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TENNANT/LOWE Battleship Potemkin EMI ***

The seminal Russian film-maker Sergei Eisenstein once called for a new score to be written every decade for Battleship Potemkin, his groundbreaking 1925 film about the 1905 Odessa navy riots. Last year the Institute for Contemporary Arts commissioned the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe to write a new score for an outdoor screening of Eisenstein's masterpiece in Trafalgar Square. Performed by Pet Shop Boys and the Dresdner Sinfoniker, with orchestrations by German composer Torsten Rasch, Tenant and Lowe's score is a knowing mix of signature electro pop, hi-nrg beats and elegant orchestral passages, which strikes a not always successful balance between art and kitsch - the chunky groove of Nyet and the driving bounce of Full Steam Ahead easily outshine the overly sentimental ballads After All (for the iconic Odessa Staircase sequence) and No Time for Tears. Eisenstein would be bemused. www.petshopboys.co.uk

Jocelyn Clarke