John Williams: Indiana Jones And The Raiders Of The Lost Ark (2LP, soundtrack, gold vinyl) [WALT DISNEY RECORDS]

Why you'll love it

This 45th anniversary 2LP set comes on gold vinyl, a fitting colour for a film about a golden Ark. The score earned John Williams an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Gold vinyl
• 45th anniversary edition

About the album

John Williams has said the music for Raiders didn't need to be serious; it needed to be theatrical and gloriously excessive, which suited Steven Spielberg's 1981 adventure down to the ground. He conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in one of the first scores recorded at Abbey Road after Anvil Studios closed in 1980.

Williams spent weeks on Indy's theme, the Raiders March. He played Spielberg two separate ideas, Spielberg wanted both, and they became the main theme and its soaring bridge. For Marion he looked back to the big romantic scores of films like Now, Voyager, the dark brass that stalks the villains sits low and militaristic, and the Ark itself gets an eerie, biblical blend of chorus and orchestra. Herbert W. Spencer and Al Woodbury handled the orchestrations, and the music runs from creeping jungle suspense to full-blooded chase cues played with real swagger.

The march has since become one of the most recognizable pieces of film music ever written, the sound of adventure for several generations. Play it while doing the washing up and it becomes a quest, though we can't promise the dishes will be any less dangerous.

Also at Kops: more John Williams on vinyl · browse Soundtracks

Listen

On Walt Disney Records, a reissue of the 1981 soundtrack.