- Alright, Grand Theft Auto V is the fastest selling entertainment product in history, hell it made one billion dollars in three days. So naturally the soundtrack to a billion dollar game has to be good and to have gone all out and let me tell you they have done just that. This soundtrack is not one but three albums and 59 tracks and that's merely a taste of the music on offer in the game itself.

Firstly, I would like to state that I am one of the losers that hasn't got this game yet. Therefore, I am reviewing this soundtrack as a soundtrack and not examining it within the context of the game. As I mentioned earlier the collection here is three discs. The first being all original works and oh yeah, they're some of the biggest names in music we have at the moment. The second disc is a slab of the score that - oh yeah - has been reworked by DJ Shadow into a standalone album and - oh yeah! - ends with select classics from the rest of the in-game 'radio stations'.

First, the originals disc. None of these songs feel as if they couldn't be included on any of the artists' next records: these aren't filler that they pulled out for a video game soundtrack; and some of these names! Highlights include Tyler, The Creator's (arguably) most experimental piece to date, Garbage, which echoes his latest work but goes a step further. So too Flying Lotus' Stonecutters, as it should: Flying Lotus curates one of the games most popular radio stations full of FlyLo's favourite banging' beats and experimental hip-hop. It's not all electro and hip hop though, Off's What's Next features the band's most graphic lyrical content, whilst holding true to their classic sound. Wavve's Nine is God and Yeasayer's Don't Come Close are rather odd tracks for those bands to do, not least because both of these standalones are better than both group's previous records.

The second disc of score is somewhat torturous to listen to for someone like me that does not own the game. It sounds exactly like what you would expect, mainlining atmosphere. In addition to the DJ Shadow reworking (again, better than his last record…) German electro / krautrock group Tangerine Dream, Red Redemption composer Woody Jackson and hip hop great The Alchemist all had their two cents worth in the score. Despite the embarrasment of celebrity input, it's hardly a case of too many cooks: the end result is truly world class. The track A Legitimate Business Man is still eclectic enough to make you wonder how it all works, and how that scene could play out in the game - it's all over the place - while the following number, A Haze of Patriotic Fervour is distinctive, giving an easy impression of how the game would play out, despite sounding much like the music from the earlier GTA title Vice City as indeed do a number of the other tracks. Then it ends with Welcome to Los Santos Outro and I'm quite certain that, in-game, if you don't feel like Biggie Smalls walking into a night club then you haven't gotten that far enough yet.

The final disc of the soundtrack, I endorse the use of the following hyperbole, it's simply amazing. Alright, here is some of what you get: Lee "Scratch" Perry's I am a Madman, Jai Paul's Jasmine Dream, Toro Y Moi with Harm in Charge, FlyLo with The Kill, Simple Minds with All the Things She Said and the list really does go bloody on! But what takes the cake is the inclusion of Bootsy Collins (who's also got his own radio station in-game, natch). His AMAZING I'd Rather Be With You which you are not allowed to listen to before eleven at night, in a bad ass pimp-mobile, on the Los Santos strip, with some honeys, four for preference. Oh yeah, if only real life radio was this good (well apart from this station…)

The only let down is that they didn't include Clams Casino's excellent original for the game Crystals but fortunately they did offer it as a free download. To be honest, I am praying that Rockstar Games hears my glowing review of this soundtrack and they help out a fresh-faced youngster with a copy of their excellent video game. But I doubt that'll happen and frankly I don't care as this soundtrack is one of the best to come out of any video game or frankly, any medium of entertainment.

- Brad Armstrong.