Way out West, Silva's latest collection of music for westerns, is as unpredictable and eclectic as they come. What other company would release a collection of music featuring such a diverse collection of composers as Gioacchino Rossini, Alex North and Percy Faith!? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, both in terms of selection and performance.

The best track is the first one. Elmer Bernstein's overture for the spoof western The Hallelujah Trail features an hilarious parody of Dimitri Tiomkin-style western songs, which try to sound sincere but are usually quite uproariously funny and cringe-enducingly embarrassing. But that's the problem - just as you hear a great piece, another Tiomkin-style song comes along to make you cry your eyes out. Usually the music for them is superb, but that cannot compensate for the faux sincerity of the lyrics or performance. The best two of these are, ironically, not by Tiomkin - Alfred Newman's How the West Was Won is magnificent, as is John Morris's spoof Blazing Saddles. The worst is Gunfight at the OK Corral, which is so hilariously funny it's not true. If Dimitri Tiomkin were alive today, I can already see him eagerly writing a rip-roaring title song for Schindler's List or a jaunty banjo-and-harmonica duet for Silence of the Lambs.

Elsewhere, the music varies from the sublime to the ridiculous with gay abandon. There are a few unexpected surprises, like Lee Holdridge's moving Old Gringo and Newman's Nevada Smith. There are also a few valiant attempts at Ennio Morricone's astonishing but idiosyncratic western themes - a bizarrely mechanical arrangement of A Fistful of Dynamite is followed by a fairly authentic recreation of For a Few Dollars More, and there's no doubt that the musicians are much more comfortable with the bizarrely mechanical reworking than the ludicrously difficult original style. (Despite now being a major force in film music recording, the Prague musicians' attempt at The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is absolutely atrocious.) A word to the wise: leave Morricone rerecording to Morricone.

The album also presents some of Silva's most spartan packaging - there are no liner notes! - and they are sorely missed - a few of these films are very obscure and a few helpful words from James Fitzpatrick or David Wishart would have come in very useful. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Otherwise, the album is generally good fun and a great way to pass a couple of hours.

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