By Fernando Velazquez

Watertower Music

A lighter version of The Mummy…

Spring half-term brought a new animated film to UK cinema’s, in this case the Spanish import, Mummies. Composer Velazquez has a long tack record of scoring films and series in his native country, but you might also find his work familiar from his scores for the likes of Devil, Crimson Peak, A Monster Calls, and The Impossible.

The album opens with three songs specially composed for the film (others used in it, such as The Bangles’s “Walk Like An Egyptian,” aren’t included). They are “I’m Today (The Nefer Song),” “New Song,” and “Ring Song.” All three come in two versions; tracks 1-3 are English versions sung by Karina Pasian, joined in the third song by Oliver Lidert and Rachel Adederji, while tracks 4-6 are Spanish versions of the same songs, sung by Nerea Rodriguez, and joined in the Ring Song by Enrique Sequero and Nieves García de la Arada. They’re all sub-Disney Princess knockoffs aimed at adolescent girls, and basically stand in as expository voiceover rather than as properly effective songs.

If they haven’t (understandably) put you off, the actual score begins with “The Race,” a bouncy speedy cue that does use orchestration reminiscent of a lighter and more childlike take on Jerry Goldsmith’s music from The Mummy. This type of musical shortcut to imply Ancient Egypt to Western audiences is in fact present throughout the score, and very welcome it is too.

That Egyptian feel, with just the right pitch of strings and hint of vocals, is beautifully done, flowing through “The Goddess Of Love,” “Phoenix On Fire,” and various other tracks. On the downside it tends to get interrupted by passages  of bouncy and warbling blandness to remind us that this is from a fleeting children’s adventure, even if the track then resumes its wondrous Egyptian movie tone – “ A Mummy’s Life” is a perfect example of this contrast.

Highlights include “Hathor’s Guidance,” the rather nice and touching “In Love” and the “World In Danger” and “The Fight” finale sequences’ music.

Verdict: The songs may please the odd 10-year-old, but are otherwise pretty awful even by the standards of the juvenile pop genre to which they belong, while the score is light and pleasant and… pretty much as forgettable as redubbed foreign-language kids’ adventure films usually are in the face of competition from Hollywood and Japan. Not actually bad, and in fact a nice and summery background listen, especially if you liked the music from the classic 90s movies like Stargate and The Mummy, though it’s much lighter than those scores, and sadly rather forgettable, which is a shame. 7/10

David A McIntee