B
y Ramin Djawadi
HBO/Watertown Music
A selection of Djawadi’s score from the HBO series (as well as a couple of the songs).
Ramin Djawadi, whose music helped to propel Prison Break and the first Iron Man movie among many other recent screen offerings, presents a very varied score for the highly dramatic third series based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice.
It’s sometimes said that the best instrumental scores are the ones you don’t notice, because they’re so much part of the atmosphere that is being created by the director, and there are certainly parts of this album which played beneath key moments without perhaps receiving as much attention. Equally you get a track, such as “The Lannisters Send Their Regrets” which underscored the infamous Red Wedding which, with its insistent drumming beat and discordant strings, complemented it well and instantly reminds the listener of its treachery and audacity. The main theme of the show and the Lannisters’ theme vie for attention, just as the Lannisters do in the series.
Albums of score music need to work as pieces in their own right, and the tracks therefore aren’t in chronological order of broadcast. Djawadi starts from a rendition of the main theme before building to “Mhysa” – the Valerian for mother, as Daenerys accepts her part in the world – then bringing things down to earth with a gentler guitar version of the theme to close.
Verdict: A powerful album that pulls the listener into Martin’s world. 7/10
Paul Simpson
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