An excellent 70s Italian film score – penned for a political thriller, but handled with a fair bit of sweet and lovely themes! The album's one of the best we've ever heard from Francesco De Masi, and it nicely mixes his usual strong talents for action with a bit more warmth that befits the sexier side of the Italian cinematic spectrum. Sweet strings glide in alongside tighter electric basslines on some tracks – and others feature evocative woodwind bits, haunting piano, and a few more dramatic orchestrations – all wrapped up with really lovely sound throughout, and reissued here in a wonderful new package that really fits the music! There's a few vocal tracks – "Tomorrow Is A Foreign Land" and "Time On My Hands" – sung in English by Melody – and other titles include "The Story Of A Dream", "Running Against The Time", "Cape Town Harbour", "Soldiers Aboard", "Red Clouds", "Ending A Dream", "Suspect & Love", and "You'll Kill Her". LP, Vinyl record album

What can we say? This is one of the greatest soul soundtracks ever! In a market that was dominated by the big-selling Shaft and Superfly albums, Roy slipped in this masterful blend of jazzy vibes and wah wah funk that's easily one of the best-composed records of the blacksploitation genre! The album's much more unified than your average funky soundtrack – and each track moves between styles that you'd hear on any of Roy's great albums from the time. There's heavy funk on the track "Brawling Broads", cool vibes and electric piano on "Aragon", off-beat jazz on "Coffy Sauna", and great soul on cuts like "Coffy Is The Color" and "Coffy Baby". Wonderful all the way through – and another jewel in the already-big crown of the great Roy Ayers! (Soul, Soundtracks) LP, Vinyl record album

The great John Barry as a young man – stepping out here on songs that are a lot more rocking than his later fame as a soundtrack composer – served up in a massive 3CD box that collects together singles for Parlophone and Columbia, plus some early rock songs from films! The style here is quite different than the Barry of the James Bond years – as the Parlophone tracks include a number of vocal singles that are clearly trying to challenge the US rock hits of the time, mixed with more instrumentals by the John Barry Seven – and the Columbia years follow with more of the instrumental vibe, often using cool production to bring the most out of the twangy guitars or bright trumpet lines. The set concludes with a CD that features the Beat Girl soundtrack and the Stringbeat instrumental album – both a strong extension of the Columbia years – and the package features 92 tracks in all – with a big booklet of notes – titles that include "Get Lost Jack frost", "Big Fella", "Beat For Beatniks", "Hit & Miss", "Zip Zip", "Little John", "Hideaway", "Farrago", "Big Guitar", "Tit Willow Twist", "Watch Your Step", "The Menace", "Blondie's Strip", "The Challenge", "Moody River", "A Handful Of Songs", "Zapata", and lots lots more. CD

A sexy little film, with a sexy little soundtrack to match – just the right blend of funk and crime modes you'd expect for a movie that was a precursor to Charlie's Angels! The Doll Squad were a lot trashier, though – and it really shows in some of the music here, which has a great early 70s exploitation vibe at times, and some surprisingly nice jazz currents at others – much more in the vein of some hip Italian work of the period, especially with the instrumentation. Most numbers are quite short, but the set features lots of these cool cuts coming together nicely, with a bit of dialog too – and the set includes the vocal number "Song For Sabrina" – plus "Jealous Lady", "Doll Squad Theme", "Big Boom", "Double Trouble", "The Big Switch", and "Freedom Beat". LP, Vinyl record album

A nice little shark-themed soundtrack, but one that comes across with a vibe that's quite different than any of the music used for Jaws – partly because there's a number of vocal tunes in the mix! The set features three standout songs – "Hollywood Big Time" and "You've Changed The World For Me", sung by Yvonne Wilkins – and "Ballad", which is sung by composer Maurizio De Angelis himself – which are then mixed with instrumental numbers that are electric and keyboard-heavy, maybe more in line with Italian slasher/horror work of the period than you might expect! The colder electronics must have given the watery scenes a really great vibe on the screen – and the package features great sound throughout, and a mighty nice graphic appeal. LP, Vinyl record album

Riz Ortolani is best known for his big scores of the 60s – but here, the maestro turns in two early 80s soundtracks – one sci-fi, one horror – both with a very distinct vibe! First up is I Guerrieri Dell'Anno 2072, a soundtrack that has some "future" elements in its use of 80s keyboards, but which also balances things with warmer currents – with a result that's almost like the way that the sound library scene was changing right at the start of the 80s – particularly in the way that KPM or DeWolfe were introducing electric elements amidst more familiar instrumentation. In other words, the set's not a straight keyboard/guitar score, as in the Goblin generation – but certainly nods to that shift. La Casa Sperduta Nel Parco is much more varied – a short score, but with tunes that move between disco groovers, to creepy lullabies, to some very dark-toned moments – all in a relatively short space! 2CD set features 23 tracks in all – including two bonus tracks from the 45rpm single for I Guerrieri Dell'Anno 2072. CD

