There's a real Escape From New York look to the cover here – and the music by Guido & Maurizio DeAngelis has a very strong John Carpenter vibe – lots of spare, stark numbers that shift between electro funk and moodier numbers – really setting up the action with a dose of horror, and maybe having a depth that can last longer than the film itself! Instrumentation is very 80s, in the best way possible – lots of keyboards and electro drum patterns – at a level that certainly make the DeAngelis brothers a key precursor to the sort of sounds that are very much favored by the Stranger Things generation. 17 tracks in all – and very strong all the way through. LP, Vinyl record album

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(Rock, Soundtracks) LP, Vinyl record album

A great little soundtrack that's got some really wonderful go-go tunes that have that hip 60s "jerk" style that was so big in French pop! Served up here in a rare Japanese vinyl pressing, too! LP, Vinyl record album

Features more than a side of work by Los Lobos – their own 80s takes on Ritche Valens classics – plus more by Bo Diddley, Marshall Crenshaw, Brian Setzer, and Howard Hutsberry. (Rock, Soundtracks) LP, Vinyl record album

A very cool record from Luis Bacalov – and one with a sound that's quite different than some of his more familiar, more sentimental soundtrack material! This one's got a wild mix of modes – from moody, atmospheric tracks, to funky bits, to more tripped-out passages – all with instrumentation that feels much more like it's from the Piccioni or Umiliani camp than the usual Bacalov styles! The whole thing's one of the more obscure numbers in Luis' soundtrack catalog – but it may well also be one of the best, thanks to titles that include "Hello Quincey", "Tucumania", "Nago", "Pinha Tamburim", "Lisa G", "Members Only", and "Anagramma". LP, Vinyl record album

A very groovy musical – one done quite far from the bright lights of Broadway, in early 60s LA – with lyrics and presentation that offer up a wry postwar commentary on the city! The whole thing has the feel of some of the hipper off-Broadway material of the time – very witty little tunes, penned by Billy Barnes in a Tommy Wolf/Fran Landesman mode – handled by the cast with a nicely intimate feel that really makes the lyrical subtleties come through nicely. Instrumentation is relatively spare, and cast members include Ken Berry, Joyce Jameson, Tom Hatten, Sylvia Lewis, and Steve Franken – singing songs that include "The Pink Pussycat School", "Covina", "Keep Away", "LA Is", "Weather Report", "Does Anybody Here Love Me", and "I'm Glad I Call It Home". LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic soundtrack from the great Francis Lai! The record is one of his most unusual – and features a number of short songs that focus on spare keyboard work, either on organ, piano, or electric piano, and with some cool groovy instrumentation, and a bit of light strings and woodwinds. The slow sensuous themes are among some of the best Lai instrumental work we've ever heard – and the soundtrack is a real gem from one of the best points in his career. The set kicks off with the vocal number "Le Passager De La Pluie", sung by the lovely Severine, and includes the cuts "Theme Des Voitures", "L'Arrestation", "Theme Dobbs", "Souvenir De Melancolie", "Le Viol", and "Theme Bestial". Wonderful stuff! LP, Vinyl record album

A huge international hit for Morricone – quite a surprise, given the warmth and whimsy in the music – which is a real change from some of the maestro's darker moments of the 70s! The tunes often use light electric instrumentation in these really nice ways – playful, and certainly comedic – but with these occasional deeper touches that are definitely Morricone, too – especially in some of the slower moments that have this great interplay between woodwinds and keyboards. One of these is the track "L'Onorevole Famiglia", worth the price of the album alone! LP, Vinyl record album

One of the all-time classic Italian film scores – a groundbreaking soundtrack from Nino Rota, and one of the first Italian works of this nature to hit the record racks in the US! The music is a beautiful blend of whimsy and sadness – penned by Rota with a variety of light themes that dance together with a dreamy sort of quality – romantic one minute, dramatic the next – always handled with Nino's inventive sense of musical play! Larger orchestrations come into play with smaller combo elements that evoke the new world of jazz and rock on the scene in Rome – and the whole thing is a musical delight throughout – with titles that include "La Dolce Vita", "Cadillac", "Via Veneto", "Titoli Di Testa", and "Valzer". LP, Vinyl record album

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A lesser-known soundtrack from Ennio Morricone – but one of his grooviest moments of the late 60s! The score is a great blend of heavy and light – and blends together that wonderful floating Morricone style with some heavier, fuzzier tunes that show the late 60s period of the film – all making for a really fleshed-out sound, of the sort that you're usually likely to hear in some of Morricone's classics! The album includes one great number that's got an extended sitar solo, and a few more with hard-edged male vocals by Patrick Samson that almost feel like late 60s French pop! Titles include "Gloria", "Sytar", "Una Voce Allo Specchio", "Tell Me Tell Me", "Sospendi Il Tempo", "In Tre Quarti", "Laila Laila", and "Dinamica Per 5 + 1". LP, Vinyl record album

A great Morricone soundtrack for a Jean-Paul Belmondo thriller – a score that starts out spare and brooding, then builds nicely as things move on – with lots of cool bottom-end sounds that make the whole thing really move up from the depths! Some tunes echo the sweeter side of Morricone, while others are a bit more brooding – and instrumentation includes some of the same offbeat piano you'd hear in The Burglars, plus light guitar, weird-tuned horns, and other nice bits that are sometimes abstracted beyond recognition! Titles include "Consideration Sur Un Homicide", "Paris Secret", "Defense De Stationner" and "Mannequins". LP, Vinyl record album

