The soundtrack album for the film The Trials of Darryl Hunt, a documentary that premiered on cable television in April 2007 with a theatrical release following a couple of months later, can be divided into at least three distinct parts, although they are interspersed in the track list. First, there is Paul Brill's ominous, percussive score, heard in only a few cues. Then, there are a handful of rap tracks that deal directly with the movie's theme about a black man who was wrongly convicted of murdering a white woman and incarcerated for 20 years.
Ras Kass and Kev Nice show themselves to be thoroughly familiar with Darryl Hunt's story in particular, and with similar injustices in their angry rap "Guilty Until Proven Innocent," and subsequent tracks "The Hunt Is On," by
Dead Prez's Stic.man, "Five O," by the
Last Poets featuring Dälek, and "Behind Bars," by
Spider Loc also explore the themes of race and imprisonment. But the bulk of the album is given over to a third musical style. A variety of indie and alternative rock acts are heard performing songs, often acoustically, sometimes live, that have no apparent relationship to the story of the film. These range from fairly well-known material, such as a live acoustic version of
Starsailor's 2002 modern rock hit "Good Souls," to a new rock song by the indie favorites
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Indie rock fans will enjoy these special recordings, even if they don't seem to have anything to do with Darryl Hunt. ~ William Ruhlmann