London

by

The Crystal Method

Edit

The Crystal Method take their first stab at film scoring with LONDON, a movie which (as of this writing) I know little about, other than the fact that it takes place in New York City. Still, it sounds like TCM are adapting to this new role quite nicely on this soundtrack, though whether their more casual fans will want to pick it up remains questionable.

As far as new material from TCM goes, LONDON is probably best thought of as an eight-track EP with 6 bonus tracks from other artists (one of which is remixed by TCM). These songs aren't quite as danceable as those on their previous releases--but then, these songs are primarily intended to reflect the mood of the on-screen action; that's the nature of film score (as opposed to straightforward "dance music"). That said, most of TCM's songs (with the title trac being a notable exception) can get you moving, and "Smoked" and "Roboslut" are good enough to work on their own without the rest of the soundtrack as

The non-TCM stuff (tracks 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, and 14) is a mix of rock and electronic music. It's pretty good, though why the decision was made to put all of the rock tracks on the second half of the album confuses me--though perhaps this has something to do with when the songs are played in the actual film. Particularly notable are The Out Crowd, whose "C'mon Children" is a wonderful bit of psychedelic retro-rock goodness (though the lead singer sounds eerily like Bernard Sumner of New Order), and Connie Price and The Keystones' wonderfully jazzy instrumental "Sucker Punch." Evil Nine also turn in a fine contribution with "Restless," which sounds like bit like an electronica tune as performed by the Hives.

All in all, this isn't a bad set of tunes--it's a little short at 55 minutes, and none of TCM's songs crack the 5-minute mark, but this is still a very entertaining soundtrack.

The Crystal Method is one of my favorite groups, so I went to Best Buy the day the album was released. I couldn't find it at first because I was looking under "Soundtracks". To my suprise, Best Buy actually filed this directly under Crystal Method. Anyways, on to the music..

This is a good CD, but I must admit that I was a bit disappointed. You can tell the tracks were written for a hollywood movie. They have that familiar cyrstal method sound, but they definitely seem to be lacking something. I like the groovy instrumental tracks like Roboslut and Defective the most, but they still don't seem to have the energy that previous TCM releases do.

I also want to mention that I am not just another person who loved Vegas and Tweekend's Name of the Game. My favorite TCM album is Legion of Boom, and I love both the Community Service volumes. The TCM tracks on this disc simply don't come close to tracks such as "I Know It's You" and "Bound Too Long". However, I still recommend this CD to any true TCM fan.