Tomorrow Never Dies

David Arnold seems to be John Barry's heir to the throne of James Bond music. When listening to his score for Tomorrow Never Dies it is quite easy to forget everything about Eric Serra and his electronic dribblings for Golden Eye. What makes Arnold's score so good is the fact that he manages to mix the sound of the classic bond scores by John Barry, with his own orchestral grandeur, and at the same time add some fresh ideas, such as heavy and exciting synth backgrounds. The original Bond theme, by Monty Norman, or John Barry (or whoever wrote the darn piece) is used frequently, which is nice. I mean, what would a Bond film be without the cool electric guitar and groovy brass as underscore whenever our secret agent does something heroic?! For Tomorrow Never Dies Arnold has composed a first class Bond score, and fans of Barry's Bond scores and David Arnold's bombastic action music will have a great time listening to it.

Because of the somewhat strange post-production of the film, Arnold had to write and record the score over a period of several months. This forced the record label to release the soundtrack before the entire score was completed, which meant that a lot of the music, particularly the latter part, had to be left out of the album, which in turn was a big disappointment for all the film music and Bond fans out there.

Luckily, Chapter III Records, formerly known as Compass III, decided to produce an expanded release, cleverly titled Tomorrow Never Dies: The Composer's Cut. Including seven previously unreleased cues, making around 25 minutes of "new" music, this release is a worthy replacement of, or addition to the original release, as one of the cues included on the first release, "Station Break", didn't make it over to the new one.

Also, this expanded edition does not include any of the songs, performed by k.d. lang and Sheryl Crow, included on the original album release, which might be good or bad, depending on your own musical taste. It does, on the other hand, include a lenghty eleven minute interview with David Arnold, telling about his score, relation to Bond and John Barry among other things. Quite interesting, actually. At least if you are a David Arnold fan.