Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack

Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack, Yoko Kanno, 1998

After a somewhat rocky start, which initially did not even see all episodes broadcast, Cowboy Bebop went on to become one of anime’s major cultural landmarks on both sides of the Pacific. Setting itself apart from almost anything else produced for television animation in either Japan or the United States, Cowboy Bebop fused disparate genres and visual idioms in ways that helped introduce many Western viewers to anime. Its cross-cultural appeal stemmed partly from its use of tropes already familiar to Western audiences: the Western, pulp fiction, film noir, and cyberpunk, all folded into a space-opera framework. Shinichirō Watanabe’s creation proved popular enough to spawn a film continuation and to occupy a permanent place on countless ‘best of’ lists in the years that followed.

As the title itself suggests, music played a crucial role in the series’ eclectic identity. Unsurprisingly, the collaboration between director and composer on Cowboy Bebop was closer than usual, and the result was one of the most distinctive and instantly recognisable anime scores ever written. After her breakthrough with the orchestral fantasy masterpiece The Vision of Escaflowne, Yoko Kanno changed gears in spectacular fashion. Taking jazz, in its many permutations, as the foundation of Cowboy Bebop, she branched out into a dizzying variety of styles, from blues and metal to country and opera, matching the series’ freewheeling aesthetic at every turn. In the process, Cowboy Bebop cemented Kanno’s status as one of anime’s foremost composers, seemingly capable of mastering any genre she touched.

With the series rescued from development hell by Bandai Visual, it was hardly surprising that a game adaptation appeared even before Cowboy Bebop had become such an emphatic success. Released for Sony’s PlayStation by BEC just a month after the anime first aired, the game was considerably less inventive than its source. Taking its cue from titles such as Star Fox, it reimagined Cowboy Bebop as a straightforward third-person rail shooter, with players piloting Spike Spiegel’s Swordfish II. Released only in Japan, the game seems to have left little impression. Thankfully, however, it did receive an original score from Kanno rather than a simple reworking of the television soundtrack. Curiously, that score never received an official album release, which is highly unusual within Kanno’s body of work.

Where would Kanno take the Cowboy Bebop sound world after already exploring so many genres in the anime? As it turns out, her choice is not especially surprising. To underscore the game’s shooter action, she turns primarily to heavy metal. While the game soundtrack offers few stylistic surprises and is nowhere near as creative as the television score, it still occupies a distinctive place within Kanno’s catalogue. Nowhere else in her work does she focus so single-mindedly on metal. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex certainly had its share of snarling guitars, but in a much grimier, more industrial register.

As a result, the Cowboy Bebop game soundtrack largely lacks the emotional and tonal subtlety that defines so much of Kanno’s finest work. Her aim here is different: to write a set of melodic, exuberant metal instrumentals, and in that she succeeds effortlessly. This music is not especially profound, but Kanno’s arrangements remain as dense and carefully shaped as one would expect. That craftsmanship allows the cues to move fluidly between sections and to sustain their relatively substantial running times. The linear rail-shooter structure also helps, giving Kanno the freedom to write pieces with a more clearly fixed duration than is often possible in games.

“Stage 1/2 (Part One)” and “Stage 1/2 (Part Two)” quickly demonstrate just how accessible and enjoyable this soundtrack is. Launching into a searing full-band attack, complete with rock organ, the music soon gives Kanno herself a chance to step to the fore on keyboards, audibly relishing the opportunity to deliver big, glossy 1980s synth hooks that bring the score surprisingly close to hair-metal territory. At this early stage, the soundtrack may even be Kanno’s most overtly pop-inflected work, driven by a steady supply of catchy, anthemic melodies that become sky-high declarations of victory once propelled by the blazing metal backdrop.

In fact, most of the tracks sound like roaring band jams designed to keep the adrenaline high while giving individual players room to shine. “Stage 1/2 (Part Two)” is especially indebted to delicious 1980s excess, relying on its pop-infused groove to bridge the gap between gleaming synth hooks and the grittier attack of its metal instrumentation. Here again, Kanno’s keyboard writing focuses largely on the repetition of short, memorable phrases.

That said, the extended keyboard solo in the second half of “Stage 1/2 (Part Two)” already hints at the direction the score is about to take. There is no major stylistic rupture, but once “Level 3/4 (Part One)” opens with a triumphant synth fanfare clearly indebted to Van Halen’s “Jump”, the music begins to make more room for overtly virtuosic keyboard writing, nudging the score towards prog metal. This is hardly surprising given Kanno’s fondness for densely layered arrangements and her formidable playing skills. Thankfully, “Level 3/4 (Part One)” never loses the soaring hooks and rush of melodic adrenaline that make this soundtrack such a pleasure.

The synth writing shifts again on “Level 3/4 (Part Two)”, now drawing on space rock’s more relaxed sense of wonder and strangeness. Floating wordless female voices provide a welcome contrast to the still tightly packed arrangement and usher in a majestically gliding central section. From there, the band launches into a ferocious closing stretch full of neo-classical soloing that still retains a welcome streak of cheerful melodicism. Kanno pushes this tendency further on “Level 5/6 (Part One)”, quietly nudging the music towards power metal by layering more overtly operatic female vocals over its theatrical metal writing. “Level 5/6 (Part Two)”, by contrast, simply goes for the jugular, emerging as the album’s most straightforward chugging rocker and delivering all the showboating and head-banging intensity one could want.

There is one further aspect to the soundtrack, and its success is more mixed. Each level cue concludes with a boss segment, and it is here that Kanno sounds somewhat less assured, largely because she has to write for encounters with no clearly defined endpoint. The earlier examples do not fare too badly. While the boss passages on “Level 1/2 (Part One)” and “Level 1/2 (Part Two)” do not develop much, they are sharp enough and brief enough to avoid becoming irritating. In “Level 1/2 (Part Two)”, Kanno even experiments to some degree, combining syncopated big-drum beats with yet another 1970s-style prog-rock keyboard solo. Later on, however, these boss sections become more humdrum, drifting along with a rather anonymous martial flavour and disappointingly vague cinematic aspirations. Thankfully, this is only a minor blemish on what is otherwise another outstanding entry in Kanno’s discography: a true hidden gem, and yet another demonstration of just how many genres she could make sound entirely her own.