Martintox Presents: Disorder Reviews
Rating System
----
COWBOY BEBOP TV SOUNDTRACKS
Rating System
I have a new album and a new Disorder Reviews blog. I have recently recovered from a stroke, and I am now in serious debt.
----
COWBOY BEBOP TV SOUNDTRACKS
Artist: The Seatbelts
Genre: TV soundtrack, jazz (hard bop, big band, swing), blues, folk, lounge, drum & bass, choral, jazz pop, pop rock
Label: Victor Entertainment
Producer: Yoko Kanno
COWBOY BEBOP
Released: 21 May 1998
Length: 53:27
Best Track: Space Lion
TRACKS: 1) Tank!; 2) Rush; 3) Spokey Dokey; 4) Bad Dog No Biscuits; 5) Cat Blues; 6) Cosmos; 7) Space Lion; 8) Waltz for Zizi; 9) Piano Black; 10) Pot City; 11) Too Good Too Bad; 12) Car 24; 13) The Egg and I; 14) Felt Tip Pen; 15) Rain; 16) Digging My Potato; 17) Memory
COWBOY BEBOP: NO DISC
Released: 21 October 1998
Length: 53:43
Best Track: Green Bird
TRACKS: 1) American Money; 2) Fantasie Sign; 3) Don't Bother None; 4) Vitamin A; 5) Live in Baghdad; 6) Cats on Mars; 7) Want It All Back; 8) Bindy; 9) You Make Me Cool; 10) Vitamin B; 11) Green Bird; 12) Elm; 13) Vitamin C; 14) Gateway; 15) The Singing Sea; 16) The Egg and You; 17) Forever Broke; 18) Power of Kung Food Remix
COWBOY BEBOP: BLUE
Released: 1 May 1999
Length: 1:10:54
Best Track: Blue
TRACKS: 1) Blue; 2) Words That We Couldn't Say; 3) Autumn in Ganymede; 4) Mushroom Hunting; 5) Go Go Cactus Man; 6) Chicken Bone; 7) The Real Man; 8) NY Rush; 9) Adieu; 10) Call Me Call Me; 11) Ave Maria; 12) Stella by Moor; 13) Flying Teapot; 14) Wo Qui Non Coin; 15) Road to the West; 16) Farewell Blues; 17) See You Space Cowboy
----
Since the term "anime" merely refers to animated shows and movies from Japan, it's hard to pretend that such works are beholden to a particular genre or style simply as a result of this distinction. Even so, they often stand out from your average Western material due to the many cultural differences behind their creation; a fair amount of viewers develop a distaste for anime precisely because they have difficulty bridging this divide. It may well be for this reason, then, that Cowboy Bebop has enjoyed so much success overseas, particularly in America: not only is it devoid of Japan's cultural quirks, it almost entirely takes root in the conventions of Western media. The premise of spacefaring bounty hunters is textbook space western, and the show's emphasis on character-specific arcs takes heavy influence from film noir -- no wonder it's considered a prime gateway into anime. Mind you, it wouldn't be a classic if it wasn't genuinely very good in its own right: its greatest achievement may be its excellent use of a mostly episodic format, covering a wide range of locations and characters that add prodigious depth to the futuristic setting, even when they have little relation to the main cast. Furthermore, these disconnected stories (in addition to an overarching plot involving main protagonist Spike Spiegel) sum up to a fascinating study of the effect of the past on people's lives: some are able to move on from their prior mistakes, but those who cannot will lose everything to try and correct them -- assuming these mistakes don't catch up to them first.
Equally as iconic as the show itself is its soundtrack, arguably the lynchpin of its genre-blending aesthetic. Its lead composer, Yoko Kanno, has kept herself very busy over the years by providing music for anime such as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Space Dandy, not to mention video games, movies, and live-action shows; nonetheless, her work for Cowboy Bebop is easily the most acclaimed part of her pedigree. She is the mastermind behind The Seatbelts -- not so much a band, I'd say, as it is a revolving cast of instrumentalists and vocalists just as diverse as the material they've performed for the show and its associated movie. Having not yet watched the latter, I'll stick to the music from the anime itself, or more precisely the three soundtrack albums released between 1998 and 1999, as they already give an adequate idea of Kanno's versatility as a composer. (I'll also overlook the 5-disc compilation Cowboy Bebop CD Box; while a fair share of its songs are unavailable elsewhere, many others have appeared on prior releases.)
Two issues are prevalent across many soundtrack albums: first, unlike studio records, the point is generally to be an exhaustive archive of all the material used in the work of origin, meaning that songs will often also be sequenced by order of appearance. Second, the compositions therein don't always function on their own: it's not unlikely for a soundtrack to contain short incidental cuts or variations of its main themes, either of which can greatly vary in quality. A best-case example is Blade Runner: seeing as there is so much music in the film itself, the 1-CD version of the soundtrack is hardly exhaustive, but it contains most of the essential songs and then some, and its one variation, "Tears in Rain", reprises the melody of "Main Titles" in a radical enough way so as to be seen as a composition of its own as opposed to an alternate version. For a worst-case example, Undertale may have some genuinely very good cuts, but the OST is an awfully tiring experience, since much of its 2-hour length is a result of endless incidental stings that last under a minute, to say nothing of its endless reuse of the same 20 melodies or so; the music works just fine in the game, but the redundancy of the material is hard to tolerate outside of that context. With this in mind, the Cowboy Bebop soundtracks stand out because of their unique packaging of the show's music: instead of a big box set, the songs are spread out non-chronologically across three different discs, each of which has a specific theme. While a lot of cuts were consequently left out for other releases, the end result is that these albums flow rather well, offering appropriate emotional ups and downs while generally avoiding too much repetition in terms of melody or style.
[cut-off due to 10,000 character limit]