The Soundtrack | Soundtrack Review

A Bloody Mess
by: bill aicher

The soundtrack for Blade 2 looked extremely interesting on paper - fuel for what could be a creative jaunt destined to open doors to new musical frontiers. Unfortunately, the Blade 2 soundtrack sounds extremely boring and contrived on disc. What could have been the birth of a new style instead works as proof that some ideas are best left unexplored.

That being said, it isn't that this entire album fails but rather that the pairings are for the most part, ill-conceived and painful listens. Take the Paul Oakenfold / Ice Cube catastrophe, "Right Here Right Now;" an electronic artist who is considered by many to be at the top of the game in his field of trance-centered dance, Oakenfold instead opts to "rock out" with Ice Cube. The song "kicks ass," but more in the "I drive a pickup truck and drink beers in the cornfields" kind of way. (Think Limp Bizkit). Eve and Fatboy Slim merely magnify each others' ineptitudes and lack of passion for the work - Fatboy's bouncy beats with Eve's rampant expletives create a song that sounds more like Minnie Mouse's abortion than anything you'd really want to hear again.

The rest of the album continues in this trend - convoluted theories that the biggest electronic names will undoubtedly mesh with the biggest names in hip-hop. Moby with Mystikal? Hell no.

Still, the album does have it's shining moment - Mos Def and Massive Attack's remake of Bad Brains "I Against I" is one of the finest musical moments in recent history. Maybe there is room for collaborations... but the others need to take some lessons from these two.

The music may work great as a soundtrack to a mindless action vampire flick, but with the names listed on the tracklisting one would expect something a bit more engaging.

Instead we get the bastard child. 25-Mar-2002 11:40 AM