Ennio Morricone: Film Music 1966-87

I bought this second-hand in the late '80s. Back then, it seems, even a second-hand double CD was £12.99. Now it's £6.99 new… if only I'd waited. (Yes, I'm joking.)

This divides fairly clearly into the tracks I already knew from the films before I bought this album — the Once Upon a Time… films, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and The Mission — and the larger number of tracks from films I've never seen. (There's also one track from The Battle of Algiers, which I've seen since buying the CD, but it's a very short one.)

I used to play this a lot, and the latter group of tracks were harder to get a fix on, because I had no images to connect them to. But listening to them now, they all sound great (apart from the pan pipe bits), and you can hear the mix of comedy, drama and beauty or tragedy in the mood of the pieces. Another thing became clear from listening today: the sequencing of the tracks, which has no chronological, title-based or theme-related order, is brilliantly done.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain do a great version of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. You might think it would be just a novelty joke for them to do, but their arrangement pays such attention to every detail in the original that it really works.

I think The Mission is my favourite today, though The Man with the Harmonica never goes stale.

MusicBrainz entry for Disc 1 Disc 2