Obscure work from Gerry Mulligan – and some of his best of the 70s! The record is a soundtrack for a French film starring Yves Montand, and the soundtrack was handled by Mulligan with assistance from Don Elliott – who brings in a funky style that's quite different than you'd expect from most of Gerry's work. Mulligan's horn sounds really great in these arrangements – strutting out nicely on the funky tracks, and kicking back with a cool sound on the mellower ones. Titles include "Trucking Again", "The Trap", "Dance Of The Truck", "Watching & Waiting", and "Theme From La Menace". (Jazz, Soundtracks) LP, Vinyl record album

We're alright. . .don't nobody worry 'bout us, we're smiling like fools at the sounds of this most classic of lowbrow 80s comedies – the unimpeachably hilarious Caddyshack – with we-don't-care-how-uncool-you-think-they-may-be pop anthems by Kenny Loggins and original music by Johnny Mandel! The Loggins tunes blend a masterful ear for the pop & soul hits of the previous couple decades, they're undeniable fun and catchy (if profoundly unhip, boo and hoo) and the cheeky bits of score by Mandel co-opting classical compositions in the interest of toilet humor are just as boisterous. Titles include "I'm Alright", "Make The Move" and "Mr Night" by Kenny Loggins, "There She Goes" by The Beat, "Divine Intervention", "Marina" and "The Big Bang" by Johnny Mandel and more. LP, Vinyl record album

Although composed by 70s sex-soundtrack genius Pierre Bachelet, this one's mostly a batch of jaunty, jagged little themes, a bit like Nino Rota's work for Fellini, with lots of similar touches. There's one striking number, though – "Ivory Coast Drums" – which has a weird back/forth rhythm approach, a bit of echo on the drums, and a melodic progression that makes the track a nice dark little number. Bachelet sings vocals on the French version of the "Black & White" theme – and other tracks include "The Letter", "The Battle", "Crossing The Rhine", "Fresnoy's Theme", and "La Chanson Des Souliers". LP, Vinyl record album

Nice 60s crime jazz from Mancini! Although Mancini's fame was made in the late 50s for his work on the classic Peter Gunn TV show, it's less known that he also did the score for the less-than-successful Peter Gunn film. Directed in 1967 by Blake Edwards, the film was a weak attempt to transfer the Gunn image to the big screen – but Mancini remained above the fray, as his solid scoring is just about the only thing we remember about the film today. The tracks include 60's remakes of some nice themes from the original show, plus a few other nice numbers thrown in for good measure. Recorded (as usual) in LA, with players like Bud Shank, Ray Brown, Plas Johnson, and Shelly Mann – and a set list that includes "Dreamsville", "Sky Watch", "A Bluish Bag", and "The Monkey Farm". LP, Vinyl record album

One of the grooviest spaghetti western scores we've ever heard – penned for an early collaboration between Terence Hill and Bud Spencer! The main theme "Trinity" starts off with some cool vocal backing by Alessandro Alessandroni's I Cantori Moderni, singing underneath the English-language lead vocal – and the group also make an appearance on the film's reprise of this song at the end of the movie. Other tracks mix together guitar, organ, whistling, and some other cool sonic elements that give the soundtrack a cool late 60s feel that reminds us more of some lost French gem than an Italian thriller! Titles include "Lazy Cowboy", "Un Cowboy e Due Ragazze", "Di Fronte Ai Killers", "Trinity: Con La Stella Di Viceseriffo", and "C'e Un Tempo Per Vincere". LP, Vinyl record album

The jury is sometimes out on the Mick Jagger on-screen performance in the Nicolas Roeg film Performance – but the soundtrack is something pretty separate entirely, and really says a lot more about the spirit of late 60s Warner Brothers Records in LA than it does the arthouse cinema scene in England! The great Jack Nitzsche composed a number of instrumental tracks for the score – maybe his first time in this mode, and prefacing some later 70s successes to come – with titles that include "Rolls Royce & Acid", "Harry Flowers", and "Natural Magic". Other Warner talents get a hand in the music too – as Randy Newman conducted all of Nitzsche's charts, and also sings "Gone Dead Train" – while Ry Cooder delivers bottleneck solos on "Get Away" and "Powis Square". There's also some nice soul-based moments – the cut "Wake Up N*ggers" by The Last Poets, and "Poor White Hound Dog" and "Performance" by Merry Clayton. And yes, Mick does get to sing on one tune – the album's "Memo From Turner" – and the set is completed by Buffy St Marie work on "The Hashishin" and "Dead Dead Red". LP, Vinyl record album

A fairly interesting soundtrack from French avant sax player Michel Portal – recorded with a host of like-minded talents that include Daniel Humair, JF Jenny Clark, Louis Sclavis, and Maurice Vander. The range of the tracks is pretty surprising – from spare sax solos by Portal, to Latin-tinged tunes and tangos, to spacey soundscapes with a mixture of jazz and electronics. All titles have that Saravah or Nato approach to the work, though – with a style of avant garde that's never too angry, never too overblown, and which always stops for a bit of whimsy. Titles include "Conil", "Adios", "J'Accepte", "Palais De La Decouverte", and "Azpeitia". LP, Vinyl record album