Category: Song Reviews

Album: となりのトトロ サウンドトラック集 Picture this: you’re composing a three-minute and fifty-second piece of music that must sync perfectly with over fifty specific visual moments. Not approximately. Perfectly. Down to fractions of a second. This was the challenge Joe Hisaishi faced when creating the score for the pivotal scene where young Mei discovers Totoro in Miyazaki’s…

Album: 魔女の宅急便 サントラ音楽集 Picture this: a young witch soaring through the sky on a deck brush, rescuing the boy she’s fallen for while an entire city watches in awe. It’s the triumphant finale of Studio Ghibli’s “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” and the music swelling beneath this magical moment is Joe Hisaishi’s “Deck Brush Rendezvous” (デッキブラシでランデブー). This…

Album: 魔女の宅急便 サントラ音楽集 Picture this: Joe Hisaishi, fresh off a plane from New York, walks into a meeting room with Studio Ghibli executives. The next day, he’s already in the recording studio. Two days later, he’s conducting a full orchestra for what would become one of anime’s most beloved soundtracks. This wasn’t just any project—this…

Album: 紅の豚 サウンドトラック Sometimes the most beautiful music emerges from pure coincidence—or perhaps what we call destiny. Joe Hisaishi’s “Fio—Seventeen” from the Porco Rosso soundtrack exists at the intersection of two artistic visions that found each other through an almost mystical alignment of timing and inspiration. While Hayao Miyazaki was developing his tale of a…

Album: 魔女の宅急便 サントラ音楽集 In the quiet moments of Kiki’s Delivery Service, when the young witch loses her powers and questions her very identity, something extraordinary happens through sound. Joe Hisaishi’s composition “Shinpiteki na E” (The Mysterious Painting) emerges not just as background music, but as musical therapy—a sonic representation of the human capacity for self-healing…

Album: 天空の城ラピュタ サウンドトラック ～飛行石の謎～ In the summer of 1986, composer Joe Hisaishi faced an unprecedented challenge that would reshape his approach to film scoring forever. Working on the soundtrack for Hayao Miyazaki’s “Castle in the Sky” (Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta), Hisaishi committed himself to achieving something remarkable: perfect synchronization between musical flow and animated movement.…

Album: 天空の城ラピュタ イメージアルバム ～空から降ってきた少女～ Standing in London’s legendary Air Studios in March 1986, Joe Hisaishi faced a peculiar challenge. The Japanese composer was putting the finishing touches on an image album for a film that existed only in Hayao Miyazaki’s imagination – Castle in the Sky. Among the pieces he was perfecting was “Taiju” (The…

Album: 紅の豚 イメージアルバム In the world of film scoring, serendipity rarely strikes twice. Yet for Joe Hisaishi, the composer behind Studio Ghibli’s most beloved soundtracks, 1992 brought an extraordinary convergence of artistic vision that would reshape his approach to cinematic music forever. While Hayao Miyazaki was developing his romantic adventure ‘Porco Rosso’ (The Crimson Pig),…

Album: となりのトトロ サウンドトラック集 The gentle piano melody that opens “Okaasan” (Mother) from My Neighbor Totoro’s soundtrack carries within it one of cinema’s most profound musical experiments. While audiences worldwide have been moved by this tender composition, few realize they’re experiencing the result of Joe Hisaishi’s radical departure from conventional film scoring—a creative risk that nearly…