Craig Armstrong - As If To Nothing (2002)

Best known for scoring film soundtracks, Craig Armstrong has provided a-list pop acts (U2, Massive Attack, and Spice Girls) with cloying string arrangements. But his stock-in-trade is moody, gargatuanly stringed incidental music for hysterically overblown movies like Moulin Rouge and Plunkett and MacLean. The appropriately titled As If to Nothing follows on from his 101-Strings-for-Jaded-Dullards debut, The Space Between Us, and repeats the same formula throughout its sixty-nine minutes, just as its predecessor did. Though some might say that Armstrong's music is powerfully evocative and serene, such people hate music and all its subtle possibilities and intricacies. Plus, if Armstrong perceives that music can be subtle, intricate and meaningful, this album goes strenuously out of its way to demonstrate the opposite.

An Armstrong piece is short and unobtrusive, which, for movie producers, means Armstrong's an affordable alternative to James Horner or John Williams. While no director really wants an audience distracted by a heavenly orchestral piece from his or her images, I expect something more eventful for home listening than billows of strings interrupted in the politest way by French horns or a soaring oboe.

Perhaps aware of the limitations of his instrumentals, Armstrong enlisted help: drum-n-bass master Photek, soul crooner David McAlmont, Alpha vocalist Wendy Stubbs, Antye Greie-Fuchs from German glitchers Laub, Bono, Mogwai and even Lemonheaded lost boy Evan Dando took time out from their otherwise productive lives to take part in this effete twaddle. Rumor has it that a small town was built to house and support all the musicians involved in realizing Armstrong's bland vision. Divided into two camps: hundreds of Musicians' Union schlubs, and those star performers the liners classify as "featured artist." But anyone wandering into Armstrong's shanty town could distinguish the two classes by whether they had a limo pick them up from their temporary accommodation or whether they had to ride Shank's pony to the studio.