This week's soundtrack CDs reviewed

BRUNO COULAIS

Coraline Koch *****

Bruno Coulais ( The Chorus, Winged Migration, Microcosmos) creates a truly ingenious new score for Henry Selick's stop-motion animation film Coraline. Instead of a conventional thematic approach to the film's character and narrative, the French composer crafts a dynamic and angular assembly of ideas and styles (from jazz and pop to post- minimalism), which he develops separately, only to merge and transform them as the phantasmagorical score progresses, producing a dense bricolage that delights in its many parts (30 cues in all) and beguiles as a whole. Combining sinuous melodic lines and lithe polyrhythms with bright electronica, spare orchestration and bright instrumental and vocal colours (including Helene Brechand's delicate soprano and the Children's Choir of Nice), Coralineis at once playful and oneiric, brooding and lyrical, and pretty much perfect. www.coraline.com

Download tracks: End Credits, T he Hand