The Mirrormask Soundtrack: Not Good

Normally I would not be inspired to review something I didn't like, unless I had a particularly original or amusing reason for disliking it. But saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy's soundtrack for the Jim Henson Company/Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean film Mirrormask puzzles me. For the most part, it is not my cup of tea. Most of the cues center around a wailing, light-jazz saxophone sound, with a generous helping of artlessly programmed drum beats and what sounds like multisampled "ethnic" instruments. The variety of styles (tangos, waltzes, circus music, Arabic, breakbeat) and the small ensemble perfomance (a ten-piece band rather than full orchestra) should have been perfect for the film's fantasy theme, creating an auditory sense of removal from the everyday, like Angelo Badalamenti's masterful score for The City of Lost Children. Except the wailing saxophone and the new age production just turn the whole thing in to a block of cheddar.

What puzzles me is that the soundtrack has a moment of brilliance which I'm still hearing in my head several days later: a mechanical, otherworldly arrangement of Hal David and Burt Bacharach's song Close To You, with truly unique and surreal close-harmony singing, performed in eight multi-tracked parts by Swedish vocalist Josephine Cronholm. It works perfectly as an unexpected musical number in the film, with the unusual harmonies coming out of the mouths of singing robot-clock-women as they give the main character a kind of gothic makeover. How did this one piece of music on an otherwise unappealing soundtrack turn out so nicely? Perhaps someone should take away Mr. Ballamy's saxophone.