Lakeshore Records releases Jess Stroup's electronic score for Camp X-Ray. The movie follows a young woman who joins the military to be part of something bigger than herself and her small town roots. But she ends up as a new guard at Guantanamo Bay instead, where her mission is far from black and white. Surrounded by hostile jihadists and aggressive squadmates, she strikes up an unusual friendship with one of the detainees. A story of two people, on opposite sides of a war, struggling to find their way through the ethical quagmire of Guantanamo Bay. And in the process, they form an unlikely bond that changes them both...

The idea at the centre of the movie Camp X-Ray is an interesting one, and the score beautifully reflects that. Now, I'm not normally a fan of atmospheric electronic scores and this album should have turned me off... but it has a charm that is hard to ignore.

Obviously, this score works much better in the movie than when listened to on its own, but while there are plenty of background atmospheric tracks, these are actually quite relaxing to listen to. This is more an EP than an album, with the 14 tracks representing only 25 min, 53 sec of music.

In interviews, Stroup has talked about how it was challenging to compose a score that didn't lean on cliched emotional cues that normally influence the viewer’s opinion of the film’s characters. But, obviously this also means that the music is lacking, somewhat, in any emotional energy. To some this will come across as bland, while to others the score will seem refreshingly original.

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Darren Rea