Samurai Champloo Music Record: Departure Review

Battlecry is the reason most people know his name. Shing02 raps over a horn stab and a drum break that mimics a sword being drawn, and the thing has enough momentum to carry a whole series over its opening credits without wearing out across twenty six weeks. The rest is a soundtrack in the honest sense, cues built to sit under action rather than command a room, and judged that way it is superb.

Aruarian Dance takes a Laurindo Almeida guitar phrase and makes it feel like heat rising off a road. Fighting for Survival has genuine tension. Kujaku and Mystline are pure atmosphere. What holds it below his proper albums is shape: several tracks are short, functional and clearly written to a picture, and the vocal features are scattered rather than integrated. It works far better as an album than a soundtrack has any right to, and it is still a collection of pieces rather than a statement.