UNIVERSE OF ENERGY
LINER NOTES
1. Energy, You Make the World Go Round (Entrance Plaza)
The iconic opening movement in EPCOT Center's original Entrance Plaza atmosphere. As with the other seven (out of the nine originally recorded), Bob Moline's "Energy, You Make the World Go 'Round" was given an avant-garde arrangement uniquely blending classic orchestra score with decidedly futuristic electronic instrumentation.
Although no less beautiful, in recent years, this particular section has been revealed to contain no less than 4 plagiarized cues from other artists by this composition's arranger, Jeffrey Sturges including the high-energy strings intro originally composed by Colin Hewinson for the song
"Let it Lie" performed by the band "Trickster", Alan Parsons'
"One More River" and
"Shadow of a Lonely Man" and the Finale to the soundtrack for 1971's
"Le Mans" by Michel Legrand. Thus, this is the first presentation of this arrangement, crediting their work. For a comprehensive yet concise comparison of these compositions, I would highly recommend watching Theme Park Musicologist
North of Main Street's video on the subject.
2. Pavilion Atmosphere
Often cited as "the most boring attraction ever created," it should come as quite a shock that the Universe of Energy had the most gloriously edgy, upbeat and, yes, Energetic of all EPCOT Center's atmospheres. For while other locations featured more serene genre arrangements like the sweeping cinematic stylings of John Debney's Horizons or Buddy Baker's more Broadway Show Tunes-inspired treatment for World of Motion, Alan Oldfield and Patrick Gleason's Universe of Energy arrangements evoke the feeling of a Disco Jazz Rock Concert where one would could image this playing to warm up the crowd before a performance of "Earth, Wind & Fire".
This atmosphere also holds the distinction of being THE biggest Holy Grail for theme park audio aficionados for decades, as many, including myself, thought it truly lost for all time. That is until 2022, while I was talking with one of my more prominent former Imagineer friends about a great many topics and, in passing, I lamented that I had made peace with never being able to hear the 1982 original Universe of Energy BGM.
A few days later, amongst MANY rare (yet to be released) treasures sent to me was a file simply titled "Energy Original BGM.m4a". Having seen tons of similarly (mis-)titled files before and despite the highly-accredited person that sent it to me, I was still skeptical until I pressed play which triggered a mild cardiac episode. There, at long last, was the long lost last piece of Future World's original soundscape.
It was now possible to give the Universe of Energy the comprehensive soundtrack album it deserves. But not without a seemingly tiny complication... (See Track 8)
Technical Note:
Due to data load restrictions beyond their control, SquareSpace (E82's website platform) will not allow individual album tracks larger than 20MB, so rather than sacrifice quality, this BGM was split into two parts which has led to some confusion. Combined they are the pavilion's entire BGM which was broadcasted both around the building's exterior and the interior preshow space when it was not playing.
3. Presented by EXXON
A tiger’s footsteps create electronic ripples of light before jumping towards the screen, his eyes flashing into stars that become the double XX’s of Exxon’s logo revealing a 3D Universe of Energy title emanating from a pulsing Supernova and climaxing with the first rotation of the enormous kinetic mosaic.
4. Radok's Energy Primer
From the 1982 Familiarization Guide:
Emil Radok, an accomplished Czechoslovakian filmmaker/artist designed the long "magical" screen situated above the queue area. Five 35mm motion picture projectors cast rapidly changing images onto 100 separate threefoot square sections of the screen. These screen sections, controlled by a microprocessor, rotate in sync with the projected images, exposing a black side, a projected surface, or a combination of both. The effect transforms the flat film images into a three dimensional, moving mosaic as dynamic as energy itself.
Featuring narration performed by Vic Perrin and capped with Bob Moline's "Energy, You Make the World Go 'Round" performed by John Joyce, the austere electronic score for this kinetic presentation was composed by Patrick Gleason. Noted at Epcot for also scoring several film presentations including "Symbiosis", "The Sea" and "The Spirit of Norway", Patrick's original mix was originally more understated, but he had to go back and add many dramatic crescendos to drown out the turning of the square screens which were much louder than anticipated.