The RZA's fine second phase career as a top notch soundtrack maestro continues with Afro Samurai – the music for the anime/blacksploitation hybrid starring Samuel L Jackson – and a varied batch of tracks that's really a lot more than the typical Ghost Dog/early Wu Tang style beats you might be expecting! Naturally, RZA does bring plenty of martial arts style and soul beat instrumentals, but there are also a lot of vocal cuts – which run the gamut from raw freestyle-like bits to atmospheric r&b. GZA drops in, as do pioneers Big Daddy Kane and Q-Tip! Titles include "Afro Theme" with rhymes by RZA, "Certified Samurai" feat Talib Kweli, Lil Free & Suga Bang, "Just A Little Dude" feat Q-Tip & Free Murder, "Oh" and "The Walk" feat Stone Mecca, "Cameo Afro" feat Big Daddy Kane, GZA & Suga Bang, "Take Sword Pt 1" with RZA & Berretta 9 and more vocal tracks, plus the instrumentals "Afro Intro", "Afro's Father Fight", "The Empty 7 Theme", "Afro Samurai Theme (First Part and Second Part)" and more. Several bonus tracks, too, billed as Bobby Digital! (Hip Hop, Soundtracks) CD

Easily one of the funkiest albums that James Brown ever recorded – and one of his few entries into the blacksploitation genre of the 70s! James really outdid himself for this one – working at a hard burning pace that had the JBs cooking up some killer funk for just about every number in the set – and which also has James himself stepping out vocally for a few key tracks. The album features the massive groover "People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul" – a slamming track that beats nearly every number in the JB 70s catalog – plus other cuts that include "To My Brother", "Brother Rapp", "Sexy Sexy Sexy", "Slaughter Theme", "Transmogrification", "King Slaughter", and "How Long Can I Keep It Up". (Soul, Soundtracks) LP, Vinyl record album

After big success on the Batman soundtrack, Danny Elfman turns his talents to another comic character – Dick Tracy, as portrayed by Warren Beatty in the 1990 film that's not nearly as good as its music! While the movie was filled with over-the-top characterizations that completely went against the brilliance of the original strip, Elfman's score is a brooding masterpiece of understatement – rejecting all the cartoony elements of the film, and instead furthering Elfman's growing talent for orchestral scoring. Titles include "Slimy DA", "Meet The Blank", "Breathless Comes On", "Crime Spree", "Rooftops", "Blank Gets The Goods", "Showdown/Reunited", and "After The Kid". LP, Vinyl record album

A biker soundtrack to end all biker soundtracks – one that shares plenty of elements with better-known entries in the genre, but which also has some really wild and offbeat moments! As with most of the short-lived motorcycle soundtrack era, the vibe here is much more rock than other film scores of the time – written and performed by Don Gere, with a variety of styles that echo some of the fake groups that were often thrown together for bigger biker films – but sometimes with looser, weirder elements that really deliver the kind of sounds that we always expected on other biker soundtracks, but which were instead buried under piles of b and c-grade psych. Instead, Don really serves up the goods here – especially on some of the more fuzzy Satanic ritual tracks, which also have some great sound effects – and which then have you embracing some of the straighter rock tracks, almost as a relief. Titles include "Werewolves On Wheels (Main Theme)", "Mount Shasta Home", "Ritual", "Ritual 2", "The Devil's Advocates", "One Foot In Heaven", "Burning Grass", "Tarot", "Tarot Trail", "Dust Bowl", "Ritual 3", and "Werewolves On Wheels (End Theme)". LP, Vinyl record album

A demonic possession soundtrack, and one that's put together with just the right sort of sounds – music that's so creepy and eerie, we keep looking over our shoulders when we're giving it a listen – and which hardly sounds like any other similar soundtracks from the time! Marcello Giombini didn't try to copy some of the bigger satanic possession films of the period – and instead just revels in his own unique combination of instruments – which sometimes includes keyboard passages acting larger orchestrations, which have this weird way of refracting the real so that things really sound unusual and offbeat. There's a bit of wordless vocals from I Cantori Moderni, and a few darker electronic moments – although this isn't really an electronic score overall – and titles include "Tema Ossessa", "Tema Agitato", "Suspence Diabolica", "Esorcismo Ex Abea", "Tema Drammatico", and "Messa Nera". CD

One of the coolest, grooviest soundtracks we've ever heard from Riz Ortolani – an artist who did bigger, more mainstream film scores in the 60s – but who really developed a more electric vibe in the 70s! This soundtrack has Riz working at the top of his powers – bringing in keyboards and guitars to really spice things up, and make for a few key funky moments – but also still handling some larger charts with the professional flair he always brought to his music – showing that the best horror work of this time still came from composers who had deeper skills than just a few slick keyboard lines. Titles include "Love With Fun", "Massacre Of The Troupe", "Cameraman's Recreation", "Adulteress' Punishment", "Savage Rite", and "Drinking Coco". CD version has a huge amount of bonus tracks – 10 more tunes added to the original soundtrack! CD

Beautiful soundtrack work from Piero Piccioni – an early score, but filled with the kind of weird, offbeat sounds that have always made him a genius! There's a bit of a link here – between earlier Italian scoring, ala Nino Rota, and some of the later, modder sounds of Piccioni's late 60s generation – a really cool blend that comes through in the way the horns play with the rhythms, and the organ has a strange, almost outer-space sort of quality! One number has a cool batucada feel, and the whole thing's got a brilliant Italian cinematic quality – a true under-discovered gem from the great Piccioni. Titles include "Big Ben Boom", "Samba Della Ruota", "Nuovo Spleen Economico", "Organ Grinders Boom", and "Calypso Transistor". LP, Vinyl record album