by geejayaye on 12/2/2002
favorite track: 3
 
I've now listened to this score a few times and while on first listening I was disappointed, I have to admit that the more I hear it the more it grows on me.

What hasn't grown on me is the theme song by Madonna. To paraphrase Bond when he dined with Scaramanga: "It's a four letter word and you're full of it." I read in an English newspaper that Arnold was seriously not at all happy with the song (so join the end of the queue, David). The excuse for it was that the techno sound would bring Bond into the new millennium. Hey, orchestral music has been going for centuries and the Bond song has been pretty much a story of unbroken success for four decades - in other words, if it ain't broke don't fix it! Mind, I do almost admire it for getting Sigmund Freud into a Bond song! And what would he have made of 007?

Then there's the techno revamp of the Bond theme. Why? It was only 2 albums ago that Moby reworked it. It's not an offensive reworking, it's just rather unnecessary. Wait until the 50th anniversary film before another revamp, I'd suggest.

Now to the score. As a John Barry fan, anyone who does a Bond score other than him starts off with two strikes against them in my book. So when Arnold (whose music I was unfamiliar with) first stepped into the scoring duties I regarded him darkly. However he then produced what I consider to be the best Bond score of any with Tomorrow Never Dies and one of the best songs in "Surrender", and shame on the producers for going with Sheryl Crow's weak effort. His score to The World Is Not Enough wasn't as good, introducing techno aspects, though the track "Come In 007, Your Time Is Up" was an absolute action classic. So which way would he go with Die Another Day?

Alas, he seems to have continued along The World Is Not Enough lines. The first word that springs to mind when describing this score is disjointed. There's the use of electronics again and they don't do anything for the score as a whole except up break up passages of music... just as they might be getting interesting. The flow isn't there.

At least the Bond theme makes more of an appearance in this score and is very prominent in the excellent opening cues "On The Beach" and "Hovercraft Chase." It gives the actual score a great start. One very good and innovative aspect of the score is the use of a choir in several tracks including "Icarus," which gives it a really sinister feel. Pity it's one of the shorter tracks on the disc. "Whiteout" and the big finale track "Antonov" also contain the choir. I can best describe the choir as sounding like something you'd hear in a medieval film. It's a hard, harsh male voice sound.

One of the better and lighter cues is "Welcome To Cuba." This is a really lively and catchy piece of Latin music that captures the feel of the island perfectly. Some will claim it's a cliche, but it sounds great.

"Jinx Jordan," "Jinx & James" and "Going Down Together" are pleasant orchestral pieces reflecting the human side of the film. "Some Kind Of Hero?" is a dark, brooding track.

The remainder of the score are action pieces that are punchy enough but have that irritating and uneasy mixture of orchestra and techno. All have their highlights and we get the occasional wonderful blast of Barry style 'whah whah' bras, and the Bond theme makes a few cameos.

Of the action tracks, I guess the best would be the longest track on the album which is "Antonov." It's dark, brassy with the choral passage and the Bond theme, but it also encapsulates a lot of what's wrong with the score as a whole. There doesn't seem to be much coherence or progression to it. As soon as it looks like it's building up a head of steam, in come the electronic sequences. Some may like that style, and while I don't mind it in moderation, I feel Arnold uses too much of it to the score's detriment.

What I also miss are the slow, growling build<