There are many things I can forgive a CD label, but claiming that video games are “culturally significant” and assuming that I’d want to hear a CD of orchestrated gaming jingles isn’t one of them. In the sleeve-notes to “Video Games Live, Vol 1”, the suggestion is made that this CD might “open the eyes of nongamers to our industry… our goal is to help usher in a whole new generation of people to appreciate symphonic music”. Like McDonalds helped generations of people appreciate salad, and watching Aussie soap operas might lead to a deeper understanding of Ingmar Bergman films.

The truth, my friends, is that the music contained here within is worthless tosh, and unpleasantly manipulative tosh at that. I’m happy to accept that in the context of a video game it has a function: but its vapid Romantic climaxes, shopping-centre beats, banks of ambient choirs and cheesier-than-a-Dairyleafondue melodies, played with sinister authoritarian precision, aren’t anything to do with music – this is the music business at its crudest and most unfettered.

Nor is there much happening with the set of “Classical Trancelations” by Finnish producer Petri Alanko. Trance music is the commercial wing of techno, but this sounds more like a pretend art to me, where material is reduced to nothing and in its place: empty atmospherics and orchestration without music. Apologies for the negative vibes, but frankly, they started it.