This 2002 Jinguji Saburo soundtrack commemorates the 15th anniversary of the detective series, as well as the "Innocent Black" installment. It comes out fighting with "Scene of Murder," a fast-paced opening with a killer descending bassline. The soundtrack then continues on with the urban, smoky, lounge jazz style compositions with plenty of smooth piano and saxophone usage. The sound quality on the CD is quite good and all the instruments have great clarity within their arrangements.

Like other Jinguji Saburo soundtracks I've listened to, jazz is the genre of choice. The pacing of the music is also quite leisurely, but the majority of tracks are under 3 minutes long. The urban jazz styled music of classic detective and film noir movies is a trademark of Jinguji Saburo, and this soundtrack definitely fits the bill. However, I have yet to hear the series' music break out of its compositional comfort zone. Jazz music is very adventurous music fitting for complex detective adventures, and the music presented here is quite safe. The opening track grabbed my attention right away, then the soundtrack faded after that. I would call this soundtrack competent, but largely unmemorable. The music seems like it would punctuate the scenes and events in the game very well, but is a bit flat when taken outside the context of the game.

Reviewed by: Neal Chandran