5. Traveling Theatre
Serving as the "Fill Music" for guests being loaded in six 96-Seat "Traveling Theater Cars" inside Theatre I — a massive triangular-shaped space covered with golden Austrian curtains, this piece of music is also making its World Premiere on this Extended Edition.
Written by the great Buddy Baker, this contemplatively calming composition sets a mysterious tone for the journey soon to unfold, spanning millions of years of energy evolution. The sinuously serene piece intentionally evokes a Stravinsky-esque quality leading into the first act of our story.
6. Energy Creation Story
Spanning 3 massive 70mm screens, this presentation holds the distinction of being the largest animated film ever produced (by canvas size). Much of this film draws direct inspiration from the Tomorrowland series TV specials created in the 1950s for the Disneyland TV Show and thus features a "Limited Animation" style with a finale looking very similar to FANTASIA's Rite of Spring segment and using much of its dinosaur animation.
Although rearranged for a larger orchestra, the music for the segment is nearly identical to an unused piece created for the "Mirror Maze" scene of GE's Progressland 18 years earlier in 1964. While it was a perfect setup for the Skydome Spectacular show that proceeded it, GE executives thought the tone shift was too dark for their pavilion and had Buddy Baker create a new more playful piece for the 1964 show.
Several years later this piece was renamed "Mysteries of the Atom" (which you'll find in the Bonus continent of this album) and was used as the model for the queue music for Adventure Thru Inner Space opening in 1967.
7. The Primeval Era
Viewed by almost everyone as the centerpiece of the attraction, this monumental collection of full scale Dinosaur vignettes in a Primeval swamp and forest not only took guests back 275 million years, but gradually through the Late Jurassic to Cretaceous periods and to their eventual extinction.
This mix was created using the source sound effects created for the attraction by audio engineer (and eventual head of Media for Imagineering) Joe Harrington. And what you're hearing (in order of appearance are) Rainstorms, Insects, Brontosaurus, Edaphosaurus, Stegosaurus & Allosaurus fight, Trachodons, Earthquakes, Ornithomimus Cries, Elasmosaurus Roars & Splashes, Pteranodon Calls, and a volcano eruption.
8. Energy Entracte
Welcoming us back from the violent and chaotic primeval era is the sleek and minimalistic Energy Information Center that features rim-lit etched glass panels of Earth with recessed colorful light beams slowly streaking across the maps before terminating on various locations around the world that will be visited during Theatre II's main show.
With its understated and optimistically futuristic tone, the music accompanying this transitional scene is quintessential EPCOT Center. And yet it is frustratingly almost impossible to capture. After acquiring Universe of Energy's original atmosphere, I was overjoyed; however, when making a rough assembly of this album, the one truly disturbing element was the lack of source audio of this pivot scene which stuck out horribly in comparison to all the other crystal clear tracks.
The same anonymous benefactor who had given me the original BGM has also stated that they *might* also have the source score for Theatre II in their offline collection. After several years of gently poking, prodding and reminding them to confirm whether or not they had it, I finally received both the bad news that they didn't have it and the good news that they did make several high-quality live recordings of this and other attractions that were encoded in a lossless format.
While unfortunate that they didn't have the material I had hoped for, after several years searching out alternative sources, it was apparent that this might be as good as I would ever get. So amid mounting (and often hostile) public pressure coupled with my strong desire to release this material into the world, I decided to proceed with producing this "Expanded (yet not quite complete) Edition".... But what to do about this problematic Entracte?
With the donation of the best live recordings in existence, and as I've done many times before, I went to work denoising and enhancing the Live to make it sound as close to a studio recording as possible. The problem is was that the music was so soft and the dinosaur sounds bleeding in from the other room were so loud that traditional methods weren't going to cut it.
For the past several soundtrack projects, I had been using various AI models to enhance or restore raw audio sources that would be far too time-consuming (or completely impossible) to do manually. In this case, simple Denoising or Crowd Removal AI-model also proved unsuccessful to remove those pesky Pteranodon Calls.
However, several AI models can isolate individual instrument groups, which led me to think, "If I can't remove the noise, perhaps I can reverse mix the music." So over the next FIVE DAYS, using over 13 separate AI models and conducting over 300 tests, I was able to make this minuscule 146-second interlude into something serviceable for this album.
Below is a before & after demostration of the original live recording and the 13-STEM AI reassembly.
