3 out of 5

Label: 2K

Produced by: Grant Kirkhope

Cinematic. it’s an easy adjective for a soundtrack to suggest a kind of John Williams grandiosity: strings swelling, horns swooning. And Grant Kirkhope, purveyor of many uniquely bouncy and nuanced game scores, has given us his cinematic appropriation with his contributions to Sid Meier’s Civilzation: Beyond Earth soundtrack. Stylistically, it’s fitting, given the game’s grand scope, and Kirkhope makes a good show of it, blending in some interesting electronic elements – a distorted beat on the opener, an interesting bridge between quiet and loud moments on standout Xeno Titan – but otherwise it sticks to the ‘cinematic’ template, which fulfills the sweeping m.o. but is generally rather predictable.  Given that, Kirkhope achieves a good blend of organic-sounding orchestral sounds with subtle tetchy electro manipulations, and the tracks are stirring in the moment, but the five minute runtimes don’t allow for enough build to make these into epics.