Buy it... if your film score collection is limited and you could use fine samplers such as Silva's to expand upon your enjoyment and knowledge of the genre.

Avoid it... if you already have a dozen similar Silva compilations and don't wish to add another repetitious album to your collection.

Reel Chill: The Cinematic Chillout Album: (Compilation) It's been several years now since Silva Screen's collaboration with The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and Crouch End Festival Chorus yielded the original Cinema Choral Classics albums and dozens of other successful ventures. You begin to wonder if Silva producer James Fitzpatrick (who we all have to thank for these performances -- many of which are magnificent) and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra have run out of noteworthy (and more likely, profitable) music to re-record and must rely on the most recent scores to choose material from. While their production together has slowed since those glorious days of the late 1990's, that doesn't mean that their library of recordings can't be plucked for yet another new combination of these recordings along a new, common theme. Some of these compilations in the past have been suspicious in their inclusion of some recordings while they omit others, and some collectors seem to stick to Silva re-recordings of either a single score (such as the fantastic Raise the Titanic) or a very specific theme (such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy or the James Bond albums). The 2004 Reel Chill album from Silva looks to have the ice cube philosophy at work, with the selection of cues this time seemingly centered on the soothing and relaxing. You see compilations such as this in the "various" area of music stores' soundtrack sections all the time, but the good thing about Silva albums is that there is actually a real --and a very good-- orchestral and choral ensemble behind those recordings. Seeing one of these Silva compilations sitting next to "Classics Performed by Neil Norman and His Cosmic Orchestra" does put the situation into perspective. Even so, albums like Reel Chill are aimed at film music novices more than hardened critics of the genre, and Silva's honorable intent with this album is to get people either hooked on film music or hooked on their rerecordings of it... and either is a positive move.

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The film score nuts could argue for an hour about the always curious inclusion of music on these collections. With 2 CDs in the case of Reel Chill, there's plenty to discuss. The albums seem heavily weighted with material by Ennio Morricone and John Barry (no surprise --they like performing that stuff in Prague) and perhaps the absence of material of classic romance writers (Patrick Doyle, Rachel Portman, Georges Delerue, etc) blows a huge hole in this compilation and exposes the fact that Prague has neglected especially Delerue and Portman. Perhaps they're just not marketable enough. Another interesting aspect of Reel Chill is that the selections have been made for their aural beauty rather than the content of the movies they originally accompanied. If you're the type of person who pictures Anthony Hopkins eating a person's brain when hearing any music from Hannibal, or pictures Willem Dafoe getting needlessly riddled with bullets when hearing Barber's Agnus Dei for Platoon, then Reel Chill might not function correctly for you. Even if you're one of those hard-ass people, however, a set like this does offer you a chance to hear Prague's more recent recordings. In this case, you get a glimpse into their Lord of the Rings recordings (released together on a separate album) as well as items such as A.I. by John Williams and Gladiator by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard (the "Now We Are Free" cue here starts over again for some reason halfway through and repeats itself). One thankful omission is Dances With Wolves, which is surprising given Barry's strong presence on the album, but it's been so overplayed in recent years that it's more tedious rather than soothing. Overall, the Reel Chill set, unlike some of Silva's other, more highly targeted compilations, is aimed at the mainstream listener rather than the film score collector. The stock photography on these Silva albums is always curious, with an ice cube all over the outside and a picture of some bald, vascular dude in Zen meditation on (far too much of) the inside. No meditation is likely for the listener of the album, though, for the performances are strong and the selections are varied enough to keep us pleasantly awake and lucid. ***