Lisa Gerrard - Whale Rider (Score)
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Free Music Notes for Whale Rider (Score)
Free Music Review: Excellent while driving
Hit: 5 Stars
This music represents the passions of struggle and commitment as protrayed in the movie. It uses the mystical sounding shell flute, and invokes feelings of compassion and mystery. If you're able to appreciate new age instrumentals, then this albulm is a must have.Free Music Review: Recommend it!
Hit: 5 Stars
After seeing the movie several times, and loving it, I finally purchased the soundtrack today. It is haunting, calming, stirring, ethereal, evocative and beautiful. Appreciate that it includes the voice over of the Maori chants. Can't recommend it enough.Free Music Review: Deeply moving and powerful
Hit: 5 Stars
I am a fan of Lisa Gerrard, but I bought this soundtrack for the music. Rarely have I see a movie in which the music and the film were so closely interwoven. I highty recommend this soundtrack to anyone who was moved by the film.Free Music Review: Outstanding work.
Hit: 5 Stars
Outstanding work, but its mostly good for background music. You can tell by listening how this would apply well to an underwater world. =) Great job Lisa!
Free Music Review: More background than foreground, but beautiful
Hit: 4 Stars
This is a collection of mood pieces written by Lisa Gerrard for the film _Whale Rider_. There are a lot of echoes of Dead Can Dance here: a tendency for the compositions to involve first laying down a drone, then some slowly changing chords over that, and sometimes some of Ms Gerrard's own vocals on the top: world music with a Gothic accent. So it's not groundbreaking in any sense. If you've liked Lisa Gerrard's other albums, also Dead Can Dance, then you know pretty much what to expect. But albums don't always have to be groundbreaking: being beautiful is enough.
I have a couple of minor reservations. I love Lisa Gerrard's voice, so I'd have liked to hear more of her voice in the foreground, while on this album she's mostly an ethereal presense, just heard through the mix. And I suppose I might have hoped for a more adventurous use of Maori chant, to produce something more local, more idiomatic to New Zealand.
The use of Maori women's chant (karanga and karakia don't seem the right words, when the chant is addressed to whales, though I'm speaking from ignorance there), also men's working chant, in some tracks is great, and the Maori musical elements work well in the mix. But still, I'd have been interested to have Lisa Gerrard make more of those distinctive Maori sounds. But I'm certainly happy with what I got.
As with any film music, it probably helps to have seen the film (and that's no hardship: you _should_ see "Whale Rider"), but this music does absolutely stand up by itself, without the accompanying images. If you want Lisa Gerrard songs, rather than instrumental mood pieces with vocals, then you might prefer others of her albums. But if you're prepared to take this for what it is, you'll be well rewarded.
Highly recommended.
Cheers!
Laon