By Bear McCreary

Amazon Music, out now

 

A stunning aural return to Middle-earth…

Amazon Studios’ new Lord Of The Rings prequel series needed a score as epic as Peter Jackson’s movie versions got – regardless of whether there’s a canonical or rights connection – because those movies were so iconic, and so was Howard Shore’s Oscar-winning music for them. It’s no surprise, then, to hear a nice and teasing Shore theme tune offering the promise of a new era of Middle-earth adventures.

This theme, however, is Shore’s only contribution to the series’ music, leaving a need for a suitable epic sound from someone else. There are two names that spring to mind as known quantities having the ability – and track record – to deliver that level of scoring on TV resources: Ramin Djawadi, of Game Of Thrones and Westworld fame, or Bear McCreary of Battlestar Galactica, Da Vinci’s Demons, and Outlander, among many others. McCreary has the gig, so how does his music stack up as an epic fantasy score, and as an alternative to Shore’s iconic compositions?

Extremely well is the short answer.

As part of the publicity for the series, a pair of themes – “Galadriel” and “Sauron” – had been released a few weeks early, and these gave us the first impression of the sort of music to expect. “Galadriel,” which is now the second track on the album, is a wonderful and memorable theme that conveys wonder and determination, while “Sauron,” which comes several tracks later in the full soundtrack, is a fairly typical dark and moody piece with a low chant that would fit Emperor Palpatine as well as it would fit Sauron. Both tracks do bring with them the feel of the Peter Jackson movies’ sound, though neither contains any actual material from the film scores.

In fact, nor does any other track – all the themes and motifs here are completely new, though have the mood of Shore’s Tolkien efforts. There are tracks like “Nampat” which have that familiar threatening tone of deep percussion and Orcish chanting that takes the place of the movies’ Orc-related music, without actually replicating it. Meanwhile, its position as the first track after Shore’s new theme seems to make “Galadriel” the series’ de facto theme, and indeed of all the themes and motifs, this is the one that is most referenced and repeated throughout the album, notably in “In The Beginning” and “The Wise One,” as well as several others. All of which rather implies that Galadriel will be the show’s main character.

What we basically have here is a wonderful pastiche of Shore’s style of music for the Jackson films – a pastiche in the true sense, that is, of being in the style of, not in the frequently misused modern sense of a parody or knockoff. This is very much an appropriate blending in with the music for later eras of Middle-earth, and some of McCreary’s best work. Not that you can’t tell – in “No One Leaves The Trail” or the latter parts of “In The Beginning” – that this is the composer of Outlander and Godzilla King Of The Monsters, as there are moments here where his distinctive style from those franchises creeps in, all while still being very much the sound of Middle-earth.

Verdict: The very best of TV soundtrack composing, filling the heart with the feel of Middle-earth, and instilling that hope that the show can live up to it. And value for money too, running about two and a quarter hours in total! 11/10

David A McIntee

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