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The Miner's Hymns Image
Metascore
84

Universal acclaim - based on 8 Critic Reviews What's this?

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  • Summary: This album is the soundtrack to Bill Morrison's film and features a 16-piece brass ensemble.
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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 8
  2. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Jul 6, 2011
    90
    Best listened to in silence on a home stereo with cinematic projection; this is a remarkable achievement from Johannsson, and a welcome change from the string-drenched sound that has become ubiquitous in modern film scores.
  2. Jul 6, 2011
    90
    While instrumental, the recurrent use of a glistening fanfare motif, present across the album's six tracks, gives these pieces a much stronger sense of cultural and biographical identity than most vocal music.
  3. Jul 6, 2011
    80
    It's mostly a stately, minimal affair.
  4. Jul 6, 2011
    80
    While nowhere near as immediate as Johannsson's string-based albums for the 4AD imprint--IBM 1401, A User's Manual and the sublime Fordlandia--The Miners' Hymns is far more complex in its use of dynamics while succeeding totally in its evocation of time, place and message.
  5. Mojo
    Nov 22, 2011
    80
    Johannsson's austere musical settings continue to conjure up a world in which the old trade union slogans which give these pieces their titles .. are not so much throwbacks to a lost ideal of altruism, as mantras that we all might still live by. [Aug. 2011, p. 93]
  6. Jul 6, 2011
    77
    This might not be the most inviting sound world to contemplate, but Johannsson's confident touch with it is powerful, and The Miners' Hymns creeps into your consciousness like a musty attic draft.
  7. Jul 6, 2011
    60
    Things are prone to occasional lulls with three tracks exceeding ten minutes. However, Johansson is capable of some beautifully stirring music, and when this album soars, it is a treat.

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