Boiler Room

In a film that could be described as Wall Street meets The Firm, Boiler Room focuses on Seth (Giovanni Ribisi) who gives up his small-time gambling racket to work for a prestigious stock brokerage. Unfortunately all is not well at the firm, and Seth slowly finds himself falling into a few legal gray areas that threaten to put him and his co-workers in jail, unless he complies with the Feds. While the ending wasn't the most satisfying, Boiler Room did feature a rather enjoyable moody electronic score by DJ diva The Angel.

The "Main Title" is a quick 30-second track that actually sounds like, well, some electronic pulses recorded in a boiler room. From there, the "Opening Sequence" brings in a bass groove, percussion and sampled brass and a saxophone round out the combination. It's definitely atmospheric, and helps supplement the dark atmosphere of the film.

Most of the score sounds the same, but if you let yourself get into the rhythm, there are a few tracks that stand out. "Seth Talks To Mom" and ""Abby's Bad Feeling" highlight emotional themes; "Reco" has a good rhythm with some punchy brass; "Michael Believes Seth" has some tense percussion with a great panning effect, and "C-Drive" brings back the main saxophone theme and an upbeat groove.

Two bonus tracks are included - the songs "Destiny Complete" and "Act As If (Act III Mix)". The latter is a rap song, and it struck me that much of the score could easily have been the underlying music for a rap song. It has a very repetitive percussion track and bass line, but the average track length is rather short. But this is not the type of score that you would probably listen to time and time again, and as such it makes the 35 minutes of music on the album rather hearty. It's a solid listen that can soothe and relax, and might be worth getting if electronica is they type of thing you're in to.