Too Young performed by Phoenix
To me this is one of the best pop songs of the last 10 years or so where just everything falls perfectly into place and couldn't be bettered in any way. It's insanely catchy without ever getting annoying, it's immaculately produced with the whole instrumentation blending together perfectly (including extremely lush synths all over the place provided by Daft Punks Thomas Bangalter) and it doesn't wear off even after listening to it for ages. I was glad to see this track finally getting some exposure on the "Lost In Translation" soundtrack recently. If only they would write more songs of that caliber, but instead both albums they released to date are rather patchy. |
Getting Started performed by Ashby
A delicious slice of indie-pop. Very european sounding (influences by early Cardigans, Saint Etienne and Birdie spring to mind), this duo (consisting of Evelyn Pope & Bill Cowie) are actually from Boston. With all ingredients properly in place to conjure up images of a breezy summer day: Warm, analogue keyboards, horns, trumpets and some joyful flutes (played and arranged by Z� Luis) and very light and breezy female vocals. |
Fantasia tragica performed by Stelvio Cipriani
This is one of these sensationally sensual, wonderful instrumental tracks only the italians could pull off in late sixties/early seventies. This is the title theme to "La morte cammina con i tacchi alti/Death walks on High Heels", one of the numerous gialli (thriller movies with that special italian touch) to come out of italy in heavy doses from the late sixties up to the mid seventies. Wonderful scores have been one of the constitutive elements of these films and while the scores that Ennio Morricone did for these movies (e.g. "L'ucello dalle piume di cristallo/Bird with the crystal plumage, "Cosa avete fatto a Solange/What have they done to Solange", Una lucertola con la pelle di donna/Lizard on a womans skin" or "Le foto proibite di una signora per bene/ Forbidden fotos of a lady above suspicion") have been long released, a lot of excellent music is still locked up in the vaults of CAM, Cinevox and other italian soundtrack labels. Thanks to the hard work of the guys at DigitMovies a lot of these scores now successively get a proper, remastered release (often for the first time ever), music otherwise would have been lost in oblivion forever. Stelvio Cipriani may not be remotely as well known as Morricone (who, naturally, overshines just every other italian composer), but he was very prolific in the heyday of italian cinema, scoring an equally wide range of different genres from westerns to gialli and from romantic movies to italain police (so called "poliziotteschi") and crime movies. This title track of "La morte cammina con i tacchi alti" doesn't have to hide behind the best of themes Morricone did, in fact the orchestration does sound very Morricone itself with an uptempo-ish bossa nova beat, lush strings, wonderful harpsicord and a female voice carrying the main melody with a bitterweet tone. The voice is delivered by Nora Orlandi, one of the very few female soundtrack composers and she could easily be mixed up with Edda Dell'Orso here. Wonderful stuff, recommended for anyone who enjoys the "Mondo Morricone" comps. |