AN APPEAL has been started online to recreate a lost Bond movie score by York's John Barry.

The score to Moonraker has been available to the public since it was released in 1979, but only available in a shortened version due to part of the music being lost.

Now, Tadlow Music has launched a Kickstarter appeal to raise £25,000 and record a new and complete score for the Roger Moore film with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

James Fitzpatrick, from Hertfordshire-based Tadlow Music, said: "Over the last couple of decades, Moonraker has proved to be the most demanded John Barry and the most frequently requested James Bond score in need of a complete recording.

"The music is one of the finest examples of Barry's more mature approach to Bond, putting a heavy emphasis on symphonic adventure scoring as opposed to the more rebellious, guitar-based sound of earlier films like Goldfinger."

James said the original master tapes from the recording sessions in Paris were lost, and have been absent during subsequent re-releases of the Bond soundtracks.

The missing pieces from the score ran to about 30 minutes, and mean the Moonraker album is the only soundtrack which does not include any of Monty Norman's famous James Bond theme.

James said: "Although the film had at least two major set pieces scored with the theme ("Freefall" and the "Bondola Chase"), none of these moments were selected for the official LP.

"Apart from the two major sequences utilizing the Bond theme, there are over ten minutes of other chilling moments missing from the soundtrack, including the iconic gunbarrel sequence, the pre-titles hijacking of the Moonraker shuttle, Bond's arrival to Chateau Drax, all the action and suspense music in Venice and of course the music for the tense race to shoot down Drax's destructive globes."

The group has previously overseen restoration of scores to El Cid, Conan The Barbarian and Conan The Destroyer, and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

To find out more or donate, go to kickstarter.com/projects/681802762/moonraker-new-recording