MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

I don’t know whether it’s my imagination or not, but there seem to be more nature documentary series right now than ever before. When I was a kid, the only nature documentaries I saw were made by the BBC Natural History Unit, they were narrated by Sir David Attenborough, and they came out once every couple of years to great fanfare and acclaim. The first one I remember watching as it aired was The Living Planet in 1984, followed by The Trials of Life six years later in 1990. Now, everyone is getting in on the act; Attenborough and the BBC are still making them, of course, and they are doing them magnificently, but in recent years Netflix and National Geographic and Disney Nature and seemingly dozens of other companies are getting in on the act too, to the point where I wonder whether we might be getting a little over-saturated. What else is there really left to say about polar bears or blue whales? The latest such documentary to be released is Life On Our Planet, which will begin airing on Netflix at the end October 2023. It’s executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, is narrated by Morgan Freeman, and ambitiously attempts to look at the multi-billion year history of the world, from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. It looks to feature some absolutely astonishing cinematography, and will include a hybrid of both computer-generated imagery and live-action film.

Musically, the gold standard for nature documentaries has always been the BBC. 1979’s Life on Earth was scored by Edward Williams, and The Living Planet was scored by Elizabeth Parker, but The Trials of Life was scored by the great George Fenton, and he carried the torch of excellence for many years afterwards through his work on groundbreaking series such as Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Frozen Planet, and more. However, as more and more production companies have entered the fray, other composers have contributed enormously to the genre; some of my favorites in recent years have included Edmund Butt’s Yellowstone, Steven Price’s The Hunt, Panu Aaltio’s trio of Finnish “Tale of…” documentaries, and several by Hans Zimmer and his associates at Bleeding Fingers Music, including Planet Earth II, Blue Planet II, Seven Worlds One Planet, and Frozen Planet II. For this new score the producers turned to one of film music’s most in-demand names, Scottish composer Lorne Balfe.

At this point it’s no secret that I think that, over the course of the last five years or so, Lorne Balfe’s music has increased in quality exponentially. I thought that titles like Black Widow, The Tomorrow War, Silent Night, Rumble, His Dark Materials, and this year’s Dungeons & Dragons movie Honor Among Thieves were all outstanding, and led me to coin a tongue-in-cheek term – the Lornaissance – to describe his career trajectory. As such, I’m delighted to say that the Lornaissance continues with Life On Our Planet, which for me is one of the best documentary scores of the year to date.

In many ways, Life On Our Planet feels like something of a throwback to the early part of Balfe’s career, when he was writing additional music on dozens of titles for Hans Zimmer at Remote Control Productions. There is something of a classic ‘Media Ventures Power Anthem’ sound to this score, but what I like about it most is how this sound has then been filtered through the more sophisticated writing style and interesting orchestration choices that has typified most of Balfe’s work of late, resulting in a work that feels like the best of both worlds – it has the crowd-pleasing thematic content of early-2000s Zimmer, but also the more intellectually stimulating compositional touches that have been a hallmark of the Lornaissance.

This album is essentially an ‘overview’ suites-and-themes album of everything the series music has to offer. Reports indicate that single-episode albums of music will be released sequentially after each new episode airs, meaning that in total there will be around eight hours or so of music from the series for consumers to enjoy, but as of right now I’m happy to concentrate on this main album, because it’s only 45 minutes long, and it presents all Balfe’s best bits and then buggers off before it outstays its welcome. I’m sure the music from each episodic album will be excellent, but I won’t be reviewing it going forward, although I will say that I really like how of late Balfe has been releasing multiple albums of music tailored to different audiences with different listening needs – he did it with each season of His Dark Materials, he did it for Dungeons and Dragons, and now he’s done it here too. Bravo.

