WaterTower Music release the soundtrack to the HBO film Bad Education, with music by Michael Abels. Inspired by true events, the story follows Frank Tassone and Pam Gluckin who reign over a popular Long Island school district on the verge of the nation’s top spot, spurring record college admissions and soaring property values. But when an embezzlement scheme surfaces that threatens to destroy all they’ve built, Frank is forced to maintain order and secrecy - by whatever means necessary...

Michael Abels delivers a score that is more classical music than it is your standard movie soundtrack - and it's all the more impressive for it. This is nowhere more evident than in the track 'The Downfall', which appears to have been inspired largely by Beethoven's 'Symphony No 7'.

Talking about the music, Abels said: "The score is a homage to great classical concert music, evoking the rigorous world of competitive academia, and its high level of training and discipline. But as this structured world begins to unravel in the film, the score also includes stark, minimalist cues driven primarily by percussion."

There are many homages to other pieces of classical music and part of the fun here is spotting them. The release consists of 13 tracks (19 min, 20 sec) and is more an EP than a full album, but it still manages to pack in more than a lot of scores with a run time three times as long.

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Darren Rea