FILMMUSIK VOL. V

This one is in my view Irmin Schmidt's weakest album (the good thing of which is obviously that from here onward things get better again). It is mostly easy listening, which of course in the world of prog reviewers isn't a very good thing, and it suffers most from the typical soundtracks issue that what works well in a film doesn't necessarily have a good life on its own. The signature piece and single of this one is another German TV series title track, the opener "Zu Nah Dran" of "Reporter", sung by the lead actress Renan Demirkan, who is a great actress indeed but not remotely as exciting as a singer. It is an OK tune though, no complaints there. The problem is that the rest of the album is rather uninteresting. Instrumental, often based on the same theme as other material from the same soundtrack (four different ones are represented here), and then the musicians play around a bit, a sound is dropped here and there, and that's pretty much it. OK, it's still Trilok Gurtu and Michael Karoli, and also the others are good (Jaki Liebezeit only appears on Zu Nah Dran and doesn't show much there), and the whole thing is fair enough as a listen, but still, I get the impression that much less effort was invested here than in the best volumes of the series, both composition- and execution-wise. Almost all of this is still on the big Filmmusik Anthology 1, 2 & 3 sampler, but there's much better stuff on that one, too. 2.3 stars.