Amazon.co.uk Review
Every collaboration with director Tim Burton has produced something uniquely special from Danny Elfman. This is their joint homage to the horror films that inspired their youths. Apart from being the largest orchestra the composer has worked with, it' s also his loudest score, on a positively operatic scale. The Headless Horseman is given a motif of Gothic enormity; its every appearance a speaker-testing swell of wry wickedness. Elfman' s style by this point in his career has gone beyond the stand-alone set-pieces that characterised the likes of
Batman or
Edward Scissorhands. So the Horseman' s musical moments are worked into the fabric of the score in the same as Ichabod Crane' s and a generic "shock" motif. "The Windmill" demonstrates the style best, covering a sequence of flashback narrative. The music dips and peaks to the cuts between the spooky steed and some eerie exposition. Instead of thematic development
en masse, Elfman aims for an integrated underscore that works beneath and above the action simultaneously. By the time of "The Chase" your senses will have been assaulted sufficiently to cope with your wide- eyed (eared?) first reaction to this densely orchestrated terrifying track. No homage was ever HAMMERed home so well.
--Paul Tonks
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