Shadows in the Sun is about an aspiring writer who travels to Italy to meet 'a literary titan' and learns about love, life, blah, whatever and things. That it stars Joshua Jackson (he of Dawson's Creek) is perhaps not an immediate indication of quality, then again it also features Harvey Keitel as said literary titan and also the always wonderful John Rhys-Davies. If nothing else, the Italian scenery is always worth a peak. Mark Thomas is a composer whose name I only know as he shares it with a well known British, political comedian, but this Thomas has a considerable number of credits since the early 90's. These include some reasonably well known British indie films - Twin Town and the impressive Dog Soldiers - plus some miniseries' notably Merlin: The Return, following in the footsteps of Trevor Jones.
Given its setting, that the score shares more than a few traits with Christophe Beck's Under the Tuscan Sun is not exactly a great surprise. The gentle strings, guitar and light heartedness that would also sit comfortably in a Fellini film although there is less of Rota's shadow here than in the Beck score. There are some utterly charming romantic passages, notably the central duo of Romantic Daydreams and Isabella: Love Theme. That pretty much sums up most of the material the album has to offer, but if sunny, European scoring is your thing, this is a quite delightful example. All it really lacks is any distinctiveness or particularly strong and memorable melody. Not perhaps a great drawback in a score of this sort, but there's nothing that, for example, sets it apart from the aforementioned Beck score (and vice versa).
Perhaps the album's most interesting feature is that it's an online only release from Mikael Carlsson's Moviescore Media label. It certainly seems like the kind of album that easily could have come out on Varese, but clearly the lack of any physical product reduces costs and in the limited market of film music, possibly a way to go for albums that are likely to only sell in small numbers. Much though I think that this method of music distribution is likely the way of the future (and I reiterate my comment that in theory, downloadable music should ensure albums don't go out of print, but the strange world of the record industry means anything is possible) the compression needs to be done in such a way that it's as good as CD and there is no loss of quality - indeed, in theory, the sound quality can be as good as the file size permits. Still, a good way to release unassuming scores such as this one.