With Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 now streaming on Disney Plus, we're planning a weekend watching all three of James Gunn's wonderfully soundtracked Marvel movies. To get us in the mood, we've compiled our own Awesome Mix Tape, featuring songs used in the movies that we consider to be great test tracks for your system. There will be plenty here to challenge your set-up to perform at its best, and it fits perfectly onto both sides of a C60 cassette, too.
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 on Amazon
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 on Amazon
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Awesome Mix Vol. 3 on Amazon
Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic)
While we often use Radiohead tracks when we test hi-fi, they're usually of the more sonically dense variety, to judge a set-up's organisational coherence. Here we have a rare acoustic test track, that is used to great effect in the sombre opening scene of Guardians 3. Provided your system has plenty of detail resolution you should get every, teary emotional ounce of Yorke's performance of the band's early break-out song, conveyed with absolute commitment in every aching syllable and rasped frustration. In the meantime, each string slide and squeak from the close-mic'd acoustic guitar should be reproduced with utmost clarity, while you can feel the space around the musicians and imagine the radio studio it was performed in. The ability to convey intimacy and nail the reproduction of emotive performances like this will really prove your stereo's worth.
Heart – Crazy On You
This true rock banger begins with Nancy Wilson's gorgeous finger-picked guitar – 30 seconds or so of axe virtuosity that, through a well-appointed set-up, should ring out clearly with each string pluck and harmonic trail. A galloping strum sets a new change of pace, before the bass and drums come in, followed quickly by Ann Wilson's softly yearning vocals, and sonorous flute sitting just behind her in the mix. There's a lot going on here, from hi-hat chicks to guitar licks, but a good hi-fi set-up should be able to organise that information neatly, allowing you to pick apart the different instrumental strands while revelling in the beautifully orchestrated whole. And the track demands to be kept up with once it starts to go at a gallop, requiring good timing and rhythmic drive from your system.
Spacehog – In The Meantime
You can hear that ring-tone, right? If your hi-fi is placing sounds precisely enough in the soundstage, you can clearly pick out a sound that will be very familiar to UK residents, as it's the UK dial tone spliced with the engaged tone in a uniquely musical lick. It's actually sampled from avant-garde pop band The Penguin Café Orchestra, whose Telephone And Rubber Band was based around a tape loop of said phone sounds (plus the sound of a rubber band, funnily enough). The Leeds band took this and added a hugely bouncy, upfront bassline and a bedrock of fuzz guitar to create an utterly addictive slice of late-’90s post-grunge indie-rock.
ELO – Mr Blue Sky
With melodies and parts variously nicked from the Beatles, the Kinks, BeeGees and Rachmaninov, ELO's 1977 hit is a real soup of influences and recording techniques, providing us hi-fi enthusiasts with plenty to slurp down. We personally love the panting after the line "running down the avenue", and the 'cowbell' hits that are actually Bev Bevan smacking a fire extinguisher with his drum stick. Elsewhere there's lush string arrangements, punchy bass stabs, double-tracked vocals, operatic choral arrangements and shameless use of a vocoder. Listen carefully to the last vocoder part and you'll hear, rather than the assumed "Mr Blue Sky", "Please turn me over", because it was at the end of side three of the double vinyl LP.
10cc – I'm Not In Love
Another of those bands that made records for which modern hi-fi seems like it could have been invented, 10cc's production chops and sonic experimentation reached new levels of 'aahhh' here. In fact, the band spent three weeks in the studio recording 'aahhh's for I'm Not In Love – Graham Gouldman, Lol Creme and Kevin Godley each singing the phrase 16 times for each note of the chromatic scale, making a total choir of 48 voices per note. They then looped the tape, jerry-rigging a system so that the tape could be extra long – this meant fewer splices, and those splices could be masked within the beat of the music. It's safe to say, then, that you'll be using this one to test the vocal delivery of your set-up. The more detail your system can dig up, the better. Can you hear where the splices are?
Rupert Holmes – Escape (The Piña Colada Song)
Though it's thought of more as a 'one hit wonder', Holmes was actually on his fifth album before this song celebrating consensual infidelity (isn't it?) bothered the charts. The easy going lounge groove, precise (sometimes double) drums and simple synth melodies – mixed and shaken up with a guitar solo that somehow screams 'seagull flying across a sunset in slow-mo' – should make you feel like you're on a tropical beach drinking the titular cocktail. If your system isn't up to the challenge, though, and things are little more muggy or muddled than they should be, you might as well be listening to a bad one-man synth cabaret act at a 1970s British holiday camp. Getting caught in the rain in Bognor is not what Rupert had in mind.
