By Kevin Kiner

Disney

Kiner returns for another of his regular Star Wars animation scores, having been with the franchise through Clone Wars, Rebels, Tales Of The Jedi, and The Bad Batch.

He’s always been reliable, good at blending in themes, cues, and motifs from prior franchise entries, and merging them with new themes and his own style – which has become a very powerful musical and compositional style for the animated shows of the past decade or so. This is no exception, and if you’re a fan, you’re not going to be disappointed.

The album doesn’t open with the familiar snare-drum intro from the episodes, but a fantastic building action cue, “Crabs Attack,” of pumping horns and swelling strings – and backing hollow percussion – from the opening scene of the season premier, which cleverly and subtly is leading us into a triumphant few notes of the show’s main theme.

In fact that’s a recurring strategy in the construction of this volume: the Bad Batch theme being woven subtly into the tracks, flowing nicely through the album like its lifeblood – repeated as early as the very next track, “Container Ship” – and occasionally popping up for an emotional hit or solid feeling of triumph.  

“Coup At Desix” brings us menacing and tense creepiness, before a lovely bit of military snare drum, which returns in force later, in “Stealth Mission,” and then we’re off in search of “Mysterious Treasure,” a much more general exploratory track with elements of emotion and wonder, from a light, almost comedic, touch through to a wondrous vocal choir element that helps stand alone as an adventure saga, which grows bigger and darker as it merges into “Align The Symbols,” which in turn teases us with a little bit of the old Death Star interior notes from A New Hope at the very end. This kind of pattern continues in the album, which also continues to innovate, with woodwinds in “Phen And Dooku’s Treasure.”

Throughout the album we get a great mix of emotional, mysterious, action packed, and occasionally lightweight tracks, mostly with a sense of mysterious adventure or hot pursuit. There are some truly thrilling passages such as “Trandoshans” in which the show’s theme itself becomes a fantastic action cue, while other stretches of successful pulse-pounding excitement include “We Need More Speed” and “Imperial Shipyard.”

In the second half of the album we do start to get more outright techno-styled tracks, but even these are really well done, blending in with the mystery, thrills, and action. “Droidekas And Commandos” is a good example. In fact the only place where the techno mixes really fail by going overboard and random is in the two closing source music tracks, “Cid’s Jukebox Mix Vol. 3” and “Racing Mix” – the latter especially saddening considering how good the “We Need More Speed” racing track is.

The Empire and the Sith are ever-present in this period of Star Wars, of course, and they get a good mixture of dark Sith-sounding mood tracks, military snare drums, and in several of the Coruscant-themed cues. This culminates in “The Emperor’s Play,” which successfully captures the tones, feel, and instrumentation of Palpatine’s themes from the movies, albeit without actually using any of his motif’s melody; a nice achievement.

Verdict: This is a great Star Wars soundtrack, and a great score to read or write to, perfectly combining humanity, driving action, mystery and deadly threat – and at this point “Heart Of The Mountain” really needs mentioned as a great example of driving threat too. If not for the final two tracks it’d be perfect. 9/10

David A McIntee