Owing to how many times I played the new Joe Hisaishi album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra this summer (partly a function of me being too busy during the week to take the time to think of anything else to put on, but also because it’s amazing), and with the stateside release of The Boy and the Heron due in December I thought it would be a good idea to revisit all the Joe Hisaishi albums in my collection and also to cover ones I haven’t heard before.
That’s right, folks. It’s rundown time! Not a life-consuming, book-inspiring rundown, but something more than just a list.
Scores will be rated on a mix of their score albums, how they function on film (if I’ve seen it), and other related albums released around the same time. Image albums and years-later symphonic / concert performances associated with that work will be discussed as well but won’t impact a score’s rating. I’m fine if you wanna disagree with that approach, but then you’d have to tell me that the later concert presentation of Sonatine is what’s in the film (spoiler alert: it’s not).
And I’ll cover other non-score albums to the extent they’re easily available. Hisaishi has been a prolific writer who has shown no issues toggling between score and non-score worlds - and has the extensive back catalog to prove it. “If I spend too much time on my own material, I’ll be stuck in my own world. But it would get really boring if I wrote soundtracks all the time - it gets to you when you’re working under orders for a long time.” So expect to see coverage of studio albums, early electronic works, whatever the heck Paradise on Earth counts as, and many other things by Mr. Hisaishi.
If nothing else, hopefully this project will introduce folks to a few new Hisaishi works they hadn’t heard before, something made a lot easier by much (but nowhere near all) of his release catalog making it to U.S. streaming services a few years ago. If you’ve never heard anything by Hisaishi, maybe this will be what fixes that for you.
Apologies in advance for some of the track titles if they don’t match what’s in your collection - they’re a mix of what’s on Spotify, Google translations I did over a decade ago, and a few other online references.
Also, seriously, buy or at least listen to the new RPO album. It’s that good.
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Mkwaju (1981) - ***½
For me, this is discovery #1.
Unlike, say, Hans Zimmer, who’s seen several of his “early years” scores get decades-later album releases, Hisaishi doesn’t have a lot of readily available early compositions. Some were done when he was still going by his given name Mamoru Fujisawa, such as his first industry credit for the anime series First Human Giatrus (1974-76). There were also cases where he supported other composers, such as his arrangements of Takeo Watanabe’s material for Mobile Suit Gundam: Soldiers of Sorrow (1981). And others albums, like music for shows Amazing Sarutobi (1982-84) and Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger (1983-84) or the image album for the novel Makyou Yuugeki-Tai (1985), were originally released only on LPs, though the few that survive thanks to YouTube uploads will be covered as part of this series.
But at least it’s easy to get your hands on the first album that bears the composer’s stage name of Joe Hisaishi, a semi-translated spin on Quincy Jones, the jazz arranger and film composer better known today for producing pop albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Mkwaju blends electronic music, minimalism, and African percussion, much of it played by Japanese percussionist Midori Takada and her ensemble. Those repelled by mallets or repetitive music may want to avoid the album, and I imagine many listeners will skip through the abstract drum circle feels of the final 13-minute track Flash-Back. But the rest of the disc is worth hearing at least once, if for no other reason than to hear where the man’s solo career seemed to truly start - and perhaps also to discover a transitional piece between the concert compositions of Steve Reich and some of Hollywood’s more famed minimalist film scores of the late 90s and early aughts (American Beauty and The Bourne Identity in particular, both of which can be counted as musical cousins to this album).
The titular track in particular creates a hypnotic swirl, and Hisaishi would revisit it a few times with expanded arrangements, including one with a full orchestra in 2009. The bustling orchestration bears more of the stylistic hallmarks of the composer’s film score days, though it still maintains the original’s delightful sense of rhythmic propulsion.
Album - https://open.spotify.com/album/5cYRj7HDkoiwEz0zFY9tcK?si=5fhcc0DEQImQgiKGv50HqA
2000 Shoot the Violist Mkwaju - https://open.spotify.com/track/7x7topwyZOpYU11HUyX5sk?si=c2f1b5a03b86426a
2000 Shoot the Violist Tira-Rin - https://open.spotify.com/track/1S9lpHxlHooDd2mtxdqjFT?si=61a493b09a1f4afe
2009 Minima_Rhythm Mkwaju - https://open.spotify.com/track/6W7CmoNq6mBrW6xRfn5YxQ?si=46d97e7fe89b4ee0
2022 Mkwaju live in concert - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMZQN-eGtp4
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Put It All in the Ring / Ring ni Kakero (1982) - **
Discovery #2.
