Sony Music Classical, out now

Like Nikolaj Arcel’s movie that that this score is supporting, Tom Holkenborg’s work feels like snippets of a much bigger piece, not helped by short tracks that aren’t given the room to grow.

Dutch composer and DJ Tom Holkenborg (AKA Junkie XL) might be known best in some quarters for his trance music, but he has been frequently collaborating with Hans Zimmer for many years, coming to prominence with his co-credit on Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. Away from Zimmer he has also scored big budget fare like Deadpool and Mad Max: Fury Road, and was also due to score Justice League before being replaced by Danny Elfman. I share this only to establish the composer’s credentials, and if things had all gone to plan then this might have been the beginning of a long series of thematically-linked scores. The jury is however still out on whether we’ll be getting any more of this Stephen King-originated saga and presently we can only judge his work on the 67 minutes on the disc.

It’s not that the soundtrack’s total running time is short, but with 29 score cues you know that some tracks are going to get short shrift. A fine case in point is Keystone Earth, which builds up in scale and then drops off at 48 seconds. The establishing cue The Dark Tower can’t even reach two minutes, and while I’m not suggesting that length of cue should be a judge of quality, it’s just harder to keep up the momentum of a score album when the cues are so short.

Most of the cues fall into one of two camps – Jake’s journey (softer strings with occasional ominous brass warbles and choir) or action pieces, which are cut from the same cloth as Batman vs Superman – pounding taiko drums, furious strings and synthetic reverb. Winner of most unusual cue title of the year is A Chicken, A Goat and One Bullet, a driving cue that belts along at a great pace, but for me the more interesting compositions are the restrained and nuanced pieces like Collateral Damage. Roland of Eld (Main Titles) is a terrific, heroic theme – part fantasy, part western – and I hope it gets the chance to return, but at 2:33 it’s cut off in its prime.

Verdict: Moments of excitement can’t disguise the fact that this soundtrack (like the film) is choppy, truncated and frustratingly tantalises what could have been epic. 7/10

Nick Joy