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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The score for Evolution is a simpler effort, catering towards three or four basic kinds of scenes in the film. Powell's score can easily be divided up into cues which accompany chases, those which accompany the awe-inspiring revelation of aliens, and those which accompany the pseudo-scary scenes of close-up investigations of aliens. Everything else is somewhat incidental, with the exception, perhaps, of the heroic finale cue. The title theme, heard a minute into the second track, is never fully developed to the listener's satisfaction. The chase sequences offer the best of Powell's ideas, with the "Mall Chase" cue representing the finest assembly of performance and theme. The chase sequences allow Powell to do what he does best: carry hopping rhythms and lengthy, elaborate themes and motifs with the orchestra through multiple minutes of nonstop aural chasing. Unlike the cues such as "Building the Crate" in Chicken Run, Powell's Evolution never pulls a lengthy enough performance to really begin to cook. Most of the cues in Evolution are too short for such a development to take place, and that is likely due to the more frenetic pace of the film. The score does well in making event the scarier moments sound comical at heart. The opening tracks present a few cues that might scare young children, but they would do so in the same fashion as Danny Elfman's Men in Black. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the Evolution is a true blend of the music from Men in Black and Chicken Run, with the former really showing up in the first half of the score and the influences of latter emerging later in Evolution. Powell seems to have a Western spirit in his action writing, because his themes for the four main characters of this film often portray them as cowboys on the Western frontier. On the other hand, the use of a bass guitar for many of the cues is a clear hold-over from Men in Black, for which Elfman's guitar was a primary resource. The chorus is used very sparingly in Evolution, with no real thematic accompaniment, and definitely no finale cue like that which blessed the end of Chicken Run. Powell uses a waltz rhythm for a short minute in the middle of the score, and it would have been interesting to hear him elaborate on this waltz flavour to represent the alien bugs as they grow throughout the film. One interesting aspect of Evolution is that it furthers the case that Chicken Run wasn't a one time fluke. Powell is indeed branching off from the typical Media Ventures/Hans Zimmer sound into a new area of sound that others in that group (with the occasional exception of Harry Gregson-Williams) have yet to readily explore. The integration of vibrant orchestral elements into the synthetic base of scoring at the core of these artists' work is an experiment that only Powell seems to be currently interested in. It's a great avenue to take, and although the Los Angeles performing group wasn't as crisply mixed for Evolution as it had been for Chicken Run (which to this day still features a sound quality far superior to nearly every other score on album), this newest performance still exerts enough energy to capture fans of this style. The one problem with Evolution is that it lacks the basic personality or thematic zeal that it really needed to recapture those fans' interest. ***
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