits human interaction – promotes a loss of social norms
...perpetuates a false persona e.g. Lord Xandir Cliffclay of Moria is actually Rick Smedley from Milton Keynes
...piracy, copyright infringement e.g. www.*******.com
...no regulation, so you can be susceptible to addiction
...promotes marginalisation on non internet-savvy people
...shortening of people’s attention span e.g. when you

ILtL: S1

Introductions: Learning to Look
Session One

I discovered that Media is...
...a means of communication
...a marketing tool
...a source of entertainment and information
...an industry
...is dissected through vectors of message.

It is essentially a message sent from a sender to a receiver wrapped in a code. My job as a media student is to read between the lines and deliberate on the purpose, motives, and benefits of this message.

I am doing this course because...
...media has become ubiquitous,
...media is a massive fiduciary commodity
...the media lessens individuality – it creates an autonomic society e.g. LOSE 5 LBS IN 5 MINUTES!!
...it provides lively debate
...media incites a moral panic e.g. SWINE!!!
...media sways the political tide e.g. Roger Ailes’ campaign for George Bush against Michael Dukakis
...the media cannot be trusted e.g. ‘IT’S A BOY’ (Heather Mills’ daughter)/ Michael Jackson’s death

The media is an avenue for escapism; by investing in other people’s lives we are less concerned with our own. What is more important to me? Giving good customer service or the fate of Ben Linus? All media is a thin disguise for adverts. The ubiquitous media is saturated with commercials, subliminal, liminal, and super-liminal. In magazines, every second page is an advert. There’s product placement in the films I watch. Television is interrupted regularly for commercial breaks. If I want to download pictures of Emma Watson, I have to navigate my way through several pop ups and get linked away to PartyPoker and endure 10 agonising seconds for the advert to leave before getting the good stuff. The message is: SPEND SPEND SPEND. A redundant message because the internet, magazines, films, and TV require me to spend money before allowing me to enjoy them. Why do I enjoy them, anyway? Because Emma Watson is fit? Because you are expected, if not required, to have a view on who should win The X Factor? Are we all being lobotomised?

My personal target for this term is to update this blog. My action plan is to not beat around the bush and Just Do It. Just a little time the morning after a session to revisit my notes and publish them here. We’ll see ;)

