Juno Recommends Soundtracks October 2020

Review: The recent passing of one of the 20th century's greatest cinematic composers, Ennio Morricone, had many scurrying to streaming services to check out the best of his vast catalogue of work. Those who did will attest that his work touched on numerous themes, genres and styles. This compilation provides a more focussed retrospective of the late Italian composer's work. It concentrates purely on cinematic themes and incidental pieces - most from the 1960s and '70s - that could be loosely termed "lounge music". In reality, the assembled material is a mixture of smooth jazz, easy listening and tongue-in-cheek, library style kitsch. There's nothing quite as stirring as some of his more acclaimed works for movies like The Mission, but the music is certainly cheeky, cheery and highly entertaining.

Review: Talk about a sonic time capsule. Misha Panfilov never ceases to impress with his compositions, but on Rain he arguably breaks the mould. The tracks are as groove-laden and funky as anything the 1970s could possibly have come up with, all laidback funk rock stylings, and play out across this album like a series of found sounds in full song form.

The phrase 'library music' springs to mind, only here it means the kind of eye-catching accidentals that would perfectly soundtrack a classic TV show, movie introduction or cut scene. They exude so much cool you can almost see the record strutting its stuff through the streets of Paris in the throws of youth revolution , and the smoke from a hundred Galwans wafting over your head. At times mysterious, often playful and occasionally raucous and rabid, it's all very sexy indeed.

Review: This CD, vinyl and download version of the Us & Them tour risks doing Pink Floyd legend Waters a disservice. Recorded on the 2017-2018 tour of the same name, the shows were dedicated to peace and love, but were also purposefully designed to stoke some particularly heated political fires, much of which is lost on this audio-only version.

No Black Lives Matters or Palestine-Israel imagery here, then. Nor flying pig props. But while this might disappoint some it means the album adds a new dimension to the Us & Them legacy. The tour is distilled into nothing but music and audible atmosphere. So we focus entirely on spoken messages, air raid effects, and a set list packed with Floyd classics ('Another Brick In The Wall', 'Wish You Were Here', 'Welcome To The Machine'), sometimes adapted, sometimes perfectly preserved by one of the UK's finest 20th Century artists.

Review: Anime has long been a source of incredibly creative ambient soundtrack music for generations of Japanese artists. 1997's Princess Mononoke is one of esteemed anime company Studio Ghibli most accomplished and notorious work, with a lush and symphonic soundtrack to match. The film has recently been made available on Netflix and now the music gets its own release with beautiful artwork. It was written by Joe Hisaishi and this edition was actually recorded ahead of the soundtrack itself and was solely based on notes by director Hayao Miyazaki on how he wanted the music to sound.

Review: 
'All Star' is the fifth song on Smash Mouth's album Astro Lounge and easily their most well known. It was released as a single in May 1999 but really took off when it was used during the final scene of the 1999 film Mystery Men, then again when it was reached for during the opening credits of the 2001 smash hit animation, Shrek. Eight of the cast members of Mystery Men had cameos in the music video of the song including the likes of William H. Macy, Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria and Janeane Garofalo and it also got used in various TV shows. Here it comes backed with 'Invisible Boy Song'.

Review: We know now for sure Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr didn't predict what life would be like in 2020 when they unveiled their science fiction puppet TV show Terrahawks back in 1980. A relatively underwhelming series compared to the success of predecessors like Captain Scarlett and Thunderbirds, one thing it did have was a crazy-big theme tune, which is now yours to love and own.

There's nostalgia in spades here if you recall the original source material, but also a ton of sampling and editing possibilities with the content, too- top billing going to 'Terrahawks Main Theme', which is a pretty typical slice of 1980s high concept keyboard glitter. But there are also two less intense, more narrative-driven cuts, 'Into The Beach' parts one and two, before the synth and tom drum-heavy 'Variations On A Theme' close the set out. Basically, hours of possible fun.