How better to score a movie that takes place in three tangentially related time periods than with music that strives for timelessness? The hallmarks of Philip Glass's minimalism serve The Hours well. The film, based on Michael Cunningham's novel, tells the stories of three women--Virginia Woolf in the early 1920s, a housewife just after World War II, and a book editor in the present--whose ...

Manufacturer: Nonesuch

Manufacturer: Reprise

For all the laudatory work he's done in rediscovering a panoply of artists from roots-based musical genres, Cooder's attempt to pay homage to influences closer to home, namely 1950s rock and R&B, on Bop Till You Drop produced spotty results. While Arthur Alexander's "Go Home, Girl" and Cooder's own composition, "Down in Hollywood", are notable exceptions, most of the album suffers from ...

Manufacturer: Reprise

Out of the dozens of high-profile film composers to have appeared in the 1980s, Michael Nyman has retained his unique voice like no other. This two-disc collection proves that with generous selections from a 20-year period. From the early Peter Greenaway works (The Falls, Drowning by Numbers, Prospero's Books) through to Hollywood dabblings (Gattaca, Ravenous), ...

Manufacturer: Venture

Ostensibly a collection of Cooder's film music, the two-CD Music by Ry Cooder delivers the cinematic quality of a good soundtrack album but packs the kind of ferocious jams--featuring crack players such as John Hiatt, Jim Keltner, David Lindley, and Jim Dickinson--that you'll never hear on a John Williams score. Cooder's melancholy acoustic and electric-slide moans are a constant, though ...

Manufacturer: Warner

Manufacturer: EMI

Manufacturer: PolyGram

Think of Ry Cooder as a musicologist who makes learning fun. A particularly nifty collection from 1974, Paradise & Lunch is solo Cooder at his best. The song selection is inspired and unpredictable: numbers by Burt Bacharach, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and Bobby Womack mingle with ease. "Tattler" is a rare Ry original that happens to be one of the collection's highlights. Jazz legend Earl ...

Manufacturer: Wea

Ry Cooder has long had an interest in other people's music, from the blues and gospel of black America through classic jazz and the music of Cuba. Even by this standard, his meeting with Mohan Vishwa Bhatt is certainly a departure. He is neither a serious student of Indian music nor in any way a master of its intricacies. Yet on his improvised session (this album was recorded without rehearsal in ...

Manufacturer: Waterlily Acoustics

Manufacturer: Commercial Marketing