Changing Lanes

In film music, David Arnold is Mr Loud Orchestral Score, but he is considerably better known in the UK as a record producer and so his background is not in writing or even producing music like Independence Day but in producing pop of various sorts. It does seem strange that he burst onto film music writing full orchestral scores when in reality - given his background - it would have been more logical had he started writing scores like Changing Lanes (and the recent Baby Boy) then moved into Bond, thus combining electronics and orchestra and then to Independence Day. However, it has happened exactly the opposite way round. Curious really.
People who rib me about not having any musical interest outside of soundtracks are invariably met with some steely sarcasm mainly because, 1. it's not really true (mail me if you're curious as to what else I listen to) and 2. film music covers such a wide scope of styles and genres that there is plenty of scope for music other than John Williams. I suspect that if I played Changing Lanes for any number of non film music fans, they wouldn't notice it was film music, indeed it's more like Moby or similar - a mixture of percussion and samples, but with some occasional orchestral backing, but even this sounds more like it was sampled and grafted on. The problem with reviewing an album like this is that, to be blunt, it's not entirely to my taste and converse with my previous comment, if this was played to me without my knowing it was film music, I'd probably dismiss it. Perception counts for a lot in music.

On the basis of Changing Lanes, I can understand why David Arnold is regarded as a skilled producer, he is deft at creating music from samples and electronic percussion and bass lines, but as his Bond scores show, he's pretty good at mixing them with the orchestra. Having said that, Baby Boy was written along the same kind of lines, but that moved from a fairly authentic urban sound into more dramatic territory and Arnold actually managed some genuinely dramatic writing. Unfortunately, Changing Lanes doesn't really have any dramatic thrust at all and comes across as merely background music there to merely add some musical wallpaper than get involved with the characters and story. I'm sure it adds just the right type of feel to the film, but as an album and for my tastes, isn't really a success. For the type of music it is, it's skillfully constructed, but by the bench mark of something like Baby Boy in a similar style, it's not an especially memorable or remarkable effort.