Such is the legendary status and posthumous influence of the original run of Monty Python's Flying Circus on BBC One in the early '70s that it's easy to forget how low-budget British comedy production was in those days. And since little of that budget could be allotted to composing and recording original soundtrack music, the show availed itself of the services of DeWolfe Music, a legendary company that offered access to its entire library of recordings for a reasonable fee.
Much beloved of progressive funk DJs and samplers (check out the dance-floor filler "Hard Hitter," which was dug up by Baltimore's Jason Willett), the polymorphous DeWolfe catalogue allowed the Python team to underscore its own brand of absurdism with instrumentals recorded by some of the best session musicians in the UK.
This welcome release (never before compiled!) doubles as an excellent mood-music collection and a "spot-the-Python-sketch" parlor game. Occasional funk ("Market Research" from "The Golden Age of Ballooning") and psych ("Eye of Horus" from "Deja Vu") pepper a set that begins, of course, with Sousa's "Liberty Bell," here uninterrupted by that famous foot falling from the sky.
