It's an absolutely over-the-top hard soul dance tune. I first heard it on a soul compilation and recently, against all odds, I found the 45! Really cool mid paced groove with amazing guitar sound.

A perfectly distilled instrumental which seems to capture everything poignant and affecting about Badalamenti's soundtrack work. 'Perdita' opens with a faint piano, being played seemingly with one finger, which gets louder and is joined gradually by a rich string section. Rather like some of Ennio Morricone's best themes, this is very simple, but so beautiful that it doesn't end up sounding obvious or clich�d. On the other hand, perhaps I'm just being nostalgic about being 16 again.

When I hear the opening bars of this song, I can still remember the utter bewilderment I felt as a 16 year old hearing it in 1978 for the first time. It came on a 2 track flexi (the other track being 'Reverberation' by the 13th Foor Elevators) with Zigzag, a UK music magazine. Up to this point I had been listening to mainly melodic pop like Blondie. This completely blew my mind. When Mayo Thompson sang "On the shelf I have six buckets and they are for you. They're full of little things that we can do", I was genuinely scared. This is the song that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that singing in tune is overrated. For me this tops the version on their 1966 'Parable of the Arable Land' version.

I first heard Tom Rapp's music via the version of 'The Jeweller' on one of the This Mortal Coil albums. From their first album on, Pearls Before Swine used a broad palette of sounds, in contrast with many of the garage punk guitar combos popular at the time and stood out like a sore thumb on the ESP Disk label (later Warners). It's one of the moving songs I've ever heard. Plaintive strings, understated brass and the most restrained steel guitar ever. Rapp's lisp contributes to the atmosphere of the song beautifully. 'Rocket Man' is a cracker too. That's also on this complimation.

A sparse, gorgeous song: a batty sample, a vocal - with a cracked 'yeah' near the end to melt your heart - a chiming, New Order-ish bass, and not a whole lot else.