STAR WARS

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Anthology

Review by Jonathan Hicks

This little beauty has been around for the better part of a decade, and it’s taken me this long to get around to buying it. I was at a memorabilia fair, hopping along minding my own business, when I glance over and see a wonderful box with the famous ‘Luke’s got his shirt ripped open holding aloft the Lightsabre and Leia’s got a gun and a sexier dress than what’s in the film’ type painting on the cover. Inside the box are four black-covered CD’s and a long thin booklet which gives not only some very interesting insights into where John Williams got his inspiration from, but also paragraphs of text describing every single track. Not only that, but each CD has been re-structured so that the tracks play in order of appearance in the film, with extra and expanded tracks thrown in to make up each disc.

Just when you think ‘excellent, dude’ you start to wonder ‘what’s the other CD for?’

According to the booklet it’s Previously Unreleased tracks. I slap it in my disc player and hey presto! All those little bits of incidental music that you heard in the films but never got on the original CD’s are there. The scenes in the carbon-freezing chamber in Empire, the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars. You even get original recordings of original compositions, which never made it into the film. There are lots and lots of tracks and it’s nice to put down the disc box, put away the booklet and just close your eyes and just try to guess where the music was in the film.

And my favourite piece? The second Cantina Band track! It’s there! As soon as you hear it start to play you just can’t help yourself and give out a happy graaa and clap your hands.

Don’t think. Buy. If you like the movies and are a big fan of the music then you can’t go far wrong with these. Your not just re-buying the music in a different format, your buying the music with extra tracks on each disc that are re-arranged in order and getting an extra disc full of all that music you missed out on originally.

I know it’s been around for a while and most of you probably already have it but give me a break; I missed out on it the first time.