Silva Screen Records digitally releases Nainita Desai’s soundtrack to BBC One Thriller Crossfire. Starring Keeley Hawes, this three-part high-octane drama follows the story of Jo and her family and friends, as their world turns upside down by a terrorist attack on the holiday complex where they are staying...

Nainita Desai's score for Crossfire is bold and brave and certainly something a little different that will grab your attention. The soundtrack exists in the space where sound design and orchestral score meet with the intimate and beautiful melodic motifs scattered amongst the sound waves. The music comes from within the environment. Sound effects have meaning and are part of the score, with Nainita manipulating and integrating the sounds of the surroundings into the music. For Jo’s running up and down corridors she uses Keeley Hawes’s recorded breath, both for fear and as a visceral immersive up-close feeling of tension. Nainita also restrains rhythms and pulses and replaces strings with reed instruments to further deepen the experience of discomfort and disorientation.

It's certainly not your conventional score, and those looking for melodic themes may be a little disappointed. But from a atmospheric point of view, this is something to be applauded.

Talking about the music, Desai says: "The brief for the score from the team was that they wanted the audience to ‘feel’ the score rather than ‘hear’ the score; not to push the story but to enhance the feeling that was already there; to never over dramatize the story but for the experience to be almost documentary like in places."

It's hard to describe how immersive and interesting this score is. While I doubt I'll listen to it very often (it's just not that sort of album) it was certainly an engaging experience and certainly perfect for the show.

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Darren Rea