Journey to the Centre of the Earth & City of Ember (Andrew Lockington)

Andrew Lockington is another of those composers who seems to have appeared out of thin air but actually has a decent list of TV and under the radar movie releases to his name before breaking out with Journey to the Centre of the Earth and City of Ember. Both scores are family orientated sci-fi/fantasy fare, the former a kind of sequel cum update of the Jules Verne story and the latter a cross between Logan's Run (without the human recycling) and Labyrinth. Unsurprisingly or otherwise, both seem to have sprung from the same pool that produced Klaus Badelt's entertaining score to The Time Machine from a few years back. Yes, that time a few years back when we kinda thought he might not turn into a rather dull Remote Control type composer. Then he did. Foreshame indeed.

I'll start with the more consistently enjoyable of the two, Journey to the Centre of the Earth. Lockington starts with his amiable main theme. It's not going to go down alongside Gone with the Wind or Star Wars, but it has the appropriate epic sweep for the movie. The album then settles into a more low key mode, bits of which recall the lighter parts of James Newton Howard's music for Atlantis (in style anyway). However, with Rope Descent the action picks up rarely flags for any length of time.  If not top notch action, it's certainly above averagely well constructed, a mix of swirling strings and strident brass with harmonies that recall Stargate era David Arnold with more than a little Howard. Although largely resolutely old fashioned in approach, there are some modern touches, notably the effective electronic percussion of Water Drop. It's about a million miles from Bernard Herrmann's iconic effort for the Harryhausen version, but it's still done with enough flair and decent themes to be worth a listen.

City of Ember is another victim of an album being too long for the material. It has a good 45 minutes but the middle is very average. It opens well, a proper main title is a bit of a rarity these days, but Lockington presents his enjoyable and reasonably memorable main theme. It's surprisingly serious, which is actually quite refreshing. Indeed, the score as a whole maintains a fairly serious tone throughout and rarely goes for anything cute. It's a bit of a double edged sword as the lack of lighter material means the rather slower early and middle passages just happen without saying an awful low. It threatens to burst into life, but these moments seem short lived. Only with Clockworks and the final 25 minutes or so does it become the score it threatens to be throughout. Finally it's exciting, the action picks up and there's a proper sense of drama and movement. As befits the general tone, Escape to Sunrise still has darker undertones despite the overall optimism of the cue. One Last Message returns the edgier material as a coda.

Having enjoyed Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I really wanted to like City of Ember, but I fear it's one of those albums where the final few tracks leave such a great impression that it's easy to forget that for a long while not a lot happens. While the thematic material is reasonable, it's far from indelible and there's too much of other people; one could easily add John Debney to the influences noted above, odd given that Debney's style has never struck me much, but if someone said either was by him, I'd not be surprised. Definitely scores that are enjoyable rather than great art, but - Journey in particular - worth a punt.

Oddly only City of Ember is available at Amazon.