Ennio Morricone - Disc of the day

Ennio Morricone
A Fistful Of Dollars/ For A Few Dollars More

(Camden, 1970)

Spaghetti western grandmaster in elemental majesty. When the chimes end, pick up your gun!

With gun-toting Clint Eastwood staring quizzically out from the sleeve, this LP was often seen in carboot sales and Oxfam shops in the 1980s. It certainly offered something of a contrast to the nearby Geoff Love and Max Bygraves LPs and copies of The Henry Root Letters, sending the unwitting listener into a savage, operatic arena of dust, blood and granite-faced nemesis. Composed by Morricone during his mid-’60s purple patch working with director Sergio Leone, A Fistful Of Dollars is the more sombre of the two, while For A Few Dollars More really gets you Golgotha-bound, accompanied by doomed strings, acoustic guitars and trumpets. Suitably for a film about avarice and revenge with the epically evil, weed-smoking killer El Indio at its centre, highlights include stand off theme La Resa Dei Conti, whose bass twangs were borrowed by New Order for Blue Monday and which terrifies with a choir of the damned and the mother of all satanic church organs, while the eerie Osservatori Osservati would sound at home on one of Scott Walker’s recent albums. Sadly, you can’t get it for 20p anymore, but they’re still well worth having. Particularly the 2003 RCA ‘onefer’ reissue of For A Few Dollars More, which delivers eight pieces of nameless dread in just 17 minutes.

Ian Harrison

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:02 AM GMT 23/06/2008