• Composed by Lorne Balfe
• Silva Screen / 31m

So as to avoid the child stars ageing too much in between the series, His Dark Materials was mostly filmed all in one go, which in retrospect has proven to be an even wiser decision given the inevitable delays that would have followed this year’s events. Philip Pullman’s second book in the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, forms the basis for the latest set of episodes following Lyra and co on their adventures.

Lorne Balfe delivered career-best material for the first season, best experienced on the initial “musical anthology” album which presented his thematic material in individual cues, out of which he wrote the actual score for the show (which was released separately, on a much longer album). The memorable main theme and wonderful “Strength of the Gyptians” were the highlights, but in truth it was just one great piece after another.

This album is the second volume of that “musical anthology” – inevitably, given he had already developed so many themes and ideas for the first season, this one is quite a lot shorter. Fortunately, it’s still very good. We open with the new primary theme, “The Subtle Knife”, full of mystery and adventure; then comes “Play the Serpent”, which has a really nice organ riff running through it and sees Balfe doing that interesting mixture of grand, grown-up drama with innocent childlike wonder that he perfected in the first season.

“Dark Materials Between the Worlds” is a straight reprise of the first season’s stirring main theme (the only repeat of music from the first album on this one); then “A Spectre’s Playground” has an appropriately swirling sound to it, with a theme that sometimes threatens to explode but always ends up just pulling back. One of the real highlights of the album is “A New Cardinal Rises”, with some deliciously dark religioso choral music and stirring brassy theatrics – it’s wonderfully over-the-top, hugely enjoyable.

Also dark (unsurprisingly) is “The Witch Queen of Lake Lubana”, which again combines the orchestra with choir but to get a very different sound – unmistakably macabre, it’s like good old gothic horror music. Following this is another of the album’s real standouts, “Children of the Prophecy”, with a much more modern sound – it starts with a playful air to it before midway through the track it really swells up and goes all grand and epic. Such a great track, surely one of the finest that’s ever come from this composer. “City in the Sky” opens with a jarring blast and is based on an almost comic book-like villainous little motif with some humungous sound being generated by the brass before the album concludes with “The Shaman”, a noble piece with a real propulsive energy running through it.

There’s some great music on here – perhaps not quite as consistently as the first album, but it’s not far off. A couple of tracks are really exceptional and there’s no doubt that anyone who enjoyed volume 1 should absolutely go and pick this up too. Even more so than that time, the recording has that weird cheap sound that some Remote Control composers favour – I know that real people played some of this music because Lorne Balfe has posted videos of them doing so on social media, but there must be a lot of samples as well for it to sound like this. (When you do hear the brass sounding like actual brass in “The City in the Sky”, it’s so arresting and powerful.) Can’t wait for volume 3!

Rating: ****

Also see:
His Dark Materials Lorne Balfe

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