Tracklist:

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Review: It’s a given that sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why I pick up an album and though it isn’t entirely the case here, it’s pretty close. It was a comment on twitter that made me curious enough to check out Kämpfer’s soundtrack despite not having seen the anime mostly because I wanted to see how terrible a listening experience I’d get out of it. I was prepared to expect the worst out of Tatsuya Katou’s compositions, and yet, I still found myself pleasantly surprised by the sheer diversity of music that he serves up. Here is an album stuffed to the brim with different genres from rock to jazz to Spanish dances and organized somewhat haphazardly, but I could not resist this wonderful musical hodgepodge since it was so different from the albums I was used to. After the first run-through, I knew I had to have more and this time, listen to it and savor each note and chord as I went.

That was a mistake and my hopes did not survive a second listen.

The problem with Kampfer’s soundtrack materializes rather quickly if you pay any attention at all to its music and admittedly, I did not the first time through. Katou’s messing around with musical genres is a double-edged sword and while Kanno and Iwasaki are able to draw forth memorable music by doing so, Katou displays no such skill and ends up cutting himself badly because he’s simply not good enough to deliver wide-ranging music that consistently engages the listener.

And it shows when you listen to Kämpfer’s music. The task of composing a diverse musical portfolio taxes him to the limit and he doesn’t have a whole lot to give. In the early part of the track, there’s a glimmer of promise; the melody is solid, catchy even, and just when you enter the bridge, you come back face to face with the opening melody. Development? What development?

Take “Aa, Sakura-san” with its soft, jazz-lounge flavor or “Iya na Yokan’s” use of the flute backed by the rhythms for instance. Both of these tracks aren’t standouts, but they’re not bad either and had Katou been able to develop these pieces at all, we could have had an enjoyable if not groundbreaking soundtrack on our hands. But he does not. The snippets that you hear are pretty much all that the track consists of: an attention-grabbing introduction followed by the main melody which then proceeds to repeat itself. It skirts the edge of droning except the jazz/rock/whatever melody Katou uses more often than not keeps it from being too monotonous, but not by much.

Aa, Sakura-san
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Iya na Yokan
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
What a disappointment and a waste of potential! An eclectic album such as this should be bold, but fun, but alas, it falls far too short of what it could have been. As you can probably guess, most of the BGM all have this same problem. There are a few that buck the trend like “Koigokoro’s” pleasant piano melody and there are a few that are nonsensical like the weird, seal-like noises tacked on to the synth in “Natsuru no Kunou” that you wouldn’t ever touch, but those are the exceptions. There is not much that can redeem this soundtrack aside to provide us an excellent lesson on how to make jazz sound boring and uninspiring. It’s a lesson that I don’t care to hear more of at any rate.

Koigokoro
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Natsuru no Kunou
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Rating: Not Good