Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerard: Gladiator Soundtrack

Herald rating: * * *

Decca

Review: Russell Baillie

If you thought the music to Russell Crowe's Roman epic sounded quite a bit like Russell Crowe's tobacco industry vs media epic The Insider, then you weren't imagining things. Both scores used the voice of Lisa Gerard (the former tonsils of ethereal soundscapers Dead Can Dance).

Here she's in league with Hans Zimmer, whose own musical past (he was in the Buggles) hasn't stopped him becoming a first-division Hollywood soundtrack man with a penchant for 10-finger synthesiser chords.

There's a bit of that here, and often this resembles an organically textured take on the music to another Ridley Scott film, Blade Runner.

But mostly it's heroic stirring martial stuff on tracks like Battle, Strength and Honor and — CHARGE! — Barbarian Horde sometimes suggesting a digitally-enhanced Ravel. Elsewhere Gerard's vocals add a Celtic lilt to the lull-after-the-storm tracks.

It's big music for a big movie and a listenable album — one to pop in the player on that next cross-country drive in the family chariot.