Kinect Star Wars Soundtrack

Kinect Star Wars Soundtrack, Gordy Haab / Kyle Newmaster, 2012

It is curious how little lasting pleasure music fans could derive from the soundtracks to so many Star Wars games. Often, they were ultimately compilations or adaptations of John Williams’ immortal film scores – in which case, it felt as if one might as well go straight to the source and buy the original soundtrack albums. Of course, a fair number of Star Wars games also received original scores. But from Clint Bajakian’s Dark Forces to Jeremy Soule’s Knights of the Old Republic, Frank Klepacki’s Empire at War, and Mark Griskey’s The Force Unleashed titles, the results – though often competent in their evocation of Williams’ signature franchise sound – frequently suffered from a lack of substance and felt underdeveloped.

Enter Kinect Star Wars, probably the last game one would expect to yield a soundtrack of any distinction, given its thoroughly negative critical reception. But score collectors willing to look past the game’s deficiencies would find an orchestral score that managed the seemingly impossible. Here, at last, was music whose quality genuinely matched Williams’ classic Star Wars film scores.

The architects of this small miracle were the young composers Gordy Haab and Kyle Newmaster. With credits on various television productions, short films, and direct-to-video titles, the two had already worked together on Star Wars: The Old Republic as part of a larger team of composers. While The Old Republic produced one of the better original Star Wars game scores, its quality was still uneven.

By contrast, the Kinect Star Wars soundtrack is consistently excellent and a significant step up from The Old Republic. In fact, the highest compliment one can pay it is this: if this music suddenly appeared one day as another hour of previously unreleased Star Wars material by John Williams, no one would bat an eyelid. It really is that good. Haab and Newmaster do an outstanding job of recreating Williams’ musical mannerisms and his extraordinarily dense orchestral writing. At the same time, they are careful not to overuse his established themes – a mistake made by The Force Unleashed scores. Overt thematic references appear only sparingly and are never asked to carry the music on their own.

Outside those references, Haab and Newmaster generate a downright frightening number of ideas of their own. There is even more happening here than on an already packed-to-the-rafters score like Michael Giacchino’s Secret Weapons Over Normandy. Keep in mind, too, that the Kinect Star Wars soundtrack consists almost entirely of often blazingly fast action material. It is one of the most technically demanding game scores ever written, and the London Symphony Orchestra acquit themselves flawlessly.

This is a one-hour thrill ride that rarely changes velocity. That Haab and Newmaster nonetheless keep the music fresh and consistently exciting is positively astounding. Their handling of orchestral counterpoint and of the ensemble’s different sections is exemplary. What is more, each composition emerges as a fully shaped showpiece for the orchestra. This bombardment of action music never feels like a mere collection of ostinati and staccato rhythms, nor like a succession of rousing moments that fail to develop any sense of direction – both common failings of action writing in game music.

Instead, the Kinect Star Wars soundtrack is a marvel of orchestral adrenaline that still knows how to pace its furious energy. As one would expect, the excitement never slackens in the pieces written for the game’s racing component. Yet even these cues know when to ease off briefly before surging back ahead, ultimately outstripping even immensely accomplished orchestral blitzes like Total Annihilation. The racing music also allows the soundtrack to close with jaw-dropping intensity. Final track “Sebulba and the Boonta Eve Classic” confirms this score as one of the gold standards of orchestral writing in game music.

This constant frenzy does not stifle the score’s storytelling ambitions either, and these are especially prominent across the album’s first eight tracks. Take “Mak Pra and the Resistance Fighters”. It builds its lumbering opening march by adding counter-rhythms and fanfares until the tension becomes almost unbearable. Then all of it suddenly drops away, and out of nowhere an a cappella choir enters with near-religious solemnity. Elsewhere, Haab and Newmaster provide enough outbursts of romantic heroism in their brass writing to make this music not merely thrilling, but genuinely rousing.

The soundtrack’s crowning achievement, however, lies in its three Rancor Rampage cues. These accompany a mode in which players control an out-of-control Rancor, and here the composers find room to innovate by adding a genuinely new musical facet to the Star Wars universe. By turbocharging their already frenetic action style with carnivalesque energy and madcap circus rhythms, “Jabba’s Runway Rancor” and “Rejection Rampage” become the soundtrack’s most intense pieces, sounding at any given breathless, electrifying moment as though they might spin entirely out of control. It is the virtuoso climax of a masterful creation – a score for the ages.