[Eirik Myhr]

2008 | Kevin Kiner — The Clone Wars (Movie)

It’s fairly obvious that Lucas and his padawan Dave Filoni wanted to go a purposefully different direction with the first SW animated movie, coming only three years after REVENGE OF THE SITH and what we thought at the time to be the end of the SW cinematic saga. The John Williams-inspired style is mixed with ethnic music inspirations, industrial hard rock, and synthetic elements. I think it works quite well, and the score is at times pretty entertaining to listen to. Most of the orchestral stuff is certainly performed by a real orchestra, with some exceptions near the end of the album which sound a bit more sample-based.
Some favourite tracks: Battle of Christophsis, Obi-Wan to the Rescue, Sneaking Under the Shield, B’omarr Monastery, Battle of Teth, The Jedi Council, General Loathsom / Ahsoka, Scaling the Cliff, Escape from the Monastery, Courtyard Fight.

2014 | Kevin Kiner — The Clone Wars – Seasons 1–6

A single, hour-long album compiles musical highlights from The Clone Wars seasons 1 through 6, but suprisingly, I found it less musically interesting than the album from The Clone Wars movie – even though I LOVE the series itself (much more so than the pilot movie). It is also obvious that the budget is not on the same level as the movie – some (but not all) of the music is quite obviously based on sample libraries, but it still sounds quite good (and hey, I know all about budget restraints leading to this sort of thing, as a composer myself). It is less forgiving that Kiner often quotes Williams’ Force Theme while getting one of the notes wrong! Musically there is really only one standout track here: the quite beautiful «Ahsoka Leaves».

2015 | Kevin Kiner — Rebels – Season One

REBELS started out as what seemed like a corporate commissioned «retro Star Wars» animated show, but gradually through the seasons grew into one of the most original, most lovable, most mythical and lore-heavy Star Wars stories told to date. In my humble opinion! Disappointingly, the score for Season 1 is suffering greatly to the fact that Kiner appears to have been instructed to reuse Williams’ music especially from A New Hope (maybe because the new Disney execs didn’t want anything to resemble the Prequel Trilogy at this point). So what we have here is largely a mishmash of Williams’ own cues, re-recorded for quite cheap-sounding sample libraries, while often getting the notes wrong. It’s quite a travesty. And a big shame that the bosses couldn’t trust Kiner to come up with his own music that told the ACTUAL story, instead of reusing Williams’ themes in scenes they were never meant for. A gross example of this practice is listening to a 3 minute track called «Ezra’s theme» which has 30 seconds of a new theme at first, while transforming into a bad copy of «Luke meets Obi-Wan» from Episode IV for one minute, then 30 seconds of the Force Theme (again with the same wrong note), and then the last minute is actually Princess Leia’s theme! I only blame Kiner for the wrong notes, I highly doubt that he wanted to do this instead of creating his own musical universe. And it is a real shame, since the show itself is fantastic. Luckly, it gets gradually better through the show’s four seasons.
Two OK tracks: Passed the Test, Familiar Pilot. And the main Rebels Theme is allright.

2015 | Gordy Haab — Battlefront

Now this sounds much more expensive – interesting that video games get all the big money now! Gordy Haab has obviously studied John Williams’ orchestrational style very closely, and there is obviously a real orchestra here. It is all expertly composed and flawlessly executed. HOWEVER, it is all style and no substance. It’s like listening to 13 tracks of pure Williams battle music, but everything is in «full power», there are no themes and no soul. The music shifts and turns constantly, from one chaotic scenario to the next, and I simply can’t find anything to hang on to. It quickly gets exhausting. There is one exception: The beautiful track «Approach to Landing Pad 13».

2015 | John Williams — Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Listening to Williams’ own Episode VII score quickly becomes a huge relief after the clever but all in all quite soulless BATTLEFRONT. This score has grown on me over the years. At first I was put off by the lack of more themes that were fully played out. Kylo Ren and The First Order only have short motifs and never full themes, for instance. But you have Rey’s Theme, which is very beautiful, and the Restistance march is kind of cool. It still can’t touch Williams’ own Prequel Trilogy scores, which I believe to be his highest musical achievement in the world of Star Wars.
Anyway, quite a LOT of highlights here for me: The Scavenger, Rey Meets BB-8, Rey’s Theme, The Girl with the Staff, Finn’s Confession, Maz’s Councel, The Starkiller, The Abduction, Han and Leia, March of the Resistance, Torn Apart, Farewell and The Trip, The Jedi Steps.

2016 | Kevin Kiner — Rebels – Season Two

It is equally interesting to jump right into Kiner’s second season of REBELS after enjoying Williams’ Episode VII. Kiner is still playing around in the soundscape of the original trilogy, but he has been given a bit more trust to do his own thing. Like in «Journey Into the Star Cluster» where he delves into neoclassical territory with a string quartet – very cool!! And the ending montage which ends the season is totally epic.
Track highlights: Twin Moons, Journey Into the Star Cluster, Pergill in Hyperspace, The Great Pergill, Where the Sun Sails and the Moon Walks, It’s Over Now.

2016 | Michael Giacchino — Rogue One

Unlike Thor, I quite like Michael Giacchino, and especially his work with Pixar. But I don’t think he was necessarily the right fit for Star Wars. Again, ROGUE ONE is a movie that I absolutely love, so the fact that the music could have been a lot better, kind of hurts. What I *do* like, is that the orchestra SOUNDS a lot like Episode IV era orchestra – the mix sounds as dry as it did back in 1977! What I *don’t* like is that Giacchino delivers some themes that sound quite bland, to be honest. And since the purpose of this film is to actually play right into Episode IV, he should be allowed to use the actual Williams themes for stuff like the Rebellion, Vader and the Empire, instead of composing «sound-alikes»… So this is actually the exact opposite problem as in REBELS, funnily enough! Having said that, his Empire theme is actually quite cool. And I also like that he cites the «extinct» Imperial theme from Episode IV (which was later replaced by The Imperial March in Episode V).
Track highlights: Star-Dust, Cargo Shuttle SW-0608, Your Father Would Be Proud, The Imperial Suite

2017 | Kevin Kiner — Rebels – Season Three

A mammoth 71 track album clocking in at over two hours, Kiner keeps developing more of his own voice into REBELS, as he should have been allowed to from the beginning. I like Thrawn’s motif on the church organ, and Sabine’s new theme when we delve deeper into her Mandalorian backstory is also nice. The amount of tracks is a bit overwhelming, and it’s hard to get an overview of any kind of album structure. I guess it has to be viewed more as documentation.
Track highlights: Ezra Suspended, Try Again, My Real Name is Sabine, Ambushing the Imperials, Thrawn’s Deductions, Mart Sato, Fighting Sister Sabine, Entrance to Underground, Convincing Sabine, Mandalorian Vambraces, Mon Mothma’s Speech, Kanan Implores Bendu, Sato’s Choice, Orbital Bombardment

That’s where I’m at now. I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of these, if you have them. 😀