CD REVIEW - DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS


Dragon Age: Origins
Music by Inon Zur
EA Games Promo
35 Tracks 62:38 mins

Premiere video game music composer Inon Zur's music for BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins is now available for download from EA Games. The composer's publicists kindly sent me a CD copy of the album, which has the same tracks as the downloadable version. The score is performed by the Northwest Sinfonia, enhanced by electronics, percussion and choir, with vocals by Aubrey Ashburn.
The album opens with the "Dragon Age Theme," Ms Ashburn's haunting vocal alternating with powerful percussion-driven music, getting things off to a great start. Ms Ashburn again features throughout the lovely, easy-going "I Am The One (High Fantasy Version)," which is followed by the initially dark and sinister "The Chantries Hubris, but this soon builds into a more flowing, heroic passage, before ending darkly again.
There's a lot of powerful, dark, malevolent and dramatic writing in the tracks that follow, many of which are quite brief but, often with much development during their limited running time. "The Dwarves Nobles" is big and impressive however; "Human Nobility" quite inspirational; "Ruins of Ostagar" and "King Edrin" proud and heroic; whilst "Battle The Darkspawn Hordes," "The Endless Wave of Hurlocks," "Battle For The Urn," "Attack on Denerim," "The Dungeons of Landsmeet," "Dungeons and Dungeons," "Howe," "The Battle of Lothering Village," the latter stages of "Ferrelden At War," "The Deep Roads," "Battle The Blight," and "To Kill An Ogre," offer much propulsive conflict; with cues like "The Dalish Elves Encampment," "Lelianna's Song" (again featuring Ms Ashburn) providing pastoral breathing space here and there.
Things come to a head with the powerful "Challenge An Arch Demon," which gives way to the satisfying, soaring "The Coronation," though even this ends on an ominous note; the album concluding with "I Am The One (Dark Fantasy Version), again featuring Ms Ashburn in a slightly popped-up version of the theme.
This is music of epic quality, again comparable to the best of modern day music for film, and fans of Howard Shore's masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, will I am quite sure find much to enjoy here.