Buy it... if you're prepared to hear Travor Rabin's basic theme construction and library samples presented over the harsh electronica rhythms of David Arnold.

Avoid it... if you value an intelligent level of complexity in your scores that may never exist for any Rob Cohen film, and certainly not this one.

Stealth: (Brian Transeau) Why bother? Really, the quality of director's Rob Cohen films must be contributing, in some minor form or another, to the gradual dumbing down of America. From XXX to The Fast and the Furious, and now with the ultra-dumb Stealth, there seems no purpose to these video game films other than to a) develop video games from them, and b) make lots of stuff blow up. Spectacularly unrealistic and frightfully illogical, W.D. Richter's script for Stealth actually tries to touch on an ethical debate contemplated in films since 2001. What happens if the ultra powerful and sleek new flying drone of the military is magically struck by lightning and given an intelligence of its own? And what then if it starts downloading songs from the Internet and destroying innocent targets? Only the guys who get off on a flyboy buzz will find anything redeeming in Stealth, and amid its scenes of exploding and crumbling skyscrapers or utterly ridiculous dialogue from supposedly the same military that is currently dying in Iraq, critics took turns beating it to a lowly 30 million dollar return (lowly for this type of film) at the domestic box office. Cohen seems to enjoy accompanying these action films with an electronica/orchestral combination in the scores, and for Stealth, he would reteam with Brian Transeau, otherwise known as "BT" in his own remix and production career. Transeau makes a living doing dance remixes for movies as well as remixing artists such as Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, Diana Ross, Seal, and Tori Amos for album production. In the case of Stealth, he would continue composing in algorithmic codes and building artificial instruments on computer, but would also incorporate 100 orchestral players into that mix. "The exciting thing is getting to incorporate some of this musical technology," Transeau says. "You have these real polarities, these big pieces of orchestral music versus this crazy punk-rock sounding code." That quote will tell 95% of the readers of this review all they need to know as far as their purchasing decision on Stealth is concerned.

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It is no surprise the Transeau has been associated with films worked on by Trevor Rabin and David Arnold, because his resulting sound for Stealth seems to be an exact merging of Rabin's usual simplistic construction and Arnold's harsher electronic sound design. To complicate matters, Transeau takes several samples from the Media Ventures library, and one of the various Hans Zimmer pupils, Trevor Morris, assists Transeau on a significant number of cues. The only really interesting aspect of the Stealth score is how the orchestral ensemble can be completely lost in the wash of the electronic sound design and synthesized counterparts of those orchestral players. With so much electronic sound always pounding at a heightened rate of movement (including the typical chopping orchestral hits on each note of a theme), all of the traditional sounds of the orchestra, whether synthetic or real, end up sounding synthetic. Part of this disappointment comes from the Rabin influence on the score, which yields extremely simplistic chord progressions and an exposure of Transeau's lack of depth in every aspect of the underlying composition. Even if you forget the electronic rendering of the music, you're still left with a score that is quite literally built from rhythmic code and frustratingly simplistic themes. The loyalty to the themes is strong, but what good does it do when they're only a few notes removed from Armageddon? In the rendering, Transeau apparently sees no use for any of the finer points of orchestration, counterpoint, or anything else that provides a satisfyingly complex listening experience that wouldn't rely on a wall of sound to suffice. Part of that is purely a mixing problem; the few specialty instruments are drowned out. There are undoubtedly a following of Media Ventures scores (and Rabin collectors, of course), who will find Stealth to be an interesting work on album, but in all honesty, you really have turn off your brain to refrain from noticing the amateurish rendering that has been done time and time before. Even among all this headache-inducing simplicity, however, are a few cues mixed with very nicely-layered male vocals; both "Tin Man Will Prosecute" and "EDI's Sacrifice" may exist on the same simplistic foundation, but at least offer some harmonically beautiful performances. Overall, however, these two vocal cues can't salvage this electronica interpretation of Media Ventures drudge from yesteryear. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download