MP3: Doctor Who: The Snowmen + The Doctor, the Widow, and the Snowmen (2013)

January 6, 2014 | By

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Rating: Excellent

Label: Silva Screen Records / Released: November 5, 2013

Tracks & Album Length: 27 tracks / 32 tracks / (66:46)

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Special Notes: (none)

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Composer: Murray Gold

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Review:

For this seasonal themed two-episode Doctor Who collection, Murray Gold’s palette is orchestral with lovely vocals from the Crouch End Festival Chorus, and small homages to Danny Elfman in terms of clusters of brass figures and a few gliding harmonics (“The Queen” and “Interrogation”).

Unlike Silva Screen’s companion release for Series 7, Gold’s cues are longer, and feature extended thematic developments and sharp dramatic twists (such as the shift from ethereal chorals and excited strings and brass in “What’s Wrong with Silly?”), and the mordant tone of “Psychotic Potato Dwarf” with lovely strings and retro sixties mood from a shimmering electric guitar.

Notes swerve up & down like a fast-moving figure on a staircase at the beginning of “Hello Mates” before extended ominous tones, low woodwinds and churning strings, and while a little lofty due to the fluttering flutes and lamenting oboe, the brass in the cue provide rather dark shading in “Dressed in a Hurry” before a waltzing midsection that’s evocative of Elfman’s Edward Scissorhands (1990).

Written to match the radiant, warm colours of Christmas, Gold’s palette features a large woodwind sections, violins, and celli, and thematic pieces that are quick-footed, swirling and gyrating in airy motions rather than anything furious and grievous. A few cues offer more desperate states (“At the Sea”) but within the Doctor Who music library, this is among the lightest works, celebrating the light, lofty, and hidden darkness of the winter holidays.

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© 2014 Mark R. Hasan

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External References:

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