From Russia With Love [Import]

The "From Russia With Love" soundtrack album (1963) gets it right. The themes are shining and original, and even when composer John Barry revisits certain themes, he manages to rework them to make them sound fresh.

"From Russia With Love" was the first Bond movie with Barry as its lead composer (though the theme song itself was penned by Lionel Bart). The brilliant mood-building and no-punches-polled orchestrating style Barry showed when reworking Norman's "James Bond Theme" for "Dr. No" permeates "Russia." Almost every selection is potent, well-arranged and effective, from the opening instrumental melding the title song with the Bond theme, to the final track, "007 Takes the Lektor."

Some of the best tracks on this CD are the vaguely menacing "Tania Meets Klebb;" "James Bond With Bongos" (used as Bond arrives in Istanbul for his mission); and the tense, bombastic "007," which first appears in the middle of the CD and is revised even more punchily as "OO7 Takes the Lektor."

But the best track is "Stalking," used in the pre-credit sequence during which villain Red Grant stalks Bond on Spectre Island. Using the chord sequence of the Bond theme, "Stalking" builds up to a powerful, brassy climax and then a relaxing resolution.

The quibbles with this album are minor; the track "Leila Dances," which luckily didn't make the movie itself (the belly-dancer sequence in the movie is much more imaginative), is so epetitive and original as to be dull, a rare criticism of a Barry-composed tune. And Matt Monro's warm vocal version of the theme song is marred by a dated 60s sound mix (most of the instruments in one channel and Monro in the other) -- and some tape rewind noise that somehow made the final cut.

But it's hard to find many faults with this impressive album -- one that perfectly mirrors the excitement and daring of Agent 007 himself. In his first stab at scoring a Bond film, Barry came up with a classic that holds up surprisingly well four decades later.

Now about the original score- that's a must for any person who likes Bond music, cause this is one of the best. Altough there some parts of music missing I won't be involving it in my rating.
It fully recreates one of my fave Bond movs and pure spy-sound. Take for instance tracks like 007 takes the Lektor and Bond With Bongos, and you'll feel like Bond himself, at least I did. Specially Bongos-that sounds so cool, when Bond arrives at the airport!
There are fine variations of the main theme(I love the lyrics, but I must admit John Barry improves them in a instrumental way) in tracks Tania Meets Klebb and Bond meets Tania, the first one is more mysterious.
Other tracks- Meeting at St Sophia (eerie), Girl Trouble(too exciting to be a woman fight music!), Gypsy Camp(nice guitars), Spectre Island(one of the best), Man Overboard/Smersh in Action(creepy SMERSH theme again), Stalking(amazing theme for one of the best pre-title sequence), Death of Kerim(too bad there wasn't more "train" music).

You'll be surprised with some tracks that don't appear in the mov, but don't worry- you'll get used to it, as a kind of pause or relaxing part.
Overall a very good score that true Bondians should have.

P.S: I'm not hoping for some complete rerelease as some guys do. I know there's not 100% music of the film in it, but what we've got is very good. I know there's Bond Back in Action, but those themes don't sound like in the movie.