Lost Q&A at the Curzon cinema

Initial thank yous, then showed a recap video of Lost,
D&C confirmed that Stranger In A Strange Land was the turning point for the studio, and they were allowed to establish an end date.
Jack’s beard is bad.
16 episodes next year, but 18 hours of Lost. Jack Bender confirmed a two hour season premiere, and a two hour finale.
After Lost, they will go in to hiding for a while, due to the inevitably interpretive quality to the series ending.
Damon: You are married to your destiny, you can try to avoid it, but it will catch up to you. This is why Charlie shut the door in the Looking Glass station, because he embraced his death.
Sometimes they get pointers from the studio, telling them stuff is too outlandish. Originally, in the season four premiere, Hurley was going to come across himself in Jacob’s cabin, but the network urged them to change the scene to Christian Shepherd, afraid it would set a precedent of weirdness. With season six, there won’t be any of that
Q: What was your favourite scene to watch or write?
CC: The scoring session we attended for the raft’s launch at the end of Exodus . These musicians were playing this incredible music without having rehearsed it, and the moment was so beautiful, there were tears in the control booth. That was just one of those great moments where you felt this blessed synergy of all these talented collaborators all come together and make Lost what it is.
JB: I love all of them
DL: I have many...but for me, during season one, when we first started writing the show coming out of the pilot, when it first started revealing itself, was really cool. I’m drawn to scenes that take place with just two characters and somehow they’re talking about very very heady things and I’m a huge fan of whenever Jack and Locke talk to each other. We’ve been very judicious in having those guys talk to each other, it happens very rarely. I go back back to White Rabbit and that 6 or 7 minute long scene where they’re just sitting in the jungle and Jack says he’s following the impossible and Locke says what if it’s not impossible and we were all put here for a reason, and that scene is the genesis for those guys’ relationship and if you think about how that was the 3rd episode shot out of the pilot, here we are now, 100 episodes later, and now Jack is finally saying ‘Y’know, Locke might be onto something’
CC: Jack’s kinda slow.
DL: It had to permeate through his beard
Q: My wife is fascinated with the artistry of delivering this idea into a script. We had, in a video podcast last year, a glimpse into the writers’ room and she’s fascinated that you get the idea and put it into a script
CC: We have a call centre in Delhi. We just ask them ‘we need a flashforward this week’
DL: We have a minicamp before we write, where we just discuss the season with the writers, the character arcs and we decide on the season’s final image so we know exactly our beginning and where we’re trying to get to. Once we start writing the show on a week-to-week episode basis it gets a bit more intense
CC: We spend a lot of time breaking each aspect of the story and once we have the story worked out from beginning to end, we’ll put it up on whiteboard and then pitch it back to ourselves, and we’ll have scenes in different colours, withan on island story, an off island story, and a C-story, split it into six acts for the commercial breaks and structure it so you’ll wanna come back after each act. Then we’ll give it to some writers to rewrite and send back, and we’ll give our notes, make some changes
Q: Jack was originally a protagonist for the show, but he seems to have gotten more antagonistic as it goes on. Was this intentional?
JB: Matthew Fox loved the idea of wearing the not so flattering jumpsuits and his character beginning to let go of his heroic side, which people accuse me of, taking Jack Shepherd’s character.
DL: Basically Jack spent a hundred hours majorly rejecting it, there was no purpose whatsoever to the island and now he’s come back in the 70s and he’s still waiting to be told ‘Here’s what you’re supposed to do’ and then when he is told what to do, he then gets to decide what he is going to do, so basically it’s contingent on what he feels his mission is.
Q: Can we get more Lost screenings where you project episodes in a cinema like this?
CC: I think so. It’s a good idea and it may happen in some form or other
Q: On the official website, there was a video of behind the scenes and you went into your offices and you had a wall of whose dead and whose alive, I want to know about Claire being on the wall of dead
[shocked gasps from audience]
DL: Are you absolutely sure
Q: I am
DL: [explains wall of alive, dead, undead] Well, uh, if you say you saw her there, I don’t know what to tell you.
JB: I think her agent slipped it in there
DL: She is going to be back on the show.
CC: Eventually all of them will be on the wall of the dead.
