My parents have always had some rather entertaining conflicts between their respective tastes in music, with the result that the vast majority of my earliest musical memories revolve around a fairly heady mixture of Al Stewart, Michael Nyman, Neil Diamond and Philip Glass. The latter in particular would appear to have made a rather lasting impression, leaving nightmarish recollections of being terrified witless by the incessantly repeating chants of Einstein on the Beach whilst sitting at the dinner table with my father.

Such early exposure to what might be described as Glass's less easily palatable work evidently had some sort of positive effect, however, as in a world post bibs and highchairs he is without a doubt one of my favourite contemporary composers. In my weakest moments I must confess that I have been known to think there are worse sins than to occasionally enjoy a bit of Neil Diamond, but the full extent of that impediment to a life of taste will stay put till it comes pouring out from a psychiatrist's couch in years to come...

The Qatsi trilogy has long been responsible for three of my absolute favourite soundtracks, and so thanks to those and what I have heard of Glass's other film scores, it was with exceedingly high expecations that I approached his latest film-oriented offering. Animals in Love is the soundtrack to (and English title of) the French cinematographer Laurent Charbonnier's 2007 film entitled "Les Animaux Amoureux". The film itself is an astoundingly twee and disjointed collection of some otherwise wonderfully-shot images, and unfortunately Glass's soundtrack makes the film only marginally less dreary, on the whole raising many of the same complaints.

My main objection to the music is the way in which it flits between sequences which are obviously intended to illustrate the images (or, heard blind, the track names) they accompany, and the musically-superior sequences which seem to bear no relation whatsoever to the images/track names, but are instead great examples of Glass's compositional abilities. Whereas in a film such as Powaqqatsi the film and soundtrack fit seamlessly together and therefore the music functions beautifully as a separate entity too, with Animals in Love there are occasional imbalances between visuals and sounds that cause a further degradation of the quality of the music when heard separately.

Opposing illustrations of this problem are provided by "Ballet Of The Birds" and "The Kangaroos". The former is a wonderful piece of music, yet it has a slightly ominous quality to it that is completely at odds with the image it is intended to convey. The latter is a fairly irritating track which bounces along in an almost smug manner, yet in the context of the film it accompanies its scene perfectly.

It is doubtlessly a fairly tall order to score a film such as this that leaps so jerkily from one scene to the next without even demonstrating any sort of continuity between the species it is displaying, let alone the message it is trying to convey. As such, it does feel rather unfair to score the soundtrack so harshly, but the fact is that even as a standalone record, this is a very disappointing album. Glass is capable of far better, and I hope his next offering might be a more convincing demonstration of this.

-Fred Bevan