On November 11, 2010 Sony Music released the soundtrack of Cirque Du Soleil's show "Viva Elvis". In the US the album stagnated at number 48 of the Billboard Chart, but in several European countries it entered the top10 and was awarded Gold (Sweden) and Silver (Great Britain).

Today the album is available on the streaming platforms. Until now there is no Hi-Res version, so we have to do with 44.1 kHz/16 bit. It's not one of the most popular Presley releases, on Spotify it clocks in at 26 million streams.

For the live show and the accordant soundtrack all songs were completely re-imaged. Erich van Tourenau and Hugo Bombardier were able to use more than 900 original recordings and over 17,000 samples as well as newly recorded music and vocal tracks. After the producers had completed their puzzles, the tracks were mixed by Serban Ghenea.

The album starts with people shouting "Viva Elvis", then an orchestra starts to play "Also Sprach Zarathustra". Elvis sings "If you're looking for trouble", there are historical raidio announcements and much more. After a countdown, the show begins.

Most of Elvis' vocals are taken from his original studio recording, some lines are borrowned from live performances of later years. The track is spiced up with an harmonica and announcements by Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle.

A drum intro, some bars of the guitar play from the original recording, a piano and an announcement from the 1950s. Suddenly we hear drums, an electric guitar and Elvis' vocals from the SUN recording. Some "wells" from later concert recordings are included, too. The mash-up rocks as hell and sounds very good!

Introduced by a few "wells" from the 1970s and a live performance from the 1950s we hear Elvis vocals from his studio recording. They are joined by roaring guitars, drums and an orchestra. The song starts as a blues, moves over to rock and swing and returns to the blues. The samples also include a few words of "Polk Salad Annie", pitch corrected to fit Elvis' voice of the 1950s. The new version is not as dark and moody as the original recording, but quite interesting to hear.

All instruments were newly recorded, besides that the song was turned into a duet of Elvis and Dea Norberg. At the end the king sings a few bars of "In My Way". This track is the haven of piece on this otherwise noisy album.

An announcement from the movie trailer of "King Creole" is followed by a hard beat, samples from "Crawfish" and vocals by the "Viva Elvis" ensemble. The track also includes bits and pieces from the orchestra version of "King Creole", "New Orleans" and "Hard Headed Woman". Compared to the original recording this new version is very different, but I like it very much.

Elvis talks to Hal Wallis, then the classic from "Fun In Acapulco" follows. The focus is on the rhythm, we hear additional voices, instruments and samples from other songs. But the basic structure of the original was maintained.

We hear an excerpt of the king's press conference in March 1960, then hard rocking guitars and smashing drums lead into "Burning Love". In-between there's a sample from the movie "Jailhouse Rock", in which Elvis says "It's just the beast in me". Apart from this sample a 2010 live version of the song might have sounded similar.

This is a short, instrumental interlude.

The classic from the movie "Blue Hawaii" was turned into a duet with Sherry St-Germain and enriched with a smooth r&b rhythm. There's also a gospel styled choir and a sample from "Love Me". It all fits together very well and certainly is a highlight of this album.

Here we have a short piano interlude, taking us to the grande finale.

To fit the previous piano piece, "Suspicious Minds" also starts off with a quiet piano intro. But of course it soon picks up tempo and loudness and starts to rock. The duet voice belongs to Stacie Tabb. It's a great finale. Just like (almost) the entire album it's rockin', noisy and fun.