Buy it... only if you seek a complete collection of the "For the Record" albums from the Ghent performances of major composers' works during the late 2000's, for the Craig Armstrong entry is rather weak compared to the others.

Avoid it... if you can't fathom hearing Armstrong's music without its trademark synthetic elements, the naked orchestral variants bizarre to the ears in a presentation that is also necessarily absent some of his best-known music.

Armstrong

For the Record: Craig Armstrong: (Compilation) Despite his relative anonymity with casual film score collectors, Craig Armstrong's output from the mid-1990's through the 2000's rivals some of the most prolific film composers in terms of quality music for high profile films. The Glasgow, Scotland native is best known for bridging and traversing the divide between symphonic classical music and contemporary pop style. Having been trained at the Royal Academy of Music, his career initially involved an odd balance between production work for Massive Attack, Madonna, and U2 on one hand while writing for classical commissions and collaborations with the Northern Sinfonietta, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on the other. His simple but effective blends of old and new have had the fortune of landing in some remarkably high profile films, culminating in his production, arrangement, and composition work for Moulin Rouge, an immensely phenomenal project that garnered him widespread acclaim and awards. The mainstream first took notice of the composer's feature score style in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet in 1996 and Plunkett & Macleane a few years later (the latter becoming a staple of movie trailer placement for years to come), though film music collectors really took notice of him after 1999's The Bone Collector. His wide ranging talents cause albums of his work to exist in the collections of nearly any serious music collector even if the owner is unaware that Armstrong is in part responsible for what he or she hears. In the late 2000's, the Ghent International Film Festival began featuring symphonic concerts of major composers' works, and in 2006 the focus of their attention was on Armstrong's music. The performing group at this event has changed through the years, and in this case, The Flemish Radio Orchestra and Choir was present (as they had been for the more famous Hans Zimmer concert several years earlier) to tackle many of the composer's best known works. These performances were recorded and made available to collectors as the first of the "For the Record" series of specialty CDs that went on sale at the festival's shops, its website, and soundtrack specialty outlets. Like the subsequent "For the Record" albums for the music of Mychael Danna in 2008, Angelo Badalamenti music in 2009, and Shigeru Umebayashi in 2010, these concert presentations are treats for the fans of the collector, featuring competent performances with solid recording quality and no ambient crowd noise, but they often raise more concerns than they may be worth for those same people.

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The selection of material to perform is always a point of contention on such compilations, though in the case of Armstrong, he often arranges his themes into a form that lends itself well for that use. Additionally, this "For the Record" CD debuted just a year after the composer's "Craig Armstrong: Film Works 1995-2005" promotional compilation that offered the original performances of many of the same cues. The completion of his score for World Trade Center in the interim allowed for a whopping four tracks from its subdued and depressingly beautiful score to be included on the "For the Record" product. Gone, unfortunately, are the replacement cues written for The Negotiator and Cruel Intentions. Of more importance, however, is that the Ghent performances attempted to represent Armstrong's career without any of the composer's trademark electronic loops. In The Bone Collector, The Quiet American, and Plunkett & Macleane, the ensemble makes token efforts with percussion to emulate the missing synthetic layers. Unfortunately, you can't really represent Armstrong's career without these electronic tones, and the performances on this compilation therefore suffer significantly from their absence. The highlights from Plunkett & Macleane, "Escape" and "The Ball," had to be omitted as a result. Ironically, the Ghent setup would have been better suited for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and The Incredible Hulk, both written not long after this recording. The strictly orchestral performances are rather passionless across the board, the trademark piano at the heart of so many of Armstrong's themes failing to resonate emotionally. The technically accurate playing by the full ensemble lacks the melodramatic flair that Armstrong's original scores tend to exude, exacerbating the issue with the synthetics. The choir was absolutely necessary, however, and it at least does its job adequately in the appropriate places. The solo vocal performance in "One Day I'll Fly Away" from Moulin Rouge is a disaster compared to Nicole Kidman's screen version. On the upside, the album does feature a dialogue-free version of "O Verona" from William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and the "Restaurant Proposal" theme from Love Actually to accompany that score's lovely "Glasgow Love Theme." The addition of "Lissa's Theme" from Best Laid Plans is a nice move as well, even if it is very similar to The Bone Collector. Overall, this "For the Record" album cannot compete with the original recordings on "Craig Armstrong: Film Works 1995-2005" because of the lack of passion and electronics in the performances. Hearing Armstrong's music without its natural synthetic element is simply too bizarre to behold. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Craig Armstrong reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.73 (in 11 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.4 (in 44,092 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.