If you deem yourself a well rounded hipster or simply a music lover, a serious soundtrack collection should be an essential part of your audio library. Pick a genre and there is a famous soundtrack to back up the style. Be it hip hop, jazz, rock, country or classical, some clever music library guru or composer has created a soundtrack to serve your audio dreams.

I can only speak of some my favorites, which include the super noir funk of Dave Grusin's Three Days Of The Condor, '70s soul fire in Curtis Mayfield's classic Superfly, Elmer Bernstein's The Sweet Smell Of Success, the British secret agent escapades of the John Barry 007 oeuvre, Bernard Hermann's Taxi Driver, and Nina Rota's work for masterful director, Federico Fellini. For something post 1980, check out Boogie Nights, Almost Famous, or heck, even Wayne's World. And how can you survive without A Hard Day's Night, City Of Industry, King Rat, or the rare LP version of Johnny Staccato?

John Lurie: Still slimy: Former Lounge Lizard and B movie character actor John Lurie has scored a handful of memorable soundtracks of late, most recently African Swim and Manny & Lo, packaged as a twofer back in ‘06. "Big Trouble" retains the Lounge Lizard's skanky jazz sound, here maneuvered into a tight spot with some especially oily vocals. "Manny & Lo" works, by contrast, more of a soukous meets Irish reel production, matching a joyous African scented rhythm with plucked instruments, marimba, electric guitars and smoky percussion. It's like dancing on the Sahara with a pint of Guinness waiting for you in the sand.

John Lurie
"Big Trouble" (mp3)
from "African Swim and Manny & Lo - Two Film Scores By John Lurie"
(Strange and Beautiful)

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John Lurie
"Manny & Lo Main Titles" (mp3)
from "African Swim and Manny & Lo - Two Film Scores By John Lurie"
(Strange and Beautiful)

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BT Blowout: Techno beatmaster BT gets his rocks off for Look, a thriller that came and went faster than Moby's hair. "Electrocuted" stomps and shakes, giant bug-like synths swarming a melody as a weak-kneed, fey vocalist sings of getting his due (death), and damn if it ain't a minute too soon. We love BT, but this geek vocalist must be doing something nasty under a table in Hollywood for deserve inclusion here. And if you tell me the vocalist is BT himself, then...well, I stand corrected.

BT
"Electrocuted" (mp3)
from "LOOK (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)"
(To Die For Records)

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