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Posted: |
Sep 17, 2013 - 12:32 PM
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By: |
mastadge
(Member)
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I haven't seen any discussion of his recent scores, so I thought I'd start one. Hisaishi runs hot and cold with me, so I'm always hesitant to pay import prices for his music, but on a whim I recently picked up three, and happily I got plenty of bang for my buck!
The Wind Rises, his new score for Hayao Miyazaki. The film, according to IMDB, is "a look at the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed Japanese fighter planes during World War II." The score is a very warm, summery score to my ears; if music could be sepia-toned this would be!
Onna Nobunaga, which I think is a period drama, an alternate history in which the father of Oda Nobuhide, who unified Japan under the shogunate in the 16th century, had a daughter instead of a son to raise as his heir and successor. Whatever the story, the music is very nice. Just a rock-solid score that's wholly appropriate for the premise, with good drama and fine action -- it really stands out to me mostly because we've heard so little of this kind of thing lately. Highly recommended.
But the knockout of the bunch is NHK Shinkai Project (which translates as NHK Deep Sea Project), which seems to be for a TV documentary featuring giant squid and sharks. Whatever it is, it provided extremely fertile ground for Hisaishi, who stepped up with an extraordinarily beautiful score. He definitely went more the underwater ballet route than the giant-sea-monsters route, and the theme for the Giant Squid is extremely playful and joyful -- as is so much of the score. He captures the beauty and mystery of the sea, the joy of discovery, and the grace of the giant aquatic organisms. This will almost certainly be among my favorite scores of the year.
Has anyone heard any of these? How about other Hisiaishi scores from 2012 or 2013 that you'd care to recommend (or not!)?
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