Rob Dougan

England-based actor-producer-singer Rob Dougan struck pay dirt early with his 1995 underground hit “Clubbed to Death,” which surfaced four years later in The Matrix. Perhaps inspired by that experience, Dougan has meticulously crafted orchestrally bombastic songs destined for flicks flaunting state-of-the-art special effects. (Indeed, the disc’s title track appears in The Matrix: Reloaded.) He shamelessly piles melodrama on top of schmaltz, saturates everything in saccharine strings and angelic choirs, then drenches the bloated compositions with syrup. Underneath all the album’s emotion-jerking gestures, Dougan, in a sop to his clubbing past, occasionally lays down trip-hop rhythms reminiscent of Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy” and Soul II Soul’s “Keep on Movin’.” (Both tracks are more than a decade old.) Given all these factors, Dougan’s future as a film composer looks secure.