Q: My question is about the fate of Lost, because I know it ends with season 6, but do you think because of Bryan Fuller with Pushing Daisies continuing it in a comic book, and I love Ultimate Wolverine vs Hulk (Damon’s comic) and with Lost it has a disjointed timeline and it comes together in the end, do you think that you’ll do any spin offs in a comic book form?
DL: We feel that if we hold anything back for the final season of the show, it will be bad. People have come along this far, and they need a conclusion.
Q: You make a lot about the characters searching for their destiny and their purpose, do you feel that you yourselves had a purpose in your own lives being involved in the show, or you’ve learned something about life from doing it?
CC: I think as writers we use the show to explore personal issues, spiritual or otherwise. We’re mainly concerned by how much faith and how much control do you have over your own destiny, something which is very fascinating to us, and obviously season 5 was an exploration of that with the time travel leading to an event at the end of the season, so that is going to be something we’re going to explore a lot on the final season of the show. The writers room is diverse and that diversity gets worked out in the characters.
Q: What’s Brian K. Vaughan like?
DL: Unfortunately he has left for greener pastures. When he first came on the show Jorge Garcia was ecstatic because he’s a huge fan of his work.
Q: Where are exactly are you with season 6?
CC: We are here, and the following Monday we’ll start writing.
JB: Shooting starts August 24th
CC: We’ll work continuously until the middle of April and the show will air sometime between January and February and will finish around May.
Q: I want to know about the end of Lost. Michael Emerson said in an interview this week that he suspects it will be quite bittersweet or melancholy. Is it going to be an upbeat ending or ambiguous? Just any kind of hint to the flavour of the ending.
DL: All of the above. We are aspiring for an ending that is fair. Bittersweet comes with the territory. The ending will be different as for once, we won’t leave you on a cliffhanger. You will stay on the cliff this time.
CC: We hope that if we like it, you will like it.
Q: I was sad Charlie died, but he had to die to give his story credibility. That makes me wonder about John Locke. The fact he is now dead, having hit his lowest ebb...what’s up with that character arc?
CC: We’re not prepared to answer any of those questions here tonight. We feel that the final part of the experience of Lost is that you have this time between to theorise, postulate, agonise.
JB: If the actors really need to know what’s coming ahead, they’ll ask. As an example, Josh Holloway did not know what he was whispering to Kate when he jumped out of the helicopter, and neither did Evangeline Lilly, but the actors sold it so well. Terry O’ Quinn was playing Locke with this dark mysterious quality, unintentionally playing into the ending which he didn’t know. I presented him with the script asking him he wanted to read it and he was sure. He came back after saying ‘I wish I hadn’t read it’
Q: How much do you know about each character’s story, are there any you’re particularly proud of, or not proud of?
DL: When you come up with an idea for a character, and they come into the show, like Eko, who was originally a priest who had a crisis of faith, and we found Adewale in New York, and we basically said we don’t buy that this guy is a priest who has lost his faith, we buy that this guy is a warlord impersonating a priest, and somewhere along the way he’d decide he wasn’t just impersonating a priest, he’d decide to be one. So we’re certainly proud of the way that one worked out, and as for the ones we’re not proud of, we bury alive...or have Michael shoot them.
Q: How do you come up with these amazing twists?
CC: A lot of getting yourself to a point where you cry. We have a really brilliant writing staff and that’s part of the DNA of the show now, and that’s a big part of the writer’s room, how we re-route things one way and flip it back another. We love introducing a character in a certain way and then reveal the character to be very different. You know originally Sawyer tested the second lowest after the pilot, and now of course he’s a very heroic version of that character.
Q: Keep the Smoke!
DL: You’ll be seeing the smoke in a probably interesting character in itself
JB: And it will be in the shape of Jack’s beard
Q: Season 5 was hard work watching, with time travel. How are you going to pay that off?
DL: We acknowledge with a degree of difficulty. We were ostensibly frightened at first with the time travel story, were basically desperate to get everybody back together again. Time travel is now complete and everybody gets back together in one form or another and we feel that season 6 is a lot like season 1 with its community.
Q&A ended here. The guys signed stuff for the fans. My friend had a copy of Half Blood Prince, Damon signed it saying ‘Locke is VERY similar to Snape!’

