Benji Merrison and Will Slater's score for Meerkat: A Dynasties Special is released via Silva Screen Records. The special follows the young meerkat queen Maghogho and her family battling to survive in a hostile environment, during a drought. Joyous and heart-breaking, the programme was filmed in the searing heat of Makgadikgadi, a 6,000-squaremile wedge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana in southern Africa...

The soundtrack release for Meerkat: A Dynasties Special contains 22 tracks (42 min, 14 sec) contains music for every eventuality: Good, strong action adventure themes; melancholic, quiet reflective moments; suspense; pretty much everything you could hope for... and more. This is hardly surprising, considering the documentary it was composed for.

That said, there's very little in the way of memorable themes... music that stays with you. I've been listening to the album for over a week and I still can't recall any of the music off the top of my head. That's not really an issue as the score is really designed to act as background atmospheric music, even though it's thematically complex.

Be careful if you intend to buy this online, as at the end of December 2020 (if Amazon and Spotify is to be believed) an EP of four songs was released, but marketed as the "Original Television Soundtrack". Now that the full album is here some confusion may present itself, with people buying the EP thinking they're buying the full album. While I understand that a "taster" EP is a way to whet people's appetite for the impending release of a full album, this could have been handled a little better.

A strong and varied collection of themes that while not overly memorable still represent an enjoyable soundtrack.

8

Darren Rea