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Music by David Holmes
Label Warner Bros
Rating ****
If you don't feel like mixing a martini, grabbing the waist of the nearest fit chick (or fella) and snake-hipping your way to a makeshift dancefloor when belting out this soundtrack, then you're either Maggie Thatcher or comatose. Composer David Holmes picks up where he left off with his funky-retro soundtracks for the first two parts of Steven Soderbergh's crime caper trilogy, serving up another eclectic soul, funk and jazz-tinged soundscape.
The Belfast-born DJ/composer ups the ante on his usual fusion of dancefloor grooves and cocktail rhythms. Check out the slinky bongos-and-horns combo on 'Earthquake', the laid-back, bassoon-and-flute mood piece 'The Nose' and the guitar/keyboard clash of 'Fender Roads'. There's less room for Eleven's Vegas crooners or Twelve's Gallic-Italian neo-psychedelia. When Holmes does take a breather, we get Isao Tomita's Moog-synthesiser version of Debussy's 'Claire De Lune' and Puccio Roelens' freaky cover of Duke Ellington's lounge jam 'Caravan', which – if it isn't already a strip-club regular – should be snapped up by Stringfellows immediately.
The soundtrack's token nod to Ocean Thirteen's Vegas setting is Sinatra's version of 'This Town', which is dripping with cynicism (“This town is a love-you town/And a shove-you-down/And push-you-round town...”). But with Frank in full flow, it still harks back to the sin city of yore (much like the film, which heaps scorn on Al Pacino's blood-red tower of bad taste, looming over the Vegas Strip like a giant science-lab-model DNA strand).
True, a few extra crumbs of non-Holmesian artistry wouldn't have gone amiss. Otherwise, though, get those cocktail shakers out and turn your front room into a Vegas lounge: Holmes' exuberant riffs are the perfect way to get the party started. | 
