OST: Broken Flowers - Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers made a successful run across various festival circuits in 2005 starring Bill Murray as a man running back into his past carefully picking up the flowers strewn across failed relationships and romances. On the road trip to absolution plays the fabulous Broken Flowers soundtrack. Headlining the versatile record is Ethiopian musician and composer - Mulati Astatke. Astatke beautifully mixes jazz, Ethiopion and Latin influences into his music, and the theme music reappears in nearly all of his songs in the album-  a lurking, possessed sound. Astatke grew up listening to traditional Ethiopian music, yet studied jazz in the United States influenced by Coltrane and Miles Davis, and this cross-cultural training has produced a menacing sound that has the studied control of jazz and the hypnotic undercurrent of Ethiopian music. While Yekermo Sew is slow, lingering and moody, Yegella Tezeta is goth-upbeat.

I have always liked movies where music plays an important part - Shaping the destinies of the characters, influencing their actions, a soundtrack to their lives. Be it Country blues in Elizabethtown (Cameron Crowe), or Spanish flamenco in Volver (Pedro Almodóvar), music can make movies more memorable, more magical - with the perfect mingling of the visual and auditory medium. Broken Flowers is no different, with a medley of artists who are worlds apart yet when are brought together produce a seamless record that tells a wonderful story. Jim Jarmusch has an expert hand in this area, having worked with a litany of artists over the years contributing music for his movies, from Tom Waits to Iggy Pop.

Following in the hazy wake of Mulatu Astatke, Holly Golightly and the Greenhornes do some sultry singing in There is an End backed by a marching orchestra straight out of the 1960s. Dengue Fever, a six-member LA band also make an appearance with their cover of another of Astatke's song - Ethanopium.

Classical Christian hymns also make an appearance with the breathtaking aria Pie Jesu from Requiem Op. 48 covered by Oxford Camerata. From the daze inducing heady love of young days to the death of relationships over the years, there is music for every landmark on life's journey as Murray makes the fateful trip across America reliving his past. The best thing about the soundtrack is the variety of music that will turn you on to new artists and singers from across the world, be it 1960s inspired alt-rock or Ethiopian music. A must listen.