John Barry took the film soundtrack world by storm with his combination of surf guitar, dramatic 1960s pop themes, less-is-more orchestration and jazz big band arranging skills, the latter inspired originally by his formative studies on a correspondence course with Bill Russo, the Stan Kenton arranger. The main emphasis here is on his James Bond movie themes from From Russia with Love to the now overfamiliar 007 theme, which was in fact written by Monty Norman and arranged by Barry for his John Barry Seven and orchestra. él Records demonstrates its obvious passion for dipping into hipster retro cuts and lesser-known curios with some enthusiastically informative booklet notes. Among the lesser-known curios are a pair of themes from a TV special, Elizabeth Taylor in London, from 1963 with an alto saxophone solo that might be John Dankworth, though it's uncredited on the sleeve notes. Zulu (1964) is more classic orchestral fare and Beat Girl (1960), his first soundtrack theme written in 1960, is pure John Barry Seven with its infectious Henry Mancini-like surf guitar-twanging theme. But the latter stages of the collection with the heavily camp 1960s ‘It's Legal’ and throwaway rock'n'roll ditties for Juke Box Jury, Easy Beat and Saturday Club are British TV themes nowhere near the level of Barry's The Saint or The Adventurer, for example. While there's some sharp-end stuff on here from one of the greatest ever film composers, when you hear Adam Faith sounding like a poor man's Gene Pitney on a naff surf pop version of Bernstein's ‘The Magnificent Seven’ you appreciate how every compilation, no matter how sublime the artist might be, needs careful curation. After 35 tracks you've probably heard enough guitar twang to last a lifetime.