By Kevin Kiner

Disney

 

Following on from the Season 2 Vol. 1 score, Kevin Kiner completes another of his regular Star Wars animation scores, with Season 2 Vol. 2’s soundtrack, covering the second half of the season.

While maintaining the same mix of pounding action, mysterious threats, and character motifs as its predecessor, this volume switches pace and some of its stylistic elements for much of its runtime. It opens with some Western-style acoustic guitar and drawn-out violin heat with “Canyon Landing” and this desert prospecting kind of air persists through the next few tracks, along fairly middling action tracks.

Volume 1’s recurring strategy of weaving the Bad Batch theme subtly into its tracks is less prominent here, the construction being more traditional animated show action propped up with the strings motifs for the various characters.

That’s not to say it doesn’t get used – it pops up nicely towards the end of “Mokko,” which is a track with a nice range of tones from the distinctive French horns heard in the original Star Wars films through to off-kilter synths and tense notes. There are also some striking, if not always successful tracks like “Zillo Beast,” most of which feels like an Alien 3-ish horror track with screeching notes marking time.

The off-kilter stuff really comes in, however, with “The Doctor,” which also feels like it has an element of Mr Kidd and Mr Wint’s theme from Diamonds are Forever. This style then pops up again in “Interrogation Begins” and “Increase Injection Level,” representing Dr Hemlock’s Bond-villain like experimentation fetish.

As the volume goes on, it becomes clearer that it’s being built around the emotional hits of what these soldiers are going through, be it in action (“ARC Troopers”), in captivity (“Interrogation Begins”), or with comradeship (“Many Like Us”). This is all building to the climactic emotional themes in “Sacrifice” and “Sisters”, which are very moving and affecting, whether or not you’ve seen the show.

That said, these don’t quite have the punch of the music for the final season of Clone Wars, in which we’re hearing more sweeping galaxy-spanning epic musicality. Instead we have effective but more intimate and smaller-scale personal requiems and motifs. These are less epic but certainly still work.

Dialling down the theme tune as part of the various tracks, however, pays good dividends when it returns in “Frantic Escape” to launch the finale action in a great arrangement that has a sort of faux nostalgia feel of classic war movies like Where Eagles Dare or Von Ryan’s Express.

While the true climax to the volume is of course the emotional levels in “Sacrifice,” “Sisters,” and “Don’t Stop Searching,” sadly, as per Vol. 1 there are a pair of final cantina and remix tracks – “Mokko’s Cantina” and “Scorpion Club Mix” – which are a bit disappointing.

Verdict: This is another successful score, and follows on well from Vol. 1, though your views may vary as to which of the pair is better, or whether they’re even. Today’s rating is one thing, but tomorrow’s may be different. 9/10

David A McIntee