This fantasy film directed by Dave McKean, written by Neil Gaiman and produced by the Jim Henson Company is a visually arresting, experimental piece which has divided critics between those who admire it for its imagination and those who hate it because it's so peculiar.  I rather suspect that exactly the same polarisation of opinion will happen with Iain Ballamy's score, released on CD by La-La Land Records.  It is seriously peculiar.  Ballamy is better known as a jazz saxophonist of some repute, and he has an extremely long list of credits in the liner notes, though I have to admit to never having heard of any of them, nor any of the groups he collaborated with.

The album - at a gut-clenching 74 minutes - is also extremely schizophrenic, as one might expect given the nature of the film.  The opening cue, "Sock Puppet / Flyover", is a piece of extremely progressive, modern jazz; next comes circus music played by a live band in "Circus Overture"; then some hispanic flair in "Spanish Web"; then what almost (note I said "almost") borders on sounding like conventional film music, "Gorillas!"; and so on and so on.  No two, successive tracks have much in common; and a lot of them are rather short.  This piecemeal nature makes the album sometimes frustrating; you just long for an idea to be developed and explored, but instead they are all quickly discarded.

There's some fine music here (I love the Parisian "Fish Street" and other pieces) but it's virtually impossible to sit and listen all the way through in one sitting.  There is something strangely compelling about it all - and certainly no doubt that an incredible amount of passion and work has gone into its creation - but it is never completely satisfying.  Still, it's a noble experiment, which is to be applauded; I suspect though that it will appeal more to Ballamy's fans from other fields than to film music fans in general.