Prior to the Kanuchi -Chapter of White Wing- soundtrack, I was completely unaware of both composer Naotoshi Nishino and the game itself. However, I am pleased that I had the opportunity to spend some time with the soundtrack, as I found that Nishino’s work made for a pleasant, though perhaps forgettable, listen. As a whole, the disc offers a relaxing sound with few deviations. It should be noted that the game also has a vocal track which was not included on this album, which is a shame since I thought that it was an excellent tune.
One issue I had with the soundtrack as a whole, though, was that many of the tracks seemed forgettable or same-ish. There are many songs that lacked any particularly memorable melodies, and even after ten listens through the album, I’ve found it difficult to recall many of them.
The introductory track, White Wing, is an excellent opener. It offers a pleasant sound and presents itself as the type of song I would expect to hear in an introductory video or cutscene. The next track, Seimei, follows in these footsteps, and is a well-composed, if somewhat unmemorable “beginning of the adventure”-sounding song. The third track, Kurato, opens up with some relaxing acoustic sounds, and quickly grows into a tribal “home village” type of sound. As the first few tracks on the album, I felt that they did a good job setting the aural stage for what was to come – however, they also foreshadowed the problem of being unmemorable that I pointed out earlier, as I still can’t recall them without hearing them.
That isn’t to say that there are no standouts, though, particularly among the character themes. The fifth track, Shin, is a delightful song that has managed to stay stuck in my head. The melody is great, and I really got a sense of “we’re setting out on a journey” from it. Immediately following Shin, the song Ouba is without a doubt my favorite song on the entire disc. The eighth track, Kugami, is a beautifully peaceful song that opens with a soothing string sound that branches out into a full and engaging basis for all of the other instruments in the track.
The strict adherence to the homey, peaceful, soothing theme is broken up somewhat later in the album, and this is exemplified by another of the better tracks, Berserker. It opens up with a little choir singing, and expands with an orchestrated percussion and string background. Perhaps it was just because of the large number of laid-back tracks on the album, but I found this song to be a breath of fresh air, offering some much-needed intensity that the other tracks had been lacking.
Thematically, all I could take away from this album was that it was very soothing. None of the tracks were bad by any means, but many of them were not exceptional in any way either. Shin, Ouba, Kugami, and Berserker were the standouts, and I find that they are the only songs I am able to recall easily. So, all in all, I enjoyed this soundtrack and found it to be worth a listen, but I don’t see it getting many listens from me in the future.
