Xena: Warrior Princess vol.4

Distancing itself very obviously from the Hercules series, LoDuca's music for Xena plays up Turkish and Arabic influences. Xena is thus defined as something of exotic promise. "Gabby Dance" has some prickly percussion for a belly dance, warbling female chorus for "The Warrior Princess", and there's the reed ensemble and chanting that opens every show in style with the "Main Title". Lucy Lawless being an all-over talented lady, demonstrates her musical gifts with "Burial", which she wrote and sings on. Like all the lyric-based cues, though, the language is unknown. You therefore have a Kiwi accent disguised as American, singing about Greek legend in something mysterious! Xena seems to get in an awful lot of scraps requiring her to scissor-kick her legs about, and the scores for these involving action set-pieces are consistently surprising. LoDuca never wastes an opportunity for complex ethnic rhythms (try "Quarterman's Festival" for example). The follow-up volumes are on a par for inventiveness, with Volume 3--"The Bitter Suite"--winning out for novelty value, being an all-musical episode. --Paul Tonks

Label: Unknown
Studio: Varese Sarabande
Released: 1999-06-21
Format: Audio CD

Extras/Features:
Soundtrack