Watertower Music, available digitally now and CD later in 2018

Ramin Djawadi delivers another comprehensive album of score tracks from HBO’s sci-fi drama.

While the initial novelty of playing modern songs on an old Wild West piano might have passed, the Game of Thrones composer serves us with a wide range of tracks encapsulating the season’s second season. Of course, the covers are still here – a sitar-led version of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army, a fully orchestral Heart-Shaped Box (Nirvana), Codex (Radiohead) and Kanye West’s Runaway – but there’s plenty of new thematic material to entertain over the 100-minute run time.

After the Main Title, Journey into Night is full of low, atonal rumbles and it’s a sound that’s revisited across the album (Les Ecorches, Virtu e Fortuna). Punctuating these edgy cues are diversions like Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer and The Raj, a sitar and Indian drum version of the Season 2 Sweetwater theme. The composer is clearly relishing the opportunity to create music for different genres, particularly with Japanese instruments in the Shogun World-set Akane no Mai and a cheeky Eastern version of The Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black.

The standout episode for me this year was the standalone episode Kiksuya, which fills in the heartbreaking back story for Ghost Nation warrior. Not surprisingly, the episode’s score is the most emotional and is well-served on this album with I Remember You and Take my Heart Where You Go.

Verdict: Another winning collection of genre-skipping soundtrack cues that takes us into the heart of the machine by way of western, samurai movie and a Passage to India. The new themes are integrated into the show’s wider musical universe, while old favourites get remixed and dressed up in fun and innovative ways. 9/10

Nick Joy