Lakeshore Records release Paul Dalio's original score for Touched with Fire. The movie follows two poets with bipolar disorder whose art is fuelled by their emotional extremes. When they meet in a treatment facility, their chemistry is instant and intense, driving each other's mania to new heights. They pursue their passion, which breaks outside the bounds of sanity, swinging them from fantastical highs to tormented lows until they ultimately must choose between sanity and love...

Paul Dalio's score for Touched with Fire includes 17 tracks (28 min, 34 sec). On balance I found it to be quite an intricate collection of themes with only one major problem: the annoying voiceovers that appear from time to time. Now, while I understand that the movie is about two poets, and so the end track, 'Starry Nights', will mean something to fans of the film, personally I purchase scores because it allows me to hear the music without the film's vocal soundtrack. To be fair, there aren't too many vocal interruptions here, but I still found them annoying.

If you ignore that slight complaint, then Dalio turns in some beautiful, rather simple, themes. Take ' Carla's Theme', for example, it's almost like the tune from a child's music box, but builds into something much bigger.

While I did enjoy this score, it's a little too repetitive and a little too short to make it an essential purchase. But if you're a fan of the movie then you may get a buzz out of this.

6

Darren Rea