Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Despite the label Farfalla's starting focus on unearthing library music of old, they've thrown a curveball on releasing this new one from guitarist and producer Orgasmo Sonore, who's a contemporary artist, more in the field of making library-esque music. Sonore's first seven or so albums were literally quite consistently (usually) all called something along the lines of Revisiting Obscure Library Music, in which the artist re-produced many of the genre/discipline's star classics. Now, however, we hear two entirely original cuts, 'Pop Sensation' and 'Sounds In The Night', both shimmering neo-synth-jazz cuts with spring-verbed Fenders and watery stabs.

Review: Four Flies presents a gem for vinyl collectors with the 7" release of Riz Ortolani's soundtrack highlights from Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della Repubblica. Side-1's 'Serena e Lomunno' showcases an exceptional quartet's jazzy spell, weaving bass, electric guitar, drums, and piano into a standout groove. On Side-2, Il ricordo di Serena continues the magic with a trio, maintaining the rhythmic essence while sacrificing none of the brilliance. The interplay of bass and drums is the backbone, adorned by electric guitar and piano's refined phrasings. The result? Irresistible jazz-funk breaks, ripe for sampling. A must-have addition to Four Flies' series of 45s celebrating Italy's golden age soundtracks and library productions, this release is essential for any serious Italian sound enthusiast's collection.

Review: When they brought back Tom Cruise's macho fighter pilot for Top Gun: Maverick, they were making no bones about the nostalgia trip. The original remains an endearingly ludicrous slice of 80s action with all the brawn necessary to make it an enduring hit, and the soundtrack more than matches up to that, going nine times platinum, no less. That's a lot of success to match up to, so Maverick pulls out the big guns by tapping up Lady Gaga for the hit-making and Hans Zimmer for the epic Hollywood score. It's tonnes of fun, and it even features Kenny Loggins' classic 'Danger Zone' from the original.

Review: In the right circles,, Martin O'Donnell and Michael Savatori are living legends. Working with the iconic US video game company Bungie Inc, the pair put their names on the map - or maybe maps? - by creating soundtracks to a number of high profile titles, either as a duo or individually. O'Donnell is arguably the better known, or at least has the bigger online persona, but both composers deserve plenty of credit. Halo: Combat Evolved was the first title in what is now a huge and genre-defining first person shooter franchise, and the score reflects the emergence of video game music as an integral part of the on-screen action. O'Donnell and Savatori's efforts to ensure instrumentation dramatically changed with events in the game, which is by nature relatively non-linear, was a revelation. While their efforts to separate these into individual suites foresaw the rise of playable stories as films in their own right.

Review: It's been a long time since Halo: Combat Evolved revolutionised the word of first-person shooter video games. Graphically superior to anything that had come before it, the franchise also benefits from a spectacularly gripping storyline in which humans are outgunned and out-teched by a ruthless and uncompromising alliance of superiorly equipped alien races united as The Covenant. The titular Halo adds a kind of Prometheus air of uncertainty, as nobody really knows what it does until attempts to activate the galaxy-destroying weapon reveal something worse than death - a parasitic breed called the Flood. If all that was enough to blow everyone away in 2001, 2004 brought us to a whole new level of immersion in this future scape. Just like its predecessor, a big part of the impact was the visionary score by gaming soundtrack masters Martin O'Donnell and Michael Savatori. Now here it is in all its Gregorian chanting glory.

Review: Laced Records and Halo Studios partner up to bring the epic soundtracks of the original Halo trilogy to vinyl for the first time, remastering and revamping 83 original scores from Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3. the music that defined a franchise is thus ethered in perpetuity. Weaving orchestral elements, prog rock, drum corps marches, and heavy metal, Halo presents a perfect bottling of angst and militancy; owing to its popularity with a certain teen gamer cohort, Halo 2's score especially made history as the first video game OST to chart on the Billboard 200. Now, each soundtrack is presented in its own sleeve with custom artwork, and comes in a collector's box adorned with a debossed Halo logo and silver laminate finish.

Review: Jim O'Rourke handles the soundtrack for Hands That Bind, a Canadian drama film directed by Kyle Armstrong and starring Michael Shannon, Elisabeth Moss and Willem Dafoe. The American musician and producer is known for his eclectic and experimental work in a deluge of genres, spanning rock, folk, jazz, ambient and electronic - all shine through with equal gravitas on the OST, reflecting O'Rourke's talent for creating atmospheric cinematics that perfectly complement the film's theme of a local land scandal, and its conspiracy-level implications.

Review: We all know Italians do it better, but did you also know they seem to have the very best library reissues on the planet? Here the legendary singer and vocalist Nora Orlandi joins iconic jazz drummer Franco Tonani for a masterpiece of 1960s-early-1970s production that really encapsulates the ambience of a bygone age which feels dreamlike today. Fittingly, much of the music similarly invokes a sense of surrealism and psychedelia. You can almost feel yourself descending into the depths of a strange and beguiling night filled with weird and wonderful characters as these arrangements play out with pin point precision. A trip to another era, but also a trip into the mind's eye and all that may live there. Exquisite, masterful, but most of all utterly inimitable and difficult to countenance.

Review: Riz Ortolani's soundtrack to the 1969 Giallo thriller Cosi Dolce... Cosi Perversa is well sought-after but now pops up as a limited edition reissue. The legendary composer famously scored over 200 films and crafted a suspenseful and evocative work here that enhances the film's themes of deception and seduction. Directed by Umberto Lenzi and starring Carroll Baker and Jean-Louis Trintignant, the film remains a standout of Italian Giallo cinema and is immediately recognisable for its haunting main theme 'Why?' by J. Vincent Edwards. The soundtrack has been fully remastered from the original master tapes here - and naturally, it sounds superb.

Review: With roots that date back to 1967, when Weekly Manga Action magazine decided to take a punt on a new character, master thief Lupin III, grandson of gentleman robber Arsene Lupin, and his criminal gang, Takeo Yamashita and Otomo Yoshihide's collaborative soundtrack has cult status written all over it. While not made to accompany the core Lupin III series, the music here featured on the critically acclaimed Lupin Zero, a saga that takes us back to the early years of the protagonist - a young boy opening the door on a life of crime in mid-1960s Japan. On record, that sounds like a flamboyant and intoxicatingly heady brew of jazz, psychedelic rock, electronic experimentation and pure groove. As vivid as both the original printed cartoons and the subsequent screen adaptations that continued the legacy.

Review: Twilight of the Gods features one of many evocative soundtracks from Hans Zimmer, Omer Benyamin and Steven Doar. Between them, they bring a sweeping cinematic scope to an epic narrative with their usual sense of masterful scoring. Zimmer and his collaborators blend orchestral intensity with atmospheric depth here to enhance the mythic tone of the story. From haunting melodies to powerful crescendos, this soundtrack captures the emotional gravity and grandeur of the gods' twilight moments and each track layers intricate instrumentation that pulls listeners into a vivid, immersive world that echoes the film's themes of fate, power and destiny.