10 Essential Library Music Records

Recorded during the height of the Moogspoitation trend, Pop Électronique represents the peak of zany, rhythmic library music. The creation of French musician Cecil Leuter (also known as Roger Roger — his real name), this album is a beggar’s banquet for wild hip-hop and electronic music samples.

The first side’s full of frantic party jams that are nearly too fun; the flipside gets weirder and more abstract as it goes, ending in a maddening labyrinth of synth blitzes, oscillations, and intense conga slaps. It’s incredible to realize that Leuter was in his late 50s when he conceived these madcap tunes.

Exactly what metropolis sounds like the supernatural strangeness of Maria Teresa Luciani’s Sounds Of The City? Most likely not one you’ve visited. For example, “Supermarket” is anything but mundane. It evokes a repetitive ritual in an eerie warehouse, foreshadowing a decade of the foreboding isolationism of Zoviet France.

Throughout the LP, Luciani portrays various everyday facets of cities as sources of mystery and wonder. Although released in 1972, the music here sounds utterly contemporary, awash in rare atmospheres, triggering seldom-felt emotions, redefining the term “concrete jungle.” Finders Keepers‘ 2017 reissue substantially raised the profile of this rare gem.

An album so good and influential, a short-lived British electronic-music movement was named after it in the ’90s. The Big Beat title was not false advertising. Further, the track titles (“Stomp,” “Thrust,” “Snatch,” “Orgy”) telegraphed the high-impact action that lay in the huge grooves, girthy bass lines, suspenseful chord progressions, and scintillating percussion accents. Ingman’s elite orchestration and arranging skills have been tapped by David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Portishead, and Diana Ross, among many others.  

Composed by Italian library luminaries Stefano Torossi and Sandro Brugnolini under pseudonyms, Feelings has endured as a favorite of heads for five decades. Its ten sumptuously produced tracks encompass orchestral soul, thriller-movie soundtracks, bossa nova, blaxploitation-flick funk, psych-rock, and florid jazz-fusion. And the luxuriantly funky “Feeling Tense” presages trip-hop by almost 20 years.

Hard Hitter is a 15-track sample bonanza. “Track Record” exemplifies Hard Hitter‘s prevalent style: down-tempo funk with bongos and flute, a killer combo in this genre. The libidinous, methodically funky “Hair Raiser” accelerates into a beat orgy that electronic stars such as Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim lucratively emulated in the 1990s. And you can hear Hard Hitter‘s impact on Propellerheads’ 1997 big beat anthem, “Take California.” Keith Papworth’s is the sound that scored countless cinematic car-chase-scenes. Optimal excitement and sexy friction are the name of the game here. US label Fat Beats did a much-needed reissue of Hard Hitter in 2022.

Here’s a merciless plunge into sinister, quasi-gothic horror that would give the toughest Bauhaus fans the heebie-jeebies. Dank, percussion-heavy tracks such as “Black Time” and “Deep In The Dark” anticipate the bleakest post-punk by about four years. “Dark Flight” makes Goblin‘s most harrowing soundtrack work seem light-hearted. But then “Spiro” and “Drum Time” bust out of the gloom with enough killer funky breaks to fill a golden-age hip-hop LP. Out of print for 49 years, Blackout is overdue for a reissue.

German drummer and synthesist Klaus Weiss was a library-music superstar. His rhythmic prowess and compositional savvy enabled him to create stunning music for countless scenarios. The liner notes on Time Signals outline all the usages for its 25 concise tracks, “news, sport, industry,… research and science, crime, adventures, space, science fiction.” And it sure seems like the gravely grandiose track “Survivor” inspired the band of the same name, who went on to soundtrack Stranger Things. Also worth checking out is Weiss’s 1970s percussion ensemble, Niagara, whose drum beats constitute some of the funkiest jams ever laid down in Europe.

The nexus of science fiction and horror figures heavily in library music, and Biomechanoïd ranks as one of the sickest specimens of this field. Masterminded by prolific Belgian multi-instrumentalist Vandroogenbroeck (best known as leader of the excellent psych-rock group Brainticket) with help from Mac Prindy and Marc Monsen, this album evokes alien bodily functions, cauldrons of mysterious, viscous liquids, toxic winds, computers going haywire, and other bizarre phenomena.

As with many library records, Biomechanoïd features brief track descriptions on its back cover. The one for “Plastic Gnome” speaks volumes: “clownish, discordant, android, heavy.” Well, then… pump up the volume! Bless Aguirre Records for reissuing this crucial document in 2014.  

The Italian quartet I MARC 4 released 20 albums from 1970 to 1980 that only few can afford to own, so this handy 18-track compilation of their Nelson Records output serves as an affordable entry into the Italian quartet’s dynamic and exciting music. Also renowned for playing on Armando Trovaioli, Ennio Morricone, and Piero Umiliani’s soundtracks, I MARC 4 excelled at creating  psychedelic-rock encrusted with pupil-dilating distortion on the guitar and keyboards and grooves geared to move even the most lethargic listener. You’ll wonder how Europeans in suits and ties could get so damned funky. The instrumentals on Nelson Psychout get right to the point with expanding your mind and enhancing your trip—potent hallucinogens with no ill side effects.

Library music was a male-dominated, Eurocentric field whose practitioners sometimes took liberties with other cultures’ music. This wasn’t done with malicious intent, but rather to expand the parameters of recordings suitable for films and television shows dedicated to those regions and peoples. One outstanding example is Africa Oscura by Italian composer Giuliano Sorgini. Recorded between 1974 and 1976 during the sessions that produced his revered Zoo Folle soundtrack, Africa Oscura goes heavy on hypnotic hand percussion patterns, eerie synth emissions, and animal and bird sounds. That this evocative collection tailored for documentaries about Africa went unreleased for over 40 years boggles the mind.