Audio

In February 1966 a 7-inch single of the theme tune (Main Theme from Robinson Crusoe / Adrift) by the Franco London Orchestra was released by Philips records (BF 1470) in the UK and an LP record of George van Parys' original score was released in France by Petit Menestrel Records (ALB 405). Subsequent re-releases by Philips included 'Theme from Robinson Crusoe / Adrift' (March1967 - Philips BF 1562) and 'Main Theme from Robinson Crusoe / Adrift' (August 1969 - Philips BF 1806). An LP was also released in Germany by Polydor records. In 1990 Silva Screen released the music from the English dub of the series by Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi on CD, the tracks being taken from tapes kept by Robert Mellin in Italy. An extended version was released in 1997, as more tapes were found at Franco London Films in France.

CD SLEEVE NOTES FOR THE 1997 EDITION by Mark Ayres, 2nd September 1997:
The master tapes from which this CD has been compiled came from two sources. Composer Robert Mellin had two reels which he loaned to Silva Screen Records in 1990 and from which the original CD was mastered. Earlier this year [1997] another four reels came to light at Franco London Films. To understand what these reels contained it is necessary to describe the production process. "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" was scored from a library of cues provided by the composers, with cues written for various moods and situations, re-cut to suit the individual episodes.

The music cues were recorded at various sessions, with safety copies made of the tapes - two of which found their way into Mr. Mellin's possession. From the original masters, copies were made and the copies edited to form play-in tapes of edited cues for individual episodes. Many passages of music were used more than once. When the edited reels were completed, further safety copies were made of the edits, and it is those safety reels that have now come to light, the previous masters are still lost. In compiling this CD, I spent many hours listening to the tapes (over two hours of material), over and over again, in order to pick the best copy of each section of music and to work out how the music was written before it had been edited.

I then re-edited the tapes to reconstruct the original cues. The source tapes were at least third generation and more than thirty years old, nevertheless they were in very good condition, but technical resources in 1963 were not what they are now and there were many small electrical clicks and pops evident in the masters, some more irritating passages of continuous interference and evidence of chewed tape on the masters being copied to the safeties!

To re-master the music, I manually removed most of the clicks and pops using Sound Designer software running on an Apple Mac Computer before re-compiling the master in Pro Tools using various software from Digidesign and Waves to de-noise and re-equalise the music. The main criteria involved removing artefacts added after the recording of the original master but to leave the original sound intact. As a result, you will occasionally hear some soft clicks; minor distortion and dropouts caused by worn tape, but these should not detract from the enjoyment of this wonderful music from a classic series.