A great late 60s western score from Italian composer Francesco De Masi – hitting on all of favored sounds to accompany the best Italian made westerns of the era – rustic solo guitar, string-tightened tension, both lonely and densely orchestrated horns, and swaggery mood to spare! Excellent work that hits all the right notes – and it's got a groovy vocal opener, to boot! This CD marks the first ever release of the complete score, mastered from the original mono tapes. "Maybe Somwhere, Maybe Someday", plus "Non Potro Domenticare", "Sogni Ed Ombre Nell'Incubo", "La Pista Nella Sabbia", "Ecce Homo", "Triste E Sospeso", "Un Giorno Ti Pentirai", "Passagio Ne Nistero" and many more. CD

We can't get enough of this stuff! Another fab collection of groovy soundtrack bits, and oblique dialogue from just about our favorite TV series of all time. This batch has more of the dramatic moments, chase scene buildups, sonic scene setting and electronic tones tied together in one long collage of mod sounds. 32 tracks in all, including "janet's Party", "European Drive", "Exploding Ball", "Poisoned Beer", "Turkish Bath", "Boxing Booth", "Attack On The Bulldozer" and "Regression". CD

A soundtrack that's every bit as sexy as you'd guess from the cover – composed by Gianni Marchetti, conducted by Stelvio Cipriani, and served up with all the groovy touches you'd expect from either maestro! The scoring mixes light strings with warmer keyboards, guitar, and bits of woodwinds – often slinky and floating, but sometimes coming across with a bit more punch – especially on a few cuts that have these very cool wordless vocals! There's plenty of elements of the erotic style that Cipriani would unfurl even more strongly in the 70s – but mixed with a range of more dynamic sounds as well, thanks to Marchetti. Titles include "Arioso Ma No Troppo", "Psicoamore Quartetto", "Il Segreto Di Una Diciottenne", and "Psicoamore" from the original album – plus 30 tracks from the score of the film! CD

One of the first great soundtracks we ever heard from Piero Piccioni – and still one of the best! Colpo Rovente has this really special sort of sound – jazzy, but not really jazz – bassy, but not really funky – and often done with spare, stark sounds – but never in a way that's too atonal or horror-based either! Piccioni brought a really special sort of genius to the record – a way of using each instrument with a very unusual sound or tuning – and isolating each element in just the right way, but with a different style than that used by Morricone at the time. Some tracks get nice and groovy, but lots more hang back in a style that's almost pensive – and titles include "Kintabu", "Colpo Rovente", "Easy Dreamer", "Chinatown Drugs", and "LSD". LP, Vinyl record album

One of the first great soundtracks we ever heard from Piero Piccioni – and still one of the best! Colpo Rovente has this really special sort of sound – jazzy, but not really jazz – bassy, but not really funky – and often done with spare, stark sounds – but never in a way that's too atonal or horror-based either! Piccioni brought a really special sort of genius to the record – a way of using each instrument with a very unusual sound or tuning – and isolating each element in just the right way, but with a different style than that used by Morricone at the time. Some tracks get nice and groovy, but lots more hang back in a style that's almost pensive – and titles include "Kintabu", "Colpo Rovente", "Easy Dreamer", "Chinatown Drugs", and "LSD". CD features 12 bonus tracks – all unreleased alternates! CD

A great little record, and one that presents maestro Piero Picconi in all his glory – a set that's got some of the spare groovy themes he did so well in the 60s, mixed with funkier moments that are at the level of the best of the crime/cop generation, plus a few dramatic moments thrown into the mix too! There's some really wonderful keyboards on the record – produced with cool effects, and used in that specifically Italian style that's got all these strange sounds that you'd never hear on an American record from the period. The whole thing's great – and titles include "The Persuaders", "Ambushers", "Lovely Mood", "Action", "Persuaders Strike Back", "Pursuit", and "Love Theme". LP, Vinyl record album

Great stuff from Lalo Schifrin – his under appreciated score for young George Luca's paranoid sci fi thriller! THX 1138 has that sort of Ayn Rand, clean-clothed tyrannical government thing going on, and Lalo's score couldn't be more haunting and perfect! It's full of stark, clean kinda chamber orch sounds to go with the oppressively sterile threat in the film – but it's full of those groovy, moddish touches that make Lalo's work from the era so amazing! Tracks include "Be Happy", "Loneliness Sequence", "You Have Nowhere To Go", "First Escape" and more. CD

