Album: Jonny Greenwood

There Will Be Blood (Nonesuch)

For his second soundtrack commission, Jonny Greenwood moves away from the abstract, avant-garde style he employed on Bodysong, to a more straightforward cinematic series of orchestral arrangements temperamentally appropriate to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, a period-piece adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! set in rural Texas. With furtive, pizzicato strings stalking away against sleek, sinister strings, "Future Markets" is the kind of lurking-menace music that Miklos Rosza or Bernard Herrmann would provide for a Hitchcock suspense thriller.

There's a deceptive sleight of tone to some tracks, particularly "Prospectors Arrive", where the opening sunrise strings, initially suggestive of a love theme, are gradually replaced by sombre horn and piano interplay more akin to a funeral. Elsewhere, the microtonal string clusters of "Henry Plainview" and the furiously sawing cellos in "There Will Be Blood" itself bring a flavour more evocative of the modern horror movie. It's not as daring as Brian Reitzell's soundtrack for 30 Days of Night, but it's a competent and stylish piece of work nonetheless.

Download this: 'Future Markets', 'Eat Him By His Own Light', 'There Will Be Blood'