Ira Madiyama August Sun (2003)

Black Midnight Sun is the first release on the Dreyfus label by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Lucky Peterson, joined here by producer Bill Laswell on bass and former Parliament/Funkadelic drummer Jerome "Bigfoot" Braily. While the disc features a few Peterson originals, the majority of the album relies on cover versions. Luckily, Peterson picked several that he's well suited to tackle, including "Herbert Harper's Free Press" (Muddy Waters), "Lucky in Love" (Mick Jagger), "Is It Because I'm Black" (Syl Johnson), "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone" (Johnnie Taylor), "Talkin' Loud and Saying Nothing" (James Brown), and "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa" (Sly Stone). Black Midnight Sun is a combination of electric blues, rock, soul, and funk that, for the most part, works just fine.

Although Hans Zimmer receives nominal credit, Tears of the Sun is in fact a collaborative effort featuring contributions from the composer's Media Ventures colleagues including Lebo M., Steve Jablonsky, and Heitor Pereira - the end result channels some unexpected ethnic influences into an otherwise by the book war film score reliant more on its emotional scope than its action themes. While African percussion and chants enliven several cues, Tears of the Sun is above all dominated by a palpable sense of melancholy - little here echoes the heroic, larger than life scale of war scores past, and all vestiges of patriotism are superseded by post-9/11 angst. It's certainly unexpected, especially given Zimmer's affection for bombast, but it works.