> Last post - https://www.filmtracks.com/scoreboard/forum.cgi?read=128404
> See my profile for earlier posts.
> -----------------------
> As we move into the 1990s, we find Hisaishi now established as a major
> composer in Japan’s film industry, one quite comfortable with both
> symphonic and contemporary modes and fluent in both rapturous melody and
> repetitive minimalism. The elegant piano that was often prominently in the
> sound mix was practically becoming a calling card for him at this point.
> That familiarity would start to turn into a double-edged sword at times,
> as Hisaishi would deliver some works that occasionally recycled elements
> of his hits of the 1980s; one can’t help but wonder if, like composers in
> Hollywood once they’ve made a name for themselves, he started getting gigs
> on the basis of being asked to sound like himself. But he would also start
> working with new people who would push his music in interesting new
> directions, including the only director aside from Hayao Miyazaki who
> would later have albums dedicated to the music Hisaishi wrote for his
> films. By the end of the decade, he’d won Japan’s equivalent of the Oscar
> for best original score five times.
> ---------
> Tasmania Story / Tasumania monogatari (1990) - ***
> Discovery #14.
> Hisaishi’s score for this film about a kid visiting his Tasmanian
> tiger-obsessed father on (you guessed it) Tasmania is a bit of a mishmash.
> There’s a lot of electronic and instrumental music that was the first
> instance of the composer starting to sound a bit stylistically derivative;
> expect to be reminded of Castle in the Sky and Totoro here
> and there. On the other hand, there are moments of grandeur, not quite
> what you get in John Barry’s Out of Africa or Georges Delerue’s
> woefully underheard The African, but still fairly sweeping. The
> album will reward your patience as towards its end you’ll find some
> marvelous orchestral outbursts related to the score’s lullaby waltz theme.
> As with 1989’s The Universe Within, the final theme suite from the
> album will be enough for most listeners. Hisaishi would return to it on
> two albums done over the next two years, including a grand arrangement for
> a 1992 concert complete with a John Williams-like coda.
> At the time, Japan’s Academy Film Prize (comparable to America’s Academy
> Award) was awarded to composers for their output across the entire year,
> and Hisaishi’s work on this - along with three other scores from 1989 and
> 1990, none of which got album releases - secured him his first nomination
> for the award.
> Score album -
> https://open.spotify.com/album/7kmtT5rXCDUYvUC6RhVkuQ?si=hJqrL0NxRBKB6NIVYjWx4A
> -----------------------
> Chizuko’s Younger Sister / Futari (1991) - *½
> Discovery #15.
> Hisaishi reunited with Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of The Drifting
> Classroom, for a drama about a girl who encounters the ghost of her
> dead sibling…or does she? At its most pleasant, the score’s use of
> synthetic pan flute evokes what Hans Zimmer sounded like when he channeled
> Morricone in his earlier days, an element that had also factored into a
> few parts of the earlier Tasmania Story. Alas, the pitfalls of
> Hans’ early days also come to mind, as the suspenseful moments are oddly
> generic and hard on the ears, particularly the bass pulses and the painful
> moments of sampled strings which give the film a cheap “TV movie of the
> week” vibe. The weaker parts of Tasmania Story sound like an
> orchestra by comparison, and the twelfth album track features shrill
> chirps that rival The Dragon’s Den from the Castle in the
> Sky image album as one of the most obnoxious sequences the composer
> ever wrote.
> In a time when Hisaishi’s CDs usually ran well under an hour, it was by
> far the longest Hisaishi album to date, with a 74-minute runtime
> not justified by its content that somehow created a worse listening
> experience than what we got for The Drifting Classroom four years
> earlier. Fans (if they exist) may grumble that I forgot to mention the
> occasional use of the composer’s trademark elegant piano sounds, but there
> are umpteen other, better scores for scratching that itch.
> Still, the composer came up with a decent-enough theme that evokes a sense
> of longing, almost like a sad warm-up act to a similar idea he would
> realize in superior fashion in an animated film the following year. In
> 1997 he rearranged it for his album Works I with the LPO,
> delivering an enchanting five minutes of soulful strings, impressive
> woodwind harmonies, and even some solo harp. It’s a miracle that anything
> like that emerged from this dreadfully mundane score.
