Los Angeles, 1999 - Officer Dave Brown is a Vietnam vet and a Rampart Precinct cop, dedicated to doing “the people’s dirty work” and asserting his own code of justice, often blurring the lines between right and wrong to maintain his action-hero state of mind.  When he gets caught on tape beating a suspect, he finds himself in a personal and emotional downward spiral as the consequences of his past sins and his refusal to change his ways in light of a department-wide corruption scandal seal his fate...

The soundtrack to Rampart represents a rather strange collection of music. We have three lounge singer tracks ('Downtown', 'Venice' and 'You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory' by Billy Hough. These tracks are a little annoying, and probably make sense in the movie, but are quite odd when listened to in isolation); 'Control Machete' is a rather bizarre Mexican hip-hop track; 'Parasito' is a Mexican rock track; and 'Famous Blue Raincoat' is a classic 1971 Leonard Cohen song.

Only four of the fourteen tracks on this CD are composed by Hinchliffe (representing just 9 min, 32 sec of the album's 44 min, 58 sec) the majority of this album is made up of Mexican examples of various western genre music styles.

It's an interesting album, but one that will age pretty quickly.

Track listing:

01 - 'Downtown' - Billy Hough
02 - 'Go Forth' - Dickon Hinchliffe
03 - 'Control Machete' - Control Machete
04 - 'Lupe Se Llama' - Gonzalez & Zuninga
05 - 'Hartshorn on the Beach' - Dickon Hinchliffe
06 - 'Parasito' - Molotov
07 - 'Dale Brinquitos' - EB Black
08 - 'Tres Delinquents' - Delinquent Habits
09 - 'Afoot' - Gang Gang Dance
10 - 'What Now?' - Dickon Hinchliffe
11 - 'Venice' - Billy Hough
12 - 'You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory' - Billy Hough
13 - 'Famous Blue Raincoat' - Leonard Cohen
14 - 'Go Forever' - Dickon Hinchliffe

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Darren Rea