What?: "Let The Beat Control Your Body", the fifth single from 2 Unlimited's second album ("No Limits"), an album I had on tape, having borrowed it from the library.

Why?: One of the b-sides is a megamix, and in the mid 90s I was a little bit in love with megamixes. I had heard a 2 Unlimited one on the radio and was hoping this was it, but it was not. In all likelyhood I probably confused it for a Techntronic megamix anyway.

Tell me more!: I admit to vaguely enjoying "No Limits" as an album, but I listened to it fairly recently and despised it. I can't even enjoy it ironically. Technotronic is still almost listenable, but 2 Unlimited are dreadful. This single, with the album version and three remixes just rubs in one of the worst songs on the album over and over, although the "X-Out In Rio" mix is fun for a few seconds, replacing the beats with Rio carnival drums.

The megamix is OK, as far as these things go, but I can't listen to it now.

Fun fact, I probably spent $8+ on this CD single.

1/10: It would be zero, but the Rio beats made me giggle, and the megamix is kind of what I paid for...

2 Unlimited's "Let The Beat Control Your Body" on YouTube.

What?: "Horror Movie Hits", a 2CD compilation of horror movie themes as performed by an unknown orchestra, with a "free" DVD of "Night Of The Living Dead".

Why?: It was cheap, and I hadn't seen "Night of the Living Dead" and soundtracks are cool.

Tell me more!: I'm not familiar with many of the original (as in recorded for the film) versions of these themes, so it is hard to say for sure how good these versions are, but they sound OK. Some of the second disc sounds as if it might be recorded with a computer rather than an actual orchestra, but I could be wrong.

I'm quite familiar with the original Gremlins theme, Halloween, Jaws and the X-Files themes and both Jaws and X-Files themes are pretty terrible. A case of playing the notes, but none of the feel. Much of it reminded me of listening to old-school midi/MOD files of songs. The version of Gremlins isn't bad, but to be honest the original movie version is pretty crap too. The theme on Gremlins 2 is performed much better.

Still, as a listen in the background on the train while reading, it's not bad.

Night Of The Living Dead is a great film, out of historical zombie-movie interest anyway. The version presented here isn't great. It can be had for free from archive.org in better quality.

I spent a good ten minutes on Googles trying to work out which orchestra actually played on these discs. The net sometimes says "101 Strings", which at times gets confused with the "101 Strings Orchestra", but it can't be them as they were around in the 50s. The copyright is to Madacy Entertainment, but otherwise there is nothing on the discs to indicate who played on them.

A scan of the discs using FreeDB type service tells me this compilation was released in 2002 with the name "Music From Scary Movies". Again Google tells me this is "101 Strings".

4/10: It isn't terrible, and it was cheap, but it's hardly worth the money really when there are far far better compilations available.

Horror Movie Hits on Amazon.co.uk.