The score was recorded both in London with the London Symphony Orchestra and in Glasgow with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. There’s a recurring main theme which gets a dramatic rendition in the opening “Main Titles,” but Balfe cleverly brings it back on several occasions in the body of the score, including the more stately and majestic “Earth,” which allows the whole work to establish a clear identity and sense of itself. Some nature documentaries don’t do this to this extent – in many ways each new sequence is just a standalone vignette with little connective tissue between them – so the fact that Balfe is able to provide this score with a more consistent sense of distinctiveness is something that really allows it to shine.

However, even when this main theme is not present, there is still plenty of excellent music to discover. There’s an initial lightness and graceful elegance to the music in “Birds,” until it emerges into a rousing percussive anthem towards the end of the piece. “Amphibians” features some unexpectedly gorgeous, ethereal, sweeping vocals emanating from yet another stirring orchestral theme; I especially like the masculine use of brass in the piece’s second half. There’s an unusual sense of grandeur to the slow chord progressions in “Arthropods,” as well as a clever use of slightly industrial-sounding electronic textures that give them an other-worldly demeanor.

One early highlight is “Dinosaurs,” which begins with an imposing solo horn performance but then emerges into yet another rousing orchestral anthem of great intensity; there’s a wonderful sense of nostalgia to this music, like I said, a throwback to the great Media Ventures power anthems of the 1980s and 90s which attracted so many people to the music of Hans Zimmer and his contemporaries in the first place. “Extinction” is quieter and more intimate, and has a soft and breathy synth effect running through it that gives it real emotional depth. “Ocean Life” has some playfully elegant woodwind writing, dancing around and within an array of plucked strings, light percussion patterns, and quirky electronic textures. One of the other highlights for me is the soaring and majestic “Mammals,” which features a brand new melodic idea carried by the most outstanding of brass performances.

There’s a sense of John Barry-like stateliness to the writing in “Reptiles,” which overflows with gorgeously romantic strings backed by warm, appealing brass harmonies. The last thing I expected to think about when I started listening to this score was Dances With Wolves, but here we are. The ghostly electronic textures at the beginning of “Survival” have an almost spiritual quality to them, especially when they combine with soothing real vocals, but by the end the piece has taken on the expansive sound of new-age world music, and is quite lovely. There’s a sort of primal, primitive sound to the woodwinds heard throughout “The Dawn of Life,” which makes them really compelling, before the main theme returns in the excellent finale “The Power of the Planet,” which runs through most of the score’s stylistics in turn, builds over the course of more than four minutes, and ends with a superbly inspiring climax.

Lorne Balfe is having a truly excellent 2023, having produced outstanding music for projects on both the big screen (Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, Tetris) and the small (The Wheel of Time Season 2), and Life on Our Planet is the latest title to join that list. I can appreciate that some may find that the score relies a little too heavily on Hans Zimmer Power Anthem tropes to tell its story, and anyone who never really appreciated that sound, or who prefers the more traditional classicism that composers like George Fenton brought to their nature documentaries, may find Balfe’s work here not to their taste. However, I am not one of those people. There is more than one valid approach to scoring these things, and the way Balfe has taken those classic Remote Control/Media Ventures sounds and filtered them through his increasingly impressive personal musical sensibility impressed me enormously.

Buy the Life on Our Planet soundtrack from the Movie Music UK Store

Track Listing:

• Main Titles (1:07)
• Earth (3:50)
• Birds (3:04)
• Amphibians (2:51)
• Arthropods (2:20)
• Dinosaurs (3:05)
• Extinction (3:12)
• Ocean Life (3:27)
• Mammals (4:10)
• Reptiles (2:42)
• Survival (4:38)
• The Dawn of Life (2:38)
• The Power of the Planet (4:15)

Running Time: 41 minutes 19 seconds

Netflix Music (2023)

Music composed and conducted by Lorne Balfe. Orchestrations by Adam Price, Bernard Duc and Jack McKenzie. Additional music by Brandon Campbell, Joe Wilson Davies, Bernard Duc, Michael Frankenberger, Nikhil Koparkar, Jon Ong and Filip Olejka. Recorded and mixed by Paul Golding. Edited by XXXX. Album produced by Lorne Balfe.