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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
If the film stretches your limits of believability, then so does the score. Badalamenti was presented with the job of recording a score that consists of two conflicting elements: the orchestra, and his experimental electronic synthetics. The basic concept of the that conflict isn't a bad idea. After all, you have a film in which the ideals of a nice, cuddly suburban neighborhood are juxtaposed against the horror of discovering that your neighbor is a technological mastermind of terrorist bombings. But the orchestra is underpowered and the electronics are off the end of the wierdness scale. The convoluted atmosphere created by their melding causes the film to slip into a dreamy state of accelerated horror. This may have been the intent with Badalamenti in the first place, but on album, the music fails to uphold the same quality. Functionally, his score for Arlington Road is as adequate as could be expected for this film. The opening track on the album, as the neighbor boy stumbles bloodily down the street with half his arm blown off, contains some of the singlehandly noisiest and irritating film music ever to exist, with percussive clanging and dissonant pounding of electronics that are actually painful to the ears. It makes similarly conceived ideas by Howard Shore look like the work of a genius. After that frightening beginning, the score levels out into a consistent droning of electronics and underpowered orchestral underscore. In the film, the only positive musical presence worth mentioning is at the finale of the film, when the "realization" sequence of the plot pulls back and reveals the secrets of its characters to the audience. Otherwise, Badalamenti's music features no redeeming characteristics. The only notable theme, exhibited at the end of the album, is too daper for even this project, making the listener wonder where the inspiration behind such themes as the ones for Cousins went for Badalamente. As mentioned before, this score has a very loyal following, as you find with most opinions online. But bad music is bad music, and when it exists for a bad film, you get an album that can only collect dust on the back shelves. A few additional cues (six minutes worth) for Arlington Road were provided by Tom Hajdu and Andrew Milburn (otherwise known as "Tom and Andy"), whose credits are highlighted by some recognizable teleivision commercial music. Even their music, using the "Evolution System," is underinspired, and blends in with Badalamenti's music without so much as an interesting motif. This is an all-around morbid and poor work when divorced from the visuals. *
* Music by "Tom and Andy"
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