Lost Season Four Soundtrack Guide by McLeron

1.) Giving Up The Ghost – The music during the scene where Charlie chats with Hurley in Santa Rosa. The music here takes from what was hinted at in season three’s Fetch Your Arm. In that track there were slight dreamlike soothing sounds like from a synth, which are now always used for Hurley’s ‘sad’ theme.

2.) Locke’ing Horns – is heard in the scene at the cockpit of 815 where Hurley sticks up for Locke. It’s another variation of the ‘Losties Coming Together Over Something Mournful’ theme heard in Just Die Already, Win One For The Reaper, Charlie Hangs Around, Life And Death, Oceanic 815, The Last To Know, Under The Knife, Here Today, Gone To Maui, and many more, but specifically Looking Glass Half Full.

3.) Lost Away – Or Is It? – Takes place when Sayid leaves the island on Frank’s chopper, transitioning into the revelatory flashforward where we learn Sayid is a hitman for Ben in the future. This is a brilliant reworking of Sayid’s theme, which is unmistakably both mournful and ethnic. Giacchino takes this full blown, for the first time making a track that feels like a massive orchestral score holding its own on a big budget film.

4.) Backgammon Gambit – Takes place during the scene where Kate frees Miles while Sawyer distracts Locke with an irresistible game of backgammon. Open’s with Locke’s ‘Dawning On Something’ themes, and turns into Kate’s ‘Running’ theme. A snappy vibrant track with fascinating reworkings of our loved ones themes.

5.) Time And Time Again – Takes place during Desmond’s airborne electromagnetically induced dementia, wherein he is meant to calm down as the chopper is about to land on the freighter. It opens with the ‘Something Strange Is Going On With Lost’ theme (see: Claire’s Sessions With The Psychic) This is the first track on the soundtrack to play the ‘Helicopter Flies Over The Freighter’ theme. This hummable piece of music is fantastic as it employs the rarely used big bass drum, that hadn’t been heard since season three’s Under The Knife. The big bass drum is an incredible instrument when used in Lost, which highlights any scene.

6.) The Constant – God knows why this track is called the Constant. Just kidding, it takes place when Desmond finally manages to make contact with Penelope, ultimately saving him from death. The Constant, aka the Desmond Penny Love Theme. Season Four’s most beloved moment is recorded here in full to the delight of all fans. This is a more concise version of Distraught Desmond from season three’s soundtrack with more romantic violins thrown in. The track hits full swing two minutes in where there is overwhelming triumph, our two parted lovers are reunited a full 40 episodes before we all thought they would. The track loses momentum around the three and a half minute mark, to go back to the island to go through Daniel Faraday’s notebook.

7.) Maternity Hell – A very interesting piece of original music from Giacchino. It builds a scene tentatively, then drops in the theme usually used for Vincent and Hurley running, then hits you in the face with it full tilt.

8.) Karma Jin-Initiative – where Bernard talks to Jin about karma. This is a slightly shorter version of Season Two’s brilliant Rose and Bernard.

9.) Ji Yeon – The music used in the scene where Sun cries at Jin’s grave. Like Locke’ing Horns, but even MORE tragic.

10.) Michael’s Right To Remain Wrong – takes place during the scene where Michael sells Jin’s million dollar watch to buy a gun to kill himself with. What happened to the gun he had in the season two finale, I wonder? This is a wonderfully bizarre piece of music, that begins with Michael’s theme (finally! Glaring omission from season two!), last heard in Adrift where he gives Toddler Walt a toy polar bear. It quickly transforms into a mad piece of frantic violin scrubbings and magically crazy plinkly percussion.

11.) Bodies And Bungalows – the music used in the scene where Sawyer is shot at repeatedly in Dharmaville. This is a more dramatic version of season three’s Hold The Phone. It is brilliantly terrifying with drums bubbling and undulating perplexingly under the sharp violins.

12.) Benundrum – Plays over any scene where Ben fortifies his house against an attack from the freighter’s mercenaries. This is a mishmash of several ‘Impending Doom’ mood pieces from the Ben centric episode The Shape Of Things To Come. The base theme here is the same as the opening of Bodies and Bungalows, so I’m not exactly sure why it was kept in. I feel that instead we could have had the music where Ben says goodbye to his daughter amidst the apocalypse of Smokey

13.) Hostile Negotiations – The music used during IMO season four’s most shocking moment: the execution of young innocent Alexandra. It begins seriously, with abrupt bursts of brass, then the mournful strings of Ben’s ‘Humanising and Emotional’ theme come in building up softly, until we are hit full on with the theme, then it dies down and turns horrifically terrible as the high tensed strings draw out a note so offensively. Possibly the best piece of music on this soundtrack and the show itself, it captures every millisecond of the jawdroppingly powerful scene. You can show the scene to randomers who hate the show and no one can say a bad word about the execution. NPI