An amazing soundtrack from German maestro Peter Thomas – even weirder and more electric than some of his famous 60s recordings! Thomas scored the music for a spooky 70s film about the possibility of aliens on earth – and did so with a bit more tension than some of his other records – mixing in some dark tones, weird sounds, and other odd elements amidst some more familiar space age-styled themes. Instrumentation often mixes conventional orchestrations with electronics and offbeat percussion – the latter of which brings an earthy, organic undercurrent that you might not expect, and which really sets the record apart from anything else at the time. A few key cuts have the trademark groovy feel you'd expect from Thomas – including the classic "Stars & Rockets" – and other titles include "Reminiscences Of The Future", "Popular Myth & The Destruction Of Sodom", "The Red Sea", "Gods From Strange Planets", "Returning To The Stars", "Rocket Science", and "Easter Island". LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic early soundtrack from the great Pat Williams – cut around the same 60s stretch that he was doing his wonderful albums for Verve – in the years before he'd break bigger with TV work for The Bob Newhart Show and other 70s programs! The tracks have loads of easy, bossa, and sixties grooves running throughout – more dynamic than the usual mainstream soundtrack of the time, almost as if Pat was composing this music on his own, away from the film! Williams titles include "Villa Sweet Villa", "How Sweet It Is", "A Pair Of Boobie Traps", and "Face Up To It Baby". However, despite the greatness of Pat Williams' music, the real highlight of the whole thing might be the incredible "Montage" sequence – which was put together by a young Jimmy Webb, and which features some very groovy vocal passages, with sort of a Harper's Bizarre-esque strangeness to it – a sublime harmony track with a really heartbreaking vibe. The tune was later covered by others, but sounds wonderful here in the original version – which also includes Webb's vocal version of the title. CD

Very obscure sounds from a very obscure Italian crime film of the 70s – issued here for the first time ever! The music has a great vibe – slinky, but also a bit offbeat – with some of those odd tunings of the piano that you might hear in an Ennio Morricone score when he was still keeping things groovy, but wanting to set a nice edge – spun out nicely here amidst some gentle strings and other unusual sounds! The whole thing's great – a real lost treasure that finally sees the light of day – with titles that include "Lo Spinello", "In Discoteca", "Overdose", "L'Inseguimento Finale", "Nel Vecchio Mulino", "Titoli Di Coda", "La Droga Uccide", and "L'Agguato Al Corriere". LP, Vinyl record album

Mindblowing music for the Alejandro Jodorowsky film The Holy Mountain – even more compelling and complex than his sounds for El Topo! The score is a wonderful mix of earthy, organic elements and a few more composed and equally groovy parts – handled by Jodorowsky in collaboration with trumpeter Don Cherry and pop producer/arranger Ron Frangipane! Some of the work has the hypnotic blend of global elements you'll find in Cherry's recordings of the time – particularly his groundbreaking early 70s work in Sweden – and although Frangipane brings in some bigger, fuller charts, he always does so with a sense of irony, and this undercurrent of darkness that continues to link his sounds with those of Cherry. The double-length score is a wonder throughout – maybe Jodorowsky's highest musical moment – and titles include "Psychedelic Weapons", "Rainbow Room", "Alchemical Room", "Mattresses Masks & Pearls", "City Of Freedom", "Starfish", and "Violence Of The Lambs". LP, Vinyl record album

Tempting sounds from the great Piero Piccioni – two late 60s horror scores on a single CD! First up is Temptation – a soundtrack that's got some wonderful organ lines and slow-moving grooves – of the sort that were covered by the Easy Tempo series years back, when we first fell in love with Piccioni's music! There's a slow swell and soft step to the music that's mighty nice – almost a perfect distillation of the Italian bossa influences that made for some of the best film scores of the time! The CD features 13 numbers from the film – all of them great, and the kind of variations on a single groovy theme you might find in Armando Trovajoli's La Matriarca. La Figlia Del Capitano is a bit richer, with more strings in the music, and a few more dramatic spots too – yet overall, the mood nicely fits that of Temptation – with a sense of holding back, then running forward – which suits the music very well. CD features 10 tracks from La Figlia – for a total of 23 in all. CD

Seminal spy sounds from the 60s – a treasure trove of spy-themed tunes, and one that features loads of material you might not hear otherwise! The set doesn't feature the big hits from the James Bond films, and instead includes all the great little records that sprung up in the wake of those movies – cool jazz, vocal, and instrumental records that sometimes feature weird reworkings of more famous soundtrack numbers, sometimes lesser-known cuts from b-grade films, and sometimes fresh new spy numbers on their own! The style ranges from groovy guitar numbers to blaring jazzy tracks to slinky steppers that find a very cool balance between suspense and swing. Titles include "Dr Goldfoot & The Bikini Machine" by The Supremes, "The Last Of The Secret Agents" by Nancy Sinatra, "Theme From Danger Man" by Red Price, "A Man Alone" by John Barry, "Deadlier Than The Male" by The Walker Brothers, "Burke's Law" by Wynton Kelly, "We Should've" by Cleo Laine, "Our Man Flint" by Billy Strange, "Theme From Where The Spies Are" by Jimmy Smith, "The Liquidator" by Shirley Bassey, "I Spy" by Roland Shaw, "Come Spy With Me" by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, and "High Wire" by Brian Fahey. (Funky Compilations, Soundtracks) CD