There are at least these two notably different versions of the Wicker Man soundtrack available on CD:
The Wicker Man - The Original Soundtrack Album (Silva Screen, 2002)
The Wicker Man - The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Music and Effects (Trunk Records, 1998)
I don't want to delve too deep into the unfortunate history of this 1973 film and its soundtrack, but in order to understand how these two versions came about and what the differences are, I have to say that the original soundtrack was long believed to be lost entirely, and the film's negative is still missing to this day.
Under these circumstances, the first soundtrack album available was an album subtitled "The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Music and Effects", which was released on CD in 1998 by Trunk Records. This album was mastered off the tapes of the butchered theatrical cut of the film itself! So, of course, the music on this recording appears exactly as it is in the film, with all the noise, dialogue, background talking, interruptions, and other sounds of the film. What isn't in the 86 minute cut, isn't there. It was the best they could come up with, as the original soundtrack was lost.
However, at least the major part of the original soundtrack was rediscovered only a few years ago, and subsequently a recording was made from that and released on CD in 2002 by Silva Screen Records, subtitled "The Original Soundtrack Album". This is divided into two parts, "Songs from Summerisle" and "Incidental Music from 'The Wicker Man'".
In the first part, the songs appear as they were recorded, without the additional sounds of the film. This contains the song "Gently Johnny", which was missing from the short cut. It also contains a complete version of "The Tinker of Rye", a song which is interrupted and thus not entirely heard in the film. (I say complete, but it is my guess that the song itself is probably longer, and only a part of it was ever recorded for "The Wicker Man". However, if the recording had been longer, I think they would have included all of it, so I mean "complete" in the sense of "probably all that was recorded for the film".)
The second part consists mainly of music that apparently wasn't among the rediscovered material; it has been mastered off the existing film and various other sources. The booklet states that there were recordings of this music, used for playback purposes on set, but they only exist in mono versions with poor sound quality. So the music in this part is again mixed with the other film sounds, but has been digitally restored and enhanced as much as possible. This part contains, for example, the opening music (with plane, seagulls and all). To round off this soundtrack album, other incidental music, sound effects and some memorable lines spoken by Lord Summerisle in the film are also included.
So which one should I buy?
The Silva Screen one. It's the better quality by far, and you get to listen to a lot of the songs without all the noise from the film. In fact, you get to listen to some of the songs at all. I've always hated Howie for interrupting "The Tinker of Rye" in the film, and this is the only available recording where you get to hear those parts of the song that weren't in the movie.
Only if you're collecting all things Wicker Man, or are into solving questions like "Has Mr Lee's voice joined the other singers in the movie in the first line of 'Sumer is a-cumen in'?" (if he joined in on the set only, then his voice can't be on the Silva Screen recording, but could be on the Trunk one, as this was taken off the finished film and contains also the live sound... I haven't been able to figure that one out yet!), then you might want to look out for the Trunk version in addition to the Silva Screen one.
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