The The – This Is The Day
Underrated musical genius Matt Johnson makes a surprising but extremely welcome addition to Guardians Vol. 3's soundtrack, with Rocket even seen singing along to The The's sublime This Is The Day. A superbly layered track with relatively unusual instrumentation, it makes for a fine test of your hi-fi's ability to reproduce a combination of synthesized and acoustic elements, as well as keeping Johnson's emotive vocals at the forefront as the track builds to its glorious conclusion. Synth strings, electronic beats and a deep, boingy synth bassline on just the root notes are layered with real drums, fiddle and a fantastic accordion line that serves as the track's motif. All of which should be a great test of your kit's presentation and keeping each unique instrumental strand coherent but distinct. As hopeful a song as was ever written, if you're not feeling teary-eyed joy by the end, either your stereo isn't doing its job, or you're dead.
David Bowie – Moonage Daydream
As the Milano reaches Knowhere and Bowie's space-age opus kicks things up a notch, it's the perfect marriage of James Gunn's cinematic flair and Bowie's visionary and futuristic music. When Bowie wrote this, everyone probably imagined we'd be in space by now, such were the signs of the times – instead, we have to content ourselves with floating away into an immersive silver-screen space opera with Ziggy Stardust along for the ride. You don't need us to tell you how great this track is, but pay attention to the way a good system will keep the stereo elements separate on each side, precisely placing the strings, bass guitars and other instrumental flourishes. Bowie's own double-tracked voices should surround you like you're in space, spinning out of control, before Woody Woodmansey's countdown of gated tom-tom hits launches you further into the cosmos.
Glen Campbell – Southern Nights
Originally a hit for New Orleans music legend Allen Toussaint, Campbell's more countrified version has plenty going on for your stereo to get its teeth into, from rag-time horns and boogie-woogie piano to banjo, groovy electric bass and Campbell's own stamp of that hooky, descending guitar lick. The repetitious groove requires your system to maintain a good sense of rhythmic authority – each four-to-the-floor drum beat should time perfectly as the rest of the duelling instrumentation follows it like a bloodhound. The track may suggest a certain amount of musical abandon in its jaunty arrangement, but each transient needs to hit just right in order for that groove not to devolve into a drunken hoe-down.
Faith No More – We Care A Lot
FNM's short and budget-conscious recording sessions for 1987's Introduce Yourself are actually responsible for some of this track's bare-bones, hard-edged charm (it was re-recorded for the album, though there's a version from 1985). Each musical element has equal footing, and through a more analytical system or pair of headphones you can hear the bright room reflections that were a feature of a lot of mid- to late-’80s alt-rock records. Everything from Billy Gould's thumping, bright slap bass licks to the choir-like quality of Roddy Bottum's soaring keyboard harmonies and Chuck Mosley's cynical, semi-rapped list of ’80s things that were 'more than meets the eye' should resonate, on every level.
The Five Stairsteps – O-o-h Child
Fittingly for the song that's playing as Star Lord challenges Ronan the Accuser to a dance-off to save the galaxy, this one is perfect as a test for whether your stereo can dance. If fed with a tight groove such as this, your set-up will at very least get your foot tapping. While you're at it, listen out for the tight playing, and even sympathetic kit ringing, of legendary drummer Bernard Purdie. All the while the bass takes a walk all over the stage and the piano, guitar, horns and strings lock in above it. This one is an equally good test of your hi-fi's vocal abilities, as the various members of the Burke family, the 'First Family of Soul', deliver their smooth, multi-ranged vocal contributions with real verve.
Yusuf / Cat Stevens - Father and Son
There can be few more poignant songs than this. It is in fact so good that even 90s boy band Boyzone couldn't kill it (though boy, did they try). If you're happily a dad or a son, or both, you can't fail to get teary eyed listening to this song, and fittingly, it features during one of the most beautifully sad moments of Guardians Vol. 2. It's a relatively simple arrangement, centred around Stevens’ strummed acoustic guitar, but with lilting melodies from piano and extra guitars that help the track build to its rousing final reprise of the chorus. Yusuf / Cat (still) has one of the finest male voices in the world, with a richness of timbre and a beautiful delivery that never fails to stir the soul; listen through a system that fudges vocals in any way and you'll regret it.
Sam Cooke – Bring It On Home To Me
The King of Soul's sweet, gospel-inspired love song has a lush production that featured the cream of LA session talent, as well as backing vocals from R&B legend Lou Rawls, whose deep timbre sits so well behind Cooke's creamy lead vocal delivery. As sessions back in 1962 were largely recorded 'in the room', a reasonably analytical system should provide a good deal of insight and place you right there among the musicians in RCA's Studio One. Of course you also want a system that can convey the warmth intended here too, so a good balance of talents would serve this track well.
Florence & The Machine – Dog Days Are Over
The Brit indie rockers owe much to this track from debut album Lungs, as it really established Florence Welch as a unique vocal talent. Its use in Guardians Vol. 3 serves to remind us just how easily a perfectly judged, foot-tappingly fun indie rock song can bring a smile to our faces. This one's going to test your stereo's midrange, where much of the track's presence is most felt, from Welch's distinctive vocal theatrics at its core to the harp and violins melodically tinkering away in the background. It's a stern rhythm test for your system too, since it can sound a little on the edge of chaotic abandon amid the changes in pace; so long as your hi-fi is keeping it locked down, you're going to have as much fun listening as Flo and co intended.
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