CD Choice:David Holmes Haywire Silva Screen****

Since the release of his debut album, This Film's Crap Let's Slash the Seats, Belfast-born David Holmes's work has been influenced by film and film music. In many ways both his follow-up albums ( Let's Get Killedand Bow Down to the Exit Sign)are scores written for imaginary films, with verbatim dialogue, found streets sounds and brief character cameos; Carl Hancock Rux's vocal track Living Room, on Exit Sign,is alone worth the price of admission.

After his break-out score for Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sightin 1998, Holmes continued his collaboration with the maverick director on his retro-cool Ocean's Eleven, producing dynamic riffs, hip-hop beats, knowing samples (from Let's Get Killedand Exit Sign on Ocean's Eleven) to accompany the director's reflexively stylish images. He repeated the same approach on Ocean's Twelveand Ocean's Thirteen, with more invention but arguably less originality (although both won critical acclaim).

Over the years Holmes has honed his signature sound on scores as diverse as Analyze That, Hunger and The Edge, a laidback and mischievous mix of psychedelic funk, Delta blues and New York hip-hop with fat grooves and chunky beats. But they've rarely achieved the organic unity and dramatic cohesion of thematically structured film music.

Not so with Haywire, his new score to Soderbergh's indie action thriller starring mixed- martial arts star Gina Carano. Shaping his jazz and funk stylings to evoke the iconic 1970s thriller scores of David Shire ( The Taking of Pelham 123, All the President's Men) and David Grusin ( Three Days of the Condor), Holmes smooths his instrumental palette of propulsive bass, jittery percussion, angular electric guitar, gliding organ and surging horns, making his signature sound sleeker and sharper.

Holmes's simple themes are developed from cue to cue, stressing atmosphere over character, and combined with sinuous polyrhythms that bounce, roll and kick as the action requires, from the va-va-voom opening of Haywireand the taut crescendo of Let's Get Jiangto the bluesy shuffle of Where's Kenneth?

A coolly evocative and suspenseful score, Haywireis Holmes at his hippest and best. silvascreen.com

Download tracks: Haywire, Let's Get Jiang, Where's Kenneth?