Since Randy Edelman's first score, rather improbably for The Chipmunk Adventure in 1987, his career has taken a path through a string of comedies (most famous among them being Beethoven and My Cousin Vinny), a couple of high-profile adventure films (Last of the Mohicans, Dragonheart) but mostly rather dreadful action films. During the last couple of years he has scored China: The Panda Adventure, Who Is Cletit Tout?, Black Knight, Frank McKlusky, CI and best of all, Corky Romano: Special Agent. But his relationship with director Rob Cohen has finally given him a very popular film to set his teeth into, the James Bond knockoff XXX, starring Vin Diesel and the rather lovely Asia Argento (daughter of Dario). It's almost certainly the finest of his scores that have seen album release so far.

While David Arnold was busying himself ridding Bond of all the great musical heritage built up for it, Edelman was faced with the task of writing music for an spy thriller which sounded as far away from Bond as possible in order to get some distance between XXX and the famous series. Rather than going down Arnold's rather tired techno route, he has written a modern score combining Hans Zimmer-style action music with sexy and appealing romantic material of his own.

This album, released several months after the routine "inspired by" collection, opens with a beautiful theme played on the balalaika by John Bilezikjian. Following comes a string of pulsating action cues, occasionally militaristic ("Czech Cavalry"), usually based around a great action theme (check out - or Czech out - the rather strangely named "The Changing Science of Ahab"). It's all very exciting stuff; Zimmer himself rarely writes in the style any more, and his Media Ventures cohorts have mostly made fools of themselves when trying to ape it, but Edelman does it very well indeed. It probably helps that his synths - while far from being absent - very much take a back seat to a full symphony orchestra. The more romantic material ("Elena", "Finding Paradise in Bora Bora") is really very appealing indeed.

Edelman's action music has always struck me as being too simplistic and slightly banal in the past, but he excels himself here. It's not groundbreaking stuff and purists will pour scorn, but it is very exciting, always entertaining and above all, a wonderful surprise.

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