Kind of Blue is a more modern installment of the Jinguji Saburo series of detective visual novels. As expected, the musical genre of choice here is jazz, as lounge jazz music has been a strong aspect in the series’ soundtracks. A few tunes here offer more modern interpretations of jazz and lounge music, but leisurely paced old-school lounge jazz is still the order of the day here. However, I found the more modern sounding tracks like track 1 and track 20 to be the more interesting ones on the disc. The soundtrack is still the same old same old that I’ve heard in other Jinguji Saburo soundtracks and I’m frankly getting tired of this stale formula.
One notable feature in the soundtrack is the four versions of “Blue, Over the Blue.” There’s one version sung in English, one version sung in Japanese (both of these are sampled), a piano trio version, and a live instrumental version. The song was rather boring and the English version was incoherently sung and the vocalist sounded very awkward. The singer definitely felt more comfortable doing the Japanese vocals. The instrumental versions of the song were definitely better than their vocalized counterparts.
I’ll say the same thing here that I’ve said before about the Jinguji Saburo soundtracks. The music is competent and offers that detective film noir feel, but it still doesn’t stray too far from its comfort zone and many compositions sound like copies of previous Jinguji Saburo compositions. Mysteries are adventurous, jazz music is adventurous, and the music offered in the Jinguji Saburo series is far from adventurous. It probably works well within the context of the games, but is rather bland on its own. Does this sound familiar? Well, detectives can experience deja vu and the can certainly feel the blues, but “Kind of Blue” is right because blues without passion is shallow.
