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Apart from the film, Pan's Labyrinth is a score that will abuse you during each listen and yet you can't help but coming back for more. Painted with a large orchestral and choral palette, Navarrete's score is rich with thematic integrity and grand, tonal schemes while also infusing a sense of dread in persistently dissonant accompaniment. The title theme is a lullaby immediately introduced in the form of a humming girl's voice (similar to John Ottman's Hide and Seek). Backed by delicate piano, whimsical strings, and deep vocals in a faint mix, this theme would extend beautifully to "Mercedes Lullaby" and "A Princess." The theme would be interpolated well throughout the two storylines, serving as a strong identity for the score. While its beauty cannot be denied, it's ultimately a cold and inaccessible theme, especially by the film's finale. While the theme may be sparsely rendered in its major performances, the remainder of the score is extremely dense with activity. As the horrors of the real-life storyline continue to unfold in the film, and the connections between them and the fairy tale expose themselves, the score loses its whimsy and slowly shifts its tone to one of horror; this transformation is one of the significantly unique and impressive aspects of Navarrete's score. The romantic attitude developed in "The Labyrinth," "Rose, Dragon," and "The Fairy and the Labyrinth," often led by a truly elegant grand piano mixed will in front of the ensemble, eventually yields to more dissonant confusion in the bone-chilling "Not Human" and "Deep Forest." An abundance of light, tingling percussion and a phenomenally incorporated layering of deep woodwinds, along with the tendency of the choir to resonate deep in the male-voice regions, contribute to the other-worldliness of the score. The straight horror cues, while terrifyingly unlistenable in some regards, continue to maintain your interest simply because of their seemingly exotic constructs, making Pan's Labyrinth a score, at the very least, worth analysis. On its generous, full-length album, Navarrete's score risks becoming an exhausting listening experience (as it was intended to be), but there are no less than twenty minutes of the more harmonically accessible music for fantasy genre fans to enjoy apart from the dissonant influences. There may be no single cue that will rank among the year's best, but the overall impression that Pan's Labyrinth leaves you with is unmistakably powerful.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Total Time: 73:44