Tears of The Cheetah

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- little here echoes the heroic, larger than life scale of war scores past, and all vestiges of patriotism are superseded by post-9/11 angst.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.

Even Norwegians get the blues. On “Tears Of The World,” guitarist Knut Reiersrud and his band find themselves in the company of the 72-year old vocalist Mighty Sam McClain, originally from Louisiana. Together, they have dedicated themselves to the music of the deep south and have given impressive proof that, when it comes to playing hard-driven R&B, soul or blues, it's not where you come from that's important.In the context of the regular flow of new releases on the ACT label, “Tears Of The World” is patently a stylistic outlier; and yet this detour is not all that surprising, given label founder Siggi Loch's passion for the blues. In Loch's autobiography he describes the experience of what he remembers as the “wildest night” of his life - until then, at least. It was in 1962, and he was at one of the first American Folk Blues Fest…