Lisa Gerard: Whale Rider Soundtrack

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * *)

Finally readily available as the movie keeps fending off those Oscar giants at the top of the New Zealand box office nearly two months after its release, the album of the soundtrack reminds why Whale Rider is a film apart. It was a coup for the film's makers to recruit Australian Gerard, former voice of ethereal soundscapers Dead Can Dance, whose credits extend to The Insider, Ali and Gladiator. Fortunately, her music doesn't repeat the necessarily grand scale of those films and neither does it resort to the cliches you'd expect of a film featuring whales — or, indeed, things mythic and Maori.

The echoes of voices from the film do haunt the languid arrangements but it's Gerard's slo-motion semi-synthesised instrumentations which give the album its dramatic tension, especially as it shifts from They Came to Die to Pai Theme to Paikea's Whale towards the mid-point. Yes, it's hard to know how it might all sound if experienced before viewing the film. But listening to it post-movie is enough to inspire a second viewing.

Label: 4AD