Creating soundtracks for imaginary films seems to be a burgeoning trend lately, especially among electronic artists. Stalwart composers like Arling & Cameron, Roger Manning Jr. and David Holmes have all recently tried their hand at the practice, with varying results. Add to that expanding list the perplexing Sybarite and their symbiotically beautiful Musicforafilm. Sybarite is in fact one man, Xian Hawkins, a New York-based abstract multi-instrumentalist who, for a short time anyway, was one-third of the legendarily odd synth group Silver Apples. After completing a brief stint with Simeon & Co., Hawkins retreated to his own Brooklyn-based studio to begin recording the material that would eventually become Musicforafilm.

Though not a soundtrack to any film in particular, the album’s epic scope would have made it an excellent choice to back, say, Run Lola Run or Get Carter. Those comparisons aside, Musicforafilm is a complex mesh of mechanical precision and warm languid tones, employing delicate synth drones, weeping melodies and burbling keyboards to emphasize its false sense of action, mystery or passion. Take for example "Suspiral"’s slowly building beats, which would make it the perfect accompaniment to a climactic chase scene, or the lurking Fisher Price-meets-Kraftwerk groove of "Soliq", which has "delicate love scene" written all over it. Other moments of android-orchestral brilliance include the shoddy breaks and rusty strings of "Rocks in Your Head", the sullen swells of Air-aping keyboards on lovely ballad "Serena" and the twisted robotic cadence of "Nearend".

The triumph of Musicforafilm is that it makes you yearn to see a movie that does not now, nor will ever exist. For that reason alone, it deserves your respect, as well as your undivided attention. David Holmes beware: your reign as the king of cinematically themed electronic music may soon be coming to an end.