David Arnold has worked pretty hard to escape the shackles of being pigeonholed as a composer of big, old-fashioned orchestral scores by considerably diversifying the range of films he scores over the last few years, with the techno elements he integrates into his Bond scores and the more urban sound he generated for Baby Boy and Shaft. Changing Lanes is pretty much the culmination of that end of the composer's spectrum, with very little acoustic music in sight (despite the large number of musicians credited in the booklet), replaced instead by urban beats and synthesised atmosphere.

The film is about a road rage incident that escalates out of all proportion and is unlikely territory for its director, Roger Michell, has previously directed a series of small-scale British movies along with the smash romantic comedy Notting Hill. It also marks the end of his collaboration with composer Trevor Jones, with whom he has worked on his last two films.

Arnold's music is indexed to 26 tracks but they are not listed individually on the album cover and they all run into one another - this is without question the most intelligent and best way of presenting it. One of the great things about film music is that it isn't a genre of music in itself but allows its best practitioners to experiment in a whole range of musical genres. All types of jazz, all types of orchestral music, all types of pop, all types of rock can be found in film music. So I don't think it's really possible to be a fan of "film music" per se, you can only be a fan of so much. And I'm not a fan of this. Music such as Changing Lanes holds no appeal for me; I find that most types of music have at least some appeal to me, but urban techno is not one of them. There's no melody here and the electronic percussion is very annoying. I would imagine that it's all done very well and if this type of music is what floats your boat, you'll be happily sailing away in no time; but it doesn't just not float my boat, it cries "Tora, tora, tora!" and sinks it before I've had chance to react.

Buy this CD by clicking here!