Composed by Henry Jackson

As lively as you would imagine but with a little thought behind it. The very short [0:36] opening track South Pacific has a slight throwback style to those awful 40’s & 50’s movies. Not that the track is awful, it’s not. It’s a scene setter as they say, an old fashioned prelude. Packard’s Blues has a a displacing, distortion on what I can only describe as a rusty piano, very effective and ‘wired’ sound. Assembling The Team gives us a little electric guitar, obviously their are some hot shots in said team. Kong The Destroyer has really mean brass and anxious violins. Things hot up with Spider Attack, the cue starts with a deep [I think electronic] buzz and you can just sense that the spiders are watching somewhere, it’s followed by rapid percussion. Another strange noise appears in an unsettling cue called The Boneyard. The tracks which cover the main event are never over the top and altogether this is another really strong score by Mr Jackman.

Water Tower Music

Composed by Jon Ekstrand

The first track Welcome to the ISS, very conveniently tells us about the mission as spoken by a member of the crew Dr. Miranda North [Rebecca Ferguson]. That mission is to get soil samples from Mars. This opening track is like a space meditation, you could imagine floating to this. It continues to sound like a parred down Gravity soundtrack in It’s Alive but ends with a heralding trumpet saying ‘all is not well’. It doesn’t really change over the next couple of tracks and should action be needed it’s somewhat formulaic. Spacewalk cranks up the tension nicely as does Thrusters. It pretty much sticks to this sound palette all the way through until the dynamic A Long Way Back which again doesn’t veer from it’s doom-laden drop note. Swedish composer Ekstrand does say in his bio that he is a composer and film sound designer and this is definitively an outer space mood board. I will say I have not yet seen the film and this soundtrack wouldn’t encourage me to but as a true sci-fi fan I will get to see it and hopefully it will fit the film like a glove.

Milan Music

Composed by Terence Blanchard

Joy of joys, a JAZZ soundtrack. Jazz soundtracks are one of my passions and this is a welcome score to the list. Composer Blanchard [also trumpeter and bandleader] has composed several jazz scores including Inside Man and Red Tails. A jazz led score is just right for the story of ageing and out of control comedian Jack Burke [Robert De Nero] and to get a sense of how out of control he is you only have to listen to the mighty Blanchard trumpet in the free fall track Electricity On MacDougal. Jackie In the Rain opens with a slow bass line making it easy to imagine the key character, shoulders slumped, ambling along in the rain. Each track is a gem and this score could easily be played anytime – but if you don’t like jazz then it probably will not appeal.

Blue Note Records