It would be easy to take a short glance at More Stories and decide that it's just a remix album, or an odds'n'sods collection, or an instrumentals disc -- at any rate, simply a companion piece to 2007's War Stories (and, therefore, recommended only if you liked War Stories). But when UNKLE and James Lavelle are involved, everything is high conce...

It would be easy to take a short glance at More Stories and decide that it's just a remix album, or an odds'n'sods collection, or an instrumentals disc -- at any rate, simply a companion piece to 2007's War Stories (and, therefore, recommended only if you liked War Stories). But when UNKLE and James Lavelle are involved, everything is high concept. Granted, this usually does more harm than good, but More Stories is a very good collection. (And, for the record, it includes remixes and instrumentals and odds'n'sodds, the latter, specifically, comprising the music for Odyssey in Rome, a documentary that focused on director Abel Ferrara and the making of his film Mary.) The film music is hardly incidental, including the atmospheric "Heaven," with a lovely vocal from Gavin Clark that calls into question why it wasn't included on a proper UNKLE full-length. War Stories collaborators Autolux and Layo & Bushwacka! are given their own tracks, and Autolux turn in a solid version of their original, "Turnstile Blues." The second disc is the full instrumental version of War Stories. ~ John Bush, Rovi