14.) Locke-about – The music used in Locke’s heartbreaking scene where he struggles to walk again, and is advised a Walkabout tour would do him good, by the oxymoronic appellation Matthew Abbadon. The second half of the track takes place during the scene where Keamy forms a Mutiny on the Kahana and kills Doc Ray and Captain Gault to coerce Frank Lapidus to pilot him back to the island to kill more innocent people. It’s an OKish version of Locke’s ‘sad’ theme. I, for one, would love to hear Locke’s original ‘Unbelievably Sad’ theme from season one’s Locke’d Out Again which was IMO Giacchino’s best music, but somehow only ever used twice on the show…and NOT in the scene where Locke first uses a wheelchair, WTF??? TRAVESTY!!! The song changes abruptly as it passes into the freighter scene. They should have just made that part of the track separate and replaced the Locke learning to walkabout music with the fantastic music played over the scene where Richard Alpert employs Buddhism to see if Locke is special enough to earn a place at his special school. The freighter part of the track is worth listening to near the end where the ‘Helicopter Flying Over The Freighter’ theme is played again with less triumphant sounds and more terrible undertones, now that we know that the machine is really ferrying a bunch of cutthroat bastards.

15.) There’s No Place Like Home – The first scene of the episode There’s No Place Like Home, where the Oceanic Six land in Hawaii. Michael Giacchino outdid himself here, with an amazing piece of original music with an Eastern tint that he hasn’t since bettered. It has strokes of Parting Words and The Gathering. It’s a piece of music that when you listen to, you wonder why no one had made something like this before, it’s so simple.

16.) Nadia On Your Life – Takes place during the scene WAY more important than The Constant scene, where Sayid, after eight fucking years of searching, and being blackmailed into setting up his old friends to be terrorists, is FINALLY reunited with his tragic exiled tortured soul mate, who had acid poured on her hands just for being a liberal. The music spills over onto the following scene where Sayid speeds the Zodiac raft to the island so that Faraday and Juliet can ship the Lostaways to the Freighter. This is basically season two’s A New Trade with season one’s Hollywood And Vines aka ‘The Losties Are Travelling For Important Reasons’ theme.

17.) C4-titude – Sun and Jin are shocked to see Michael aboard the freighter, but are interrupted by Desmond yelling for them to come see the ridiculous amount of C4 explosive on the boat. Uh oh. This is a dramatic mishmash of some of the tense themes of Lost and the freighter theme.

18.) Of Mice And Ben – A montage even better than the opening with There’s No Place Like Home. For me, this is where track 15 really hits its stride. It completes the best musical scene of the season as all our heroes pass off voluntarily on to certain doom…with a few more drums! Old feuds are forgotten as they act in the interests of their loved ones, which is basically all of what Lost is about. True heroes are sort of born out of moments and the reality is-is most of our characters are heroes…when the proverbial others are coming…do you man up and take action? These guys always act most nobly when they act in the spirit of the community, they protect each other. The question remains what is the fate of our castaways, how are they gonna get off this island? Ultimately it’s about these people, it always has been. This island has given them an opportunity to completely reinvent themselves and that change for these characters is really what the end game will be all about.

19.) Keamy Away From Him – The music played over the rescue of Ben and shootout between Keamy and the Islanders, ending with the stunning hand-to-hand fight with our own soldier of fortune, Sayid. This is a good piece of music using several ingredients from the soundtracks to season two and three. It’s mostly ‘The Hunt’ gone psychotic.

20.) Timecrunch – plays over Faraday coming back on the Zodiac to ferry more socks to the freighter. This is a great piece of music, drawing off The Moth theme from season one, or season two’s Charlie’s Temptation into music that gives a palpable feeling of dread, until the ‘The Losties Are Travelling For Important Reasons’ theme returns.

