Back catalogue: Leftfield

Review: Some 25 killer library music cuts by the German film music maestro Peter Thomas, on audiophile pressing, in a deluxe 2×10? set. Uber-rare, never-before-released material spanning 1968-1976 - and sourced from Thomas' personal reel-to-reel tape archive - this bombastic instrumental set spans a whole range of quirky overseen by the composer himself, documenting an approach to composition that essentially augurs electronic music production as we know it today. Prolific in scope, the 25 pieces here rival the sheerly industrious proliferations of many of today's artists, and even outstrips them in quantitative ambition; but then again, what less might one expect from a soundtrack artist by trade, whose work spanned over 600 films? Best of this bunch have to be 'Meeting Palermo', whose brushes revel in a beaucoup frisson, and 'Astral Snow' - a whacked-out absurdist electro-disco frazzler for the most frenetic out there. This one also comes with four recently unearthed 'lost' tracks from Warner Chappell's CPM Archive series, which have never been released on vinyl before. We'll hazard a quip: the word 'timeless' often doesn't come to mind, yet it has done here.