DIGITAL ALBUM REVIEW - ONCE FALLEN


Once Fallen
Music by Jeff Beal
MovieScore Media MMD 0012
20 Tracks 43:32 mins

Available as a digital download only, MovieScore Media has released Jeff Beal's score for the recent low-budget crime drama Once Fallen, which reunites the composer with the film's star Ed Harris.
Beal, like fellow screen composer Mark Isham, comes from a jazz background and if you enjoy the latter's smoky and gritty urban scores, then chances are you'll like this one too, as it's very much cut from the same cloth, with trumpet drifting in and out of many of the cues, though absent from the film's title track, which moves along rather more optimistically than much of what follows. But the instrument quickly makes its first tentative appearance in the upbeat "Prison Fight" that follows. Aside from the jazz-based atmospheres, "There Are No Rules" and "The Kidnap" present some percussive movement, and "Beat and Leon," "If I Go, You Go," "Father and Son" and "Reunion" a few moments of sentiment; with the title theme (this time with trumpet) returning to close out the final album track "A Gift From Beat/End Credits."
Go to www.moviescoremedia.com/oncefallen.html for samples, a trailer for the film, and for ordering suggestions.