Details:
- Film: 2012
- Soundtrack composer: Harald Kloser and Thomas Wander
- Original year of release: 2009
- Number of tracks: 24
- Soundtrack duration: 58 mins 1 secs
- Tracks with vocals/distracting aspects: 3 Tracks (11 mins 56 secs) (Tracks 1, 7, & 24)
- Film score duration (with distracting tracks removed): 46 mins 5 secs
- Suggested suitable book genres: Thrillers are ideal or indeed a Stephen King style of novel. Also, war stories, along with post-apocalyptic and ecological disaster novels work well with the score. But honestly, just general fiction, although perhaps not a creepy horror!
DLS Summary:
Just three songs to skip or remove from your track listing, the rest of the soundtrack is an original score with loads of great background music tracks ranging from quiet and moody to urgent and bursting with tension.
One thing to note is the soundtrack does jump back-and-forth between these two styles of music – low and atmospherically moody, then high-adrenaline with a pounding sense of urgency. However, at no stage is the music so dominating that it’ll disrupt your reading.
There’s also a handful of tracks which deliver a very emotionally geared sound. Sort of military funeral vibe if you know what I mean. Again, still great background music for reading to.
DLS Review:
The soundtrack kicks in with an acoustic soft rock number by Adam Lambert. But that’s not what DLS Reviews’ dissections of soundtracks is about, so let’s move on…
Track 2 starts off as an eerie, quietly atmospheric piece. Whispers of strings with mild booms of thunder echo across this string landscape, with the piece gradually building to a dramatic crescendo which moves perfectly into the next track.
Track 3 follows with a barely noticeable transition, taking up a quiet but much more delicate tone to the preceding track. Lightly played piano and strings make for this wonderfully evocative piece.
Track 4 sticks with the strings, continuing with the theme of atmospheric and beautifully delicate. Although behind the music is a sense of mystery, of exploration and something more, building up with our first touch of percussion and much thicker strings, akin to some of those instantly recognisable tracks from ‘The Rock’ (1996).
Track 5 is a distinctive and wonderfully evocative, emotionally geared string piece which sets a ‘Heroic’ sort of tone that’ll bring out the tears if played at the right time!
Track 6 hits with absolute urgency, leaping into the overall musical landscape of the soundtrack with a faster tempo and an overall sense of thriller like drama. We have strings and wind instruments, awash with all this drama creating a sense of action.
Track 7 is another song – George Segal and Blu Mankiuma’s lounge piece ‘It Ain’t The End Of The World’. A great little ditty full of comedy, but yeah, instantly pulls you out of your book, so let’s move along…
Track 8 is a sombre piece with low played cellos delivering a moody backdrop of foreboding. It’s perfect background music for reading, slow, quiet but with a thick masking depth to block out the outside world.
Track 9 continues with the now recurring theme of bleakness. Another low piece which starts adding layers until the urgency suddenly hits with quickly strung violins, pianos and bursts of wind instruments. Perfect for an escalating thriller.
Track 10 is effortlessly blended into the last track delivering more urgency and tension that’s constantly pressing forwards. Mounting percussion, wind instruments and rising and falling strings, are all geared up to pack the piece with tension and drama.
Track 11 is another heroic sounding track, dripping with emotion from the get-go. The sort of track you’d have for a military funeral in a film. Quiet vocal elements add to this emotive tone, until the track quietly peters out.
Track 12 is back into the urgency again. We have our friends from the brass section getting themselves well and truly involved, but it’s the quickness of the strings and hanging notes of the violins that deliver the heart-pounding action within the music. Oh, and is there tension and suspense! Boy, is there!
From here on the tracks continue with this sort of jumping back-and-forth between quiet and moody to high drama and tense. It’s excellent music for reading to, although your book is unlikely to be in sync with the back-and-forth nature of the music. That said, even the dramatic pieces aren’t too dominating to sling you out of your book.
The soundtrack ends with a track from Filter – ‘Fades Like A Photograph’. I love Filter, but again, we’re all about the original film score here.
So yeah, all in all, a great soundtrack, especially for reading thrillers to.
As a soundtrack for reading to:
The soundtrack as a whole:
© DLS Reviews
