RY COODER Vinyl & CDs

Review: American guitar legend Ry Cooder's 1985 score remains a defining example of minimalist film music, built almost entirely around sparse motifs and slide guitar. Recorded for Wim Wenders' feature set in the American Southwest, the ten-track sequence avoids orchestration entirely, opting instead for open-ended cues that feel improvised but never unfocused. 'Paris, Texas' opens with the recognisable main theme i a slow, resonant guitar line set against silence. 'Brothers' and 'Nothing Out There' follow similar patterns, with minor variations in phrasing and tempo. The inclusion of 'Cancion Mixteca', sung by Harry Dean Stanton, adds one of the only vocal moments on the set, grounded in traditional folk. The remainder of the tracks i including 'No Safety Zone', 'Houston In Two Seconds' and 'Dark Was The Night' i continue the pared-back approach, prioritising tone and atmosphere over melody. Some 40 years since its original release, the material hasn't dated i not because it sounds modern, but because it was never trying to. It remains quietly influential, especially in the way it reframed narrative scoring through reduction.