Category: Song Reviews

Album: 紅の豚 サウンドトラック What happens when a director hands his composer six mysterious poems and asks him to create music for a story about a cursed pig pilot? In the case of Joe Hisaishi and Hayao Miyazaki’s collaboration on ‘Porco Rosso,’ it resulted in one of Studio Ghibli’s most sophisticated musical scores, exemplified perfectly by…

Album: 風の谷のナウシカ イメージアルバム 鳥の人… What happens when a composer abandons conventional wisdom about film scoring and instead creates music that flows through a character’s perspective rather than manipulating audience emotions? The answer lies in Joe Hisaishi’s groundbreaking work on “Tori no Hito (Bird Person – Nausicaä’s Theme)” from the Nausicaä of the Valley of the…

Album: となりのトトロ サウンドトラック集 Picture this: Hayao Miyazaki, for the first time in his career, taking full control of a film’s musical direction. It was 1988, during the production of ‘My Neighbor Totoro,’ and Joe Hisaishi found himself in uncharted territory. ‘Miyazaki was leading the music meetings himself,’ Hisaishi recalls, ‘and he kept saying Takahata was…

Album: 紅の豚 サウンドトラック In the smoky ambiance of an Adriatic seaside bar, a piano plays a gentle jazz melody that seems to carry the weight of memory itself. This is how audiences first encounter “Times of Wind – When People Could Be Human” from Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack to Porco Rosso, a composition that would become…

Album: 天空の城ラピュタ サウンドトラック ～飛行石の謎～ When Joe Hisaishi sat down to compose music for Castle in the Sky in 1986, he made a revolutionary decision that would transform how animated films approached the marriage of sound and image. His track ‘On the Tiger Moth’ (Taigāmosu-gō ni te) serves as a perfect example of this new methodology…

Album: 風の谷のナウシカ イメージアルバム 鳥の人… What happens when a composer abandons the traditional rules of film scoring? Joe Hisaishi discovered the answer while crafting ‘Sentou’ (Battle) for Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’s image album, Bird Person. This piece exemplifies a radical departure from conventional film music philosophy that would reshape how we think about…

Album: 紅の豚 サウンドトラック What happens when a celebrated composer decides to poke fun at military pomposity through music? Joe Hisaishi’s “Flying boatmen” from the Porco Rosso soundtrack provides a delightful answer, serving as both musical comedy and character study wrapped in the golden age of jazz. The track functions as the theme for the Mamma…

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～ In the depths of Studio Ghibli’s creative process, where imagination meets reality, Joe Hisaishi faced an unusual challenge in 1986. How do you transform a composer’s notes about heavy pickaxes, stubborn stones, and bitter ale into music that speaks to children’s hearts? The answer lies in ‘Miners’ (鉱夫), a track from…

Album: となりのトトロ イメージ・ソング集 When Studio Ghibli’s ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ premiered in 1988, audiences experienced a musical landscape that felt both intimate and expansive, perfectly capturing the wonder of childhood discovery. What many don’t realize is that this sonic foundation existed before a single frame was animated, emerging from one of the most unconventional approaches in…