Mark McKenzie is one of those composers - like Cliff Eidelman, Bruce Broughton, and co - who gets far, far too few assignments.  While they are all great composers, I wish the likes of Williams, Horner, Zimmer, Elfman and Silvestri didn't have to get all the big films when there are so many great composers who could do just as good a job but rarely get the chance to show it.  While the straight-to-video Dragonheart: A New Beginning isn't exactly the sort of project that will get him noticed, it was the sort of old-fashioned adventure movie that traditionally inspires good music, and on that point McKenzie does not disappoint.

On the original Dragonheart, Randy Edelman wrote a theme that has quickly gone on to (deservedly) acquire classic status, and so it is only natural that McKenzie should offer smatterings of it through his score, and indeed it appears in four of the cues on offer here; it's great to hear it again, but it's also great to hear the wealth of original material McKenzie has put together.  He introduces his own main theme in the opening cue, a soaring piece that's sure to get the pulses racing.  The excitement doesn't really ever tail off through the whole album, and indeed the second cue, "I'm Flying?!" is another early highlight.

Edelman's peculiar, slightly comical action music is replaced here by some thunderous, ballsy stuff ("Lian's Awesome Fight", for one) that's brilliantly orchestrated (as you may expect) and performed, by the Slovak Philharmonic recorded in Bratislava.  (Having said that, there is some slightly more comic material from time to time, but here it is delightful and composed skilfully enough that it never seems out of place, as Edelman's did in the original; fortunately, Edelman's anachronistic modern guitars and synths are also missing - McKenzie uses a guitar to great effect in "A Serenade to the Stars", but it's used in a timeless way, not a pop-song-without-words like Edelman did.)  The movie is set in the Far East, and while the ethnic influence is pretty slight (correctly so, I feel), a wonderful, Chinese-flavoured theme first appears in "My Heart Goes With You", the sixth cue.  Lyrics are also added and a vocal performance, by Rona Figueroa, concludes the album.

Despite the disparate elements that make up the music, a consistent tone is maintained and this is a very easy, well-flowing album to hear.  Its length is ideal and all concerned can be heartily congratulated.  This is a lovely, lovely score.

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Tracks