Plaza Mayor Company release J Bateman's original score for Age of the Dragons. Herman Melville’s classic novel Moby Dick, is recreated in a world where Captain Ahab and his crew search for a Great White Dragon… Harpooner Ishmael joins Ahab and his crew on the Pequod, in this instance an armoured land boat that hunts for dragons. The seven-strong crew ostensibly seeks the precious "vitriol", a highly explosive liquid substance found inside the fire-breathing winged creatures, which powers the mythical realm they live in. Ishmael joins their quest, and soon learns that in fact, Ahab's mission is one of revenge on a particular great white dragon that decades ago scarred and injured him, and killed his sister...

J. Bateman delivers some wonderful themes on the soundtrack to Age of the Dragons. It's primarily an electronic score, but designed to sound as close to an orchestrated album as possible. The LP contains 25 tracks (54 min, 35 sec) and is pretty much a handbook on how to craft the perfect soundtrack. It has a beginning, a middle and an end and pretty much covers all emotional bases. It's simple to follow the narrative of the movie through the music alone - something that's fairly rare these days.

There are enough melancholic themes here to guarantee that those who are looking for an emotional journey are kept happy. I also loved how this score would have worked just as well if the movie had been a faithful retelling of Moby Dick, set on the sea.

There's also plenty of suspense music, as you'd expect, as well as action/adventure themes. Another interesting touch was that there's also a slight traditional Irish music feel on some of the tracks - a lot of which reminded me of James Horner's work on Titanic. In fact the only slight quibble I had was that I couldn't help feeling how glorious it would all sound with a full orchestral.

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Darren Rea