While undoubtedly very silly, Moonraker still has its attractions: “He’s attempting re-entry, sir”, Holly Goodhead, Ken Adam’s amazing production design and John Barry’s brilliant music. Incredibly, it was the highest-grossing Bond movie until Goldeneye, and when adjusted for inflation it took in more money than any of the remaining Moore films, either of the Dalton ones and any of the Brosnan ones. The score has been the stuff of legend: the unusually short original album (just a shade over half an hour long) was brilliantly-produced, but as the initial set of Bond soundtrack expansions came and went without it being included and then Chinese whispers led seemingly everyone to believe that the recordings of the score (made in Paris) had been lost, the chances of an expansion seemed to ebb away as the years went by. Even a re-recording project was abandoned after Eon threw a spanner in the works. But now, finally, we have one in our hands – a magnificent new album from La-La Land Records.

The title song was never really one of my favourites but now I’m older I appreciate it a lot more. The melody is vintage Barry, a really beautiful ballad – Hal David’s nonsensical lyrics are very silly (possibly befitting the film) but the inestimable Shirley Bassey belts them out like nobody’s business. I’ve even grown to like the quirky disco version used for the end credits. What we get on this album are two different demo versions of the initial version of the song (intended for Frank Sinatra), performed by lyricist Paul Williams – while clearly tailored for the intended vocalist, I do think they’re markedly better than David’s and it’s a pity that’s not the version of the song we got.

The score – the first one really where Barry made everything considerably more languid but also arguably more grand than he had before in the series – really is top-notch. It’s surprising how much previously-unreleased material there is – less surprising, how good it is. Before the title sequence we get the brief action cue “Hijackers”, a great take on the Bond theme in “Last Leg & Freefall Sequence” and in the first few cues after it a couple of really great, romantic takes on the song melody (I particularly like “18-Carat”).

The familiar “Corinne Put Down” is the first of the score’s really major pieces of action music – it hardly needs me to say how well Barry did this, even here in this new slowed-down version of himself making it thrilling with the simplest of touches, a really catchy ostinato being recycled and recycled. To employ simplicity so effectively was one of his great gifts, distilling what the film needed down to the barest of bones, avoiding anything not necessary to what he was trying to do. While this particular piece is one that we’ve all been enjoying for years, another one follows not long after which we haven’t – “Venice Boat Chase” is based on a set of variations on the Bond theme quite unlike those Barry had deployed in the past, again it’s quite deliberately-paced, again it’s hugely entertaining. (And I think I’m right in saying that the Bond theme didn’t actually appear even once on the original album – now we get to enjoy it quite a few times.)

“Bond Smells a Rat” (in a slightly longer take than the one on the original album) is vintage Barry/Bond suspense music, with a doom-laden (almost Herrmannesque) little macabre motif running through it and then we get two radically different takes on the song theme – an ultra-romantic one in “It Could Have Its Compensations” and then a gentle samba one in “Bond Arrives in Rio” – it’s great witnessing how a skilled composer can do so much with a single melody. But then we’re back to action, with another great track, “Cable Car Fight” – I love how all these things are so based on melody in Barry’s hands – no crash-bang-wallop, but packing a punch all the same. And speaking of action – for the first and only time in Roger Moore’s tenure, Barry reprises his “007” theme from From Russia With Love in the track that is called “South American Boat Chase” on the new release – while slightly antiquated by that time, it still worked even in its (inevitably) slower-paced form as used here.

I’ve always loved the grandiose “Bond Lured to Pyramid” with its colourful long-lined string phrases accompanied by florid, fluttering flutes and gorgeous harp glissandi and – very unusually in a Bond score (though not, it later becomes apparent, this one) even a choir. But even its grandiosity is nothing compared with the score’s big centrepiece, the magnificent “Flight Into Space” – on the extended album, the cue’s central theme is established earlier, in “Launch Programme Command” – but when it gets belted out in the opening section of the main piece, it’s clear Barry is scoring this great romantic vision of space flight, big repeated melodic leaps signifying the vastness of space, the choir lending it an epic feel – it’s one of the best pieces of music in any Bond score, and were it in one of the better Bond movies I’ve no doubt it would be even more revered. (As a side note – despite listening to it for decades, I had never noticed until now that the piece’s central theme is used for the opening bars of the disco arrangement of the song for the end titles.)

While that piece feels like it should be the culmination of everything, we’re not done yet – there’s still one more magnificent action track (perhaps the score’s best) in the form of “Space Laser Battle” – a dynamic new theme forms its basis, long-lined and sometimes played by the strings, sometimes trumpets, with militaristic percussive accompaniment and that choir again. I’ve always loved it and continue to find it thrilling today (and I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s remarkable how exciting Barry could make something which is so slow sound).

I’m hardly surprised but am still delighted that the wait for this album (45 years after the film) was more than worth it. Dumping the couple of pieces of source music leaves the film score running for about 54 minutes – not far off double the original album – and of course we get various bonus materials, along with a remastered version of the original track list. I don’t think it’s quite up there with Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice or OHMSS for me – but this is still an extremely good Bond score and this new release of it is quite wonderful.