The list of 2017’s bestselling albums on vinyl included two soundtracks – Guardians Of The Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and La La Land. While mass popularity is not always an accurate barometer of artistic value – and neither of those records are fixtures on the Long Live Vinyl office turntable – the significance of the vinyl soundtrack in music history cannot be denied: a mutually beneficial connecting fibre between two mediums that saw huge booms in the early-to-mid 20th century, before coming under threat from the digital revolution.
Try to picture Michael Madsen’s gruesome cop-torturing in Reservoir Dogs without hearing Stealers Wheel’s Stuck In The Middle With You. Or Marlon Brando’s fearsome performance in The Godfather without bringing to mind Nino Rota’s Grammywinning soundtrack. Or – a personal favourite – Richard E Grant stumbling around the squalor of his London flat in the opening moments of Withnail And I minus the rich melancholic saxophone of King Curtis’ A Whiter Shade Of Pale. Or any of the 11 James Bond films that John Barry soundtracked without his unique musical genius. More recently, labels such as Silva Screen and Invada have become home to some of the coolest soundtracks on vinyl, including Cliff Martinez drenching Ryan Gosling’s stellar turn in Drive with shimmering electro, and Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein’s nostalgic 80s atmospherics for Netflix blockbuster Stranger Things. Whatever your favourite soundtrack, turn to p51 for our Top 50, then read on as Redg Weeks and Geoff Barrow tell the Invada story.