Guthrie is no newcomer to film soundtracks, with more under his belt than studio albums he managed with the band that made him famous. 3:19 is no great departure from his previous work, but its sonorous acoustics, lonely and haunting in the dark evenings of winter will appeal to those who like their music instrumental, heavy and lyric-less.

The film's title comes from a verse of Genesis, the first book of The Bible, which ends 'for dust you are and to dust you will return'. If you can imagine the music that might soundtrack that single line, you're on your way to knowing what the whole album sounds like. Dark, minimal, funereal in places, it isn't a floorfiller anthem by any count.

Not that you'd expect it to be. The film's plot revolves around a trio of friends, one of whom is dying of terminal cancer, and the live action is interspersed with animated passages about mathematics. In other words, a film that might as well have been created just so that one of the Cocteau Twins could write its soundtrack.

It's not all doom and gloom, allegedly, in an arthouse cinema way, but you might not guess that from the music. At times, you can close your eyes and imagine it's drifting you off to sleep, at others that this is what drowning must sound like, but always there is a sense of drifting downwards, of falling gently, very gently, into a warm and welcoming abyss.

You either love this type of music or you hate it, of course, and whichever camp you fall into, there is nothing on 3:19 that will change your mind. One thing is certain: it's music to be listened to alone, a soundtrack for silent meditation or a lullaby for a winter night.

Not unpleasant by any means, nor as sad as its backstory might make it sound, but music that probably works better attached to the movie it was designed for than it does standing on its own merits.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees