There have been quite a few Origin related Kickstarters over recent months that should be delivering the finished goodies imminently. One that arrived a few weeks back was the latest Wing Commander CD from Wing Commander 3-5 composer George Oldziey. His original CD was a full orchestral recording of some of his Wing Commander music and very good it was too. This latest one is a more modest jazz interpretation of some of the Wing Commander themes recorded with his Latin jazz band for the first half of the album, along with some more conventionally re-orchestrated versions (recorded on a high end synthesizer) in the second half.

I wasn’t sure the world was ready for jazzed up versions of Wing Commander music but I was clearly always going to back the campaign. The CD starts with a swinging version of the Kilrathi theme music. Listening to such a familiar tune altered like this does bring the disco version of the Star Wars theme to mind and I’ll confess to finding the whole notion a little amusing. It really shouldn’t work but somehow does, it’s actually not bad at all. The other jazz tracks center around the Wing 3 bar music which is a more obvious target for a jazz group and it all fits quite nicely.

The re-orchestrated tracks are more up my street if I’m honest all sounding much better than the original recordings. The Wing Commander 3 & 4 music is some of the best of the era. Chris Roberts should have got George to write the music for the movie if you ask me – I might have liked it a bit more. I can’t see me listening to this all that often but it’s certainly a bit of fun and George has delivered everything he promised once again. I’m very much looking forward to backing the next one if there is one.