Return to Paradise

That this score isn't talked about among film music fan is a big mystery to me. Return to Paradise is a beautiful score, in the same veins as Zimmer's Beyond Rangoon, i.e. slow, relaxing music with generous usage of exotic instruments, such as panpipes, tarka, and duduk, along with strings and woodwinds. And the fact that it's composed by Mark Mancina, part of the Media Ventures crew, is a great surprise to me. This is certainly not a score you expect one of those guys to come up with. Kudos to Mancina for that. And shame on me for being so prejudiced.

The music revolves around a simple declining four note theme, or motif, that wouldn't be especially memorable if it wasn't used in such a splendid way. Mancina incorporates this theme into almost every cue, and when it's performed by strings and flutes, supported by exotic percussion, the result is just gorgeous, like in the opening cue, "Looking at You", or in the track "Return to Paradise" - the definite highlight.

But the music has a tendency to becomes a little dull at some occasions though, especially in the middle part of the album, where nothing insteresting goes on for some time. And a couple of the cues are quite short, many just around 40-50 seconds. But the final cue, "Epilogue", makes up for that. At just under 8 minutes this is a piece that builds towards a wonderful, heartfelt ending.