Thief - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Tangerine Dream's essential synth soundtrack to Michael Mann's 1980 masterpiece Thief. Pulsing with neon energy, Tangerine Dream's score for Michael Mann's debut film was markedly bold and unique for the crime genre at the time, which is what makes it so iconic and influential to this day.

Years before Miami Vice, Heat and Manhunter, director Michael Mann took his first crack at the gritty crime genre with a film starring James Caan, about a Chicago diamond thief, and his last big score. Seems straightforward enough – but though it could've easily felt like a holdover from the New Hollywood movement of the '70s, Thief plants its feet firmly into the '80s with Tangerine Dream's incredible, and at the time revolutionary, approach to film music.

They kicked off an electronic film score wave – Tangerine Dream alone would go on to score nearly twenty films over the course of the '80s – but Thief has always been special and for the 40th Anniversary here is a vinyl reissue.