"I wanna make you the happiest man alive". This one has to be heard to be believed, taken from a new compilation by "Crippled Dick Records" called "Les Chansons Des Perverts", described as "a collection of dirty gems". Rich, loungy sounding production with lyrics which still would qualify for the "parental advisory:explicit lyrics" label even today.

Here's another recommendation from the great third "Canto Morricone" compilation. After Milva, Mireille Mathieu was the second artist to record a whole album of Morricone songs and this song was no rearrangement of a film song but exclusivley penned by Morricone for Mathieu and also conducted by Il Maestro himself. Mathieu is in excellent form here and the arrangement is as good as you'd expect from Morricone. Bear Family Records did a fantastic job here, including 7 songs by Mathieu, 4 of them have previously only been available on singles, two of these songs, "Nata libera" and "Quando verranno i giorni" were even transfered from vinyl since the original mastertapes couldn't be retrieved. Kudos to Bear Family Records for this great effort.

Incredibly breezy, silky smooth and gentle sounding tune this one. With a laid back samba rhythm, male/female wordless vocals some soft strings in the backround and some electric and acoustic guitars thrown in, this track is a great example for Martin B�ttchers superior talents as arranger and orchestrator. The whole compilation "Sound Kaleidoscope" is very well done, featuring 25 tracks from the mid 60s to the mid 70s. Highly recommended.

Alessandroni is probably best known for his characterstic whistling on Ennio Morricone's spaghetti soundtracks. Apart from that he was also one of the few sitar players at the time, guitar player, composer, arranger and the founder of the chorus group "I Cantori Moderni" that was featured on a lot of italian soundtracks of the 60s. In the early 70s he had the opportunity to record a "solo" album, not a score, with a big orchestra without any restrictions (which means it didn't had to fit the mood of a film). The result was "Prisma Sonoro" and it's very Morricone-esque stylewise and regarding the texture of the music with lush strings, horns, wordless vocals,harpsicords etc. Unfortunately it's scarcely available on vinyl, but the track "Punti di vista" was issued as "A spanish village" as a bonus track on the Hexacord release "Di Tresette Ce N'E' Uno Tutti Gli Altri Son Nessuno & Other Western Themes".