21.) Can’t Kill Keamy – takes place over the scene where the helicopter flies off the island. Because the main characters are too good to use the Zodiac raft, they wanna be all fancy and use a helicopter – well look how that turned out! The helicopter ended up crashing! If they’d been humble enough to use the Zodiac raft they would have crashed in the ocean. Look at the scoreboard, the freighter had TWO helicopters and one Zodiac. What’s still standing? Zodiac:1, Helicopters: Nil. This music opens with a new take on the Lost theme (Credit Where Credit’s Due, season one) and subtly lifts from the new There’s No Place Like Home and transforms it into a bit of an actioner.

22.) Bobbing For Freighters – Plays over the scene where Keamy, who obviously COULD be killed, and his dead man’s switch sets off the C4 on the freighter, causing it to explode along with several of our beloved characters. This track contains some of the best music, most notably in the final minute of the track, where the ‘Helicopter Flies Over The Freighter theme and the Jin Sun love theme become one, and it soars hopefully with desperately pounding drums, but ultimately tragic. This is a case of music completely taking you over. The great thing about Giacchino’s music is that it fully sucks you in and absorbs you into the Lost world and none more so than here with the emotionally devastating parting of our favourite married couple.

23.) Locke of the Island – The Frozen Donkey Wheel. It’s the longest Giacchino track ever released, and it throws in every instrument possible, going through so many scenes where farewells are given. It truly sums up the mood in the best possible way, giving us Locke’s theme, and Ben’s emotional theme, which is one of the strongest on the show. He brings out that big bass drum again, telling us, this is the most emotional event going on ever. Brilliant track.

24.) Lying For The Island – where The Searcher finds the survivors, and Des and Penny are reunited after three years. Sayid went for longer, pussies. In this track, curiously, are the beginnings of Jacob’s Theme, which will next be heard in the penultimate scene of the season five finale. The track is held by a long note on the violin, and then the piano comes in, with hope, then following on from that, in come the weeping cellos, and the Desmond Penny Love Theme returns more powerful and significant and more romantic than ever before.

25.) Landing Party – The music played over the slow motion scene where the Oceanic Six land on Manukangga. Because There’s No Place Like Home and Of Mice And Ben was not enough, we’re hit again with the original finale music one last time.

26.) Hoffs-Drawler – The music played over the final scene of the season, and we find what’s in the box. This is a four minute long track that only needs to be one minute. The first three minutes are just long drawn out notes that bubble under the scene that takes place. In the middle of the track we get a shout out to the music played in season one’s finale when Hurley sees the numbers on the Hatch, so it is nice to finally have that on audio to listen to. The music just murmurs under with a few keys of piano, and low low harpsichord plucks. In the final minute we get the ‘We Are About To End On A Shock’ piece of music, most recently heard in the final minute of Follow The Leader.

Overall as I am the world’s biggest Lost fan, I’m not going to rate this anything other than 100%. I’m upset at how we don’t have the music from when Sawyer kisses Kate and jumps off the helicopter, which was the creator’s favourite part of the finale. I’m glad that the music from when Michael first attempts to blow up the Kahana is omitted, as that’s just Eko Blaster from season two, aka the ‘Losties Are About To Blow Something Up’ theme. I’m also annoyed that we don’t have the music from the scene where Kate throws Jack out of her life in Something Nice Back Home, which is Jack’s season three theme, last heard in Flash Forward Flashback. However it wouldn’t be a Lost soundtrack if they didn’t forget to include musical highlights of the season (Season One: The Moth scene, and Don’t Tell Me What I Can’t Do scene; Season Two: Locke doesn’t push the button and Henry gets his face smashed in – the music is crazy climatic; Season Three: Locke walks off with his dead father on his back – if you end on a dialogue free music piece, make sure it’s on the soundtrack!)

So back next year to do the same thing for the season five soundtrack, probably to bitch that they didn’t include Ben’s Humanising and Emotional theme from the Monster scene in Dead Is Dead. And, also, why ARE the Lost soundtracks released so late? Is it because it takes a year to come up with puns like Karma Jin-initiative and Nadia On Your Life?