> Score album - https://youtu.be/KM_XbsUIAP4?si=VkxoTDZ38GrU_1gV
> Works I Two of Us -
> https://open.spotify.com/track/5AVF8tfzO0M4uoxRAFFDEm?si=07cc37f948c645fa
> -----------------------
> I Am (1991) - Not rated
> Discovery #16.
> The first of several albums / scores Hisaishi worked on at Abbey Road in
> London. Most of the tracks appear to be original creations (at least in
> name), though the opening piece is credited as the main theme from the
> 1991 film Deer Friend and another piece covers material from
> Tasmania Story. Of the few tracks I could find, the final piece is
> by far the best, with the composer lacing his pop-orchestral mannerisms
> with some of the in-your-face romanticism of Georges Delerue.
> The CD’s most intriguing element is its cover which features a photo of
> the composer from when he still had hair!
> Deer’s Wind - https://youtu.be/GYb_US-egnE?si=trFsQh0di-_l38lY
> Silencio de Parc Güell -
> https://youtu.be/9Ictwigy-98?si=8lHtXBFjPHhsv2HB
> White Island - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZZdddjDDIw
> -----------------------
> A Scene at the Sea / Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi (1991) -
> ****½
> Discovery #17.
> Actor-director Takeshi Kitano pivoted after helming two crime films to a
> less violent (but no less tragic) drama about a deaf couple and how their
> lives are changed by the discovery of a surfboard. “My [prior films didn’t
> get] good reviews. My producer advised me to work with Joe Hisaishi, a
> renowned composer. I accepted because it was a positive thing for the
> film. I showed Hisaishi some images from the film and I asked him to do
> the music, giving him a free hand. His music helped a lot. If this film
> works, it owes a lot to Hisaishi’s music. It really is a great tune.”
> After years of Hisaishi tinkering with the kind of minimalism and
> electronics that Terry Riley and Ryuichi Sakamoto had popularized,
> including only two years earlier with The Universe Within, on A
> Scene at the Sea he finally found a version of that sound that was
> undeniably his own. Taking a simple theme and weaving it over hypnotic
> repeated percussion, guitar, violin solos blown in from Curved Air,
> new age vocal duets, the composer’s own keyboard playing, and whatever
> sounds he could summon from his Fairlight synthesizer, Hisaishi whipped up
> a soothing, engaging, and utterly unique love theme, its lengthy
> album-opening arrangement Silent Love one of the essential
> film score tracks of 1991. Hisaishi returned to the idea several times but
> also balanced out the listening experience with a soulful secondary waltz
> theme, several contemporary jazz interludes, and one ultra-cool climactic
> surfing track.
> This is not one of those expansive Studio Ghibli scores that the composer
> is best known for today, and some of the work’s synthetic elements may
> wear on some listeners; the mostly fun Bus Stop has some moments of
> imitation ensemble noise that haven’t aged well, and the first half of the
> short track Next Is My Turn has some cheap-sounding suspense
> material that evokes the lesser portions of Chizuko’s Younger
> Sister. But the rest of the album is a contemporary-sounding triumph,
> even if a low-key one, and it more than capably captures the soul of the
> movie, one that has very little vocal dialogue and is thus more reliant on
> music for its emotional core than the average film. Six years later the
> composer put together a marvelous orchestral arrangement, one which has
> some impressive horn counterpoint, but at best it can only be considered
> complementary to the original recording’s beguiling mix of sounds.
> A Scene at the Sea started to change opinions in Japan about Kitano
> (already famous as a TV comedian) as a director, securing nominations for
> best film, directing, screenplay, and editing at the Japan Academy Prize
> awards. The association also awarded Hisaisahi best composer for this
> along with the rest of his 1991 output.
> It would also nail down the template for Kitano’s next few collaborations
> with Hisaishi. If you want to understand how we got to more well-known
> works like Sonatine and Fireworks, you have to start here.
> Score album -
> https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSP_sMZH6pQ0JkQKiMyXsMWjYlSXI5HZm&si=mpMpa3IvrDazFuGJ
> Works I Silent Love -
> https://open.spotify.com/track/1PZb0CAIjzu1BCu3mx3SAp?si=37f5aa1bf738459e
> Original Silent Love arrangement -
> https://open.spotify.com/track/2BvkrhRz7dzf87oJS9ucLQ?si=f4699804f617453b
> -----------------------
> Next time: “I'd rather be a pig than a fascist.”
Excellent write up as always bud. Haven't heard of any of these but now must find Scene at the Sea.