1982 brought along an early instance of what is now a common occurrence in Hisaishi’s discography: the image album. Nowadays those are largely demo albums that showcase many of the composer’s early ideas before he composes an actual score, often on solo instruments and synths/samples, but at this point the title was serving a different purpose: “music inspired by” for a manga / comic book series. This would not be the only such album in this decade.
If you explored Put It All In the Ring after hearing, say, the recent album of Miyazaki music done with the Royal Philharmonic, you’d have little clue both releases came from the same composer, as this earlier album contains over a half hour of electronics, guitar, bass, drum pads, and various keyboards. The sound was less the composer inventing a new style and more him catering to prevailing trends in his home country. This mix of rock, funk, jazz fusion, and other Western genres termed city pop was the dominant music in urban Japan for much of the decade, and you can hear its influence not just here but in a lot of video game and anime music in the 80s and 90s.
The album isn’t awful; if anything it plays like a much campier version of the urban cool Hisaishi would channel in later Takeshi Kitano films. But it seems to contain little of the composer’s distinctive voice; only the relentlessly ticking percussion in the background of the first score track even hints that this is from the same guy who wrote Mkwaju. The theme song would find the composer channeling predictable anime song (anison) vibes. A few sections in the track Devil Fantasy have enough deranged synths to make one wonder if a Joe Dante / Jerry Goldsmith score is on, though this predates any of those. And an earlier track also throws in electronically manipulated voices for good measure.
Various tracks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9Pl37a89E
The manga was adapted into an anime series decades later. Hisaishi’s music - very much of its era - unsurprisingly wasn’t used in that TV series, though online credits about who wrote the actual episodic score are inconsistent.
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Techno Police 21C / Tekuno porisu 21C (1982) - ***
Discovery #3.
Quite possibly the first film score where Hisaishi was the credited lead composer, this music accompanies an animated robot police action movie distributed by Toho (yes, that Toho). Most of the tracks are scored like the halfway point between city pop and 1970s cop TV music (complete with some outrageous electric bass and sax solos), not dissimilar from what Lalo Schifrin or Patrick Williams might have done with the concept - although the fusion of jazz and synths perhaps suggests the influence of Chick Corea or Ryuichi Sakamoto instead. One track has wailing electronics akin to the otherworldly sounds Elmer Bernstein would summon from his ondes Martenot. Jazz flute appears. A harmonica, an instrument Hisaishi would occasionally use throughout the decade, dominates a bluesy romp for a few minutes. There are more proto-Dante / Goldsmith synth farts at another point.
Adequate though anonymous, the score does have one nugget that suggests the composer’s own compositional voice starting to emerge: the piano lines and pseudo-Barry romantic strings in the first minute of the track Love Theme.
Score album - https://youtu.be/w-16cKzl5Oc
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Genesis Climber MOSPEADA / Kikō Sōseiki Mosupīda (1983-84) - **½
Discovery #4 - and the earliest Hisaishi score that’s available on U.S. digital / streaming services, credited as a 1994 work because that’s when it was released on CD; an LP release came out around the time the show was on the air.
Unlike many of Hisaishi's later scores, the writing is a lot more straightforward - city pop, big 80s synths, jazz interludes, valiant anime brass heroics, and so on. But considering this is a sci-fi series involving transformable motorcycle armor, perhaps the show didn’t need anything more profound from its music. Unlike earlier image / score albums which were interspersed with rock songs that the composer didn’t write, here we have five such songs actually arranged by Hisaishi, all of which are likable and a coherent fit with the surrounding score. Like Techno Police 21C, this score makes for a fun romp that is very much of its time but also goes right in one ear and out the other.
Score album - https://open.spotify.com/album/3MciipMTb0y2wUtJ0p9D8w?si=Qr12PYwDT0WAXUbka1VhHQ
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Information (1982) - **
Discovery #5.
This, Hisaishi’s second studio album, expands on the city pop of his prior works, now with lounge vocals and in one track ACTUAL SOUNDS OF PEOPLE CALLING INFORMATION LINES, which I am clearly not the target audience for.
Album - https://youtu.be/Fej8GmZRKVo
You might think Hisaishi’s studio albums weren’t terribly consequential in the grand scheme of things, but Hisaishi (or at least his webpage) claims that Information brought him to the attention of producer Isao Takahata, who recommended him to a young director adapting his own manga series into his second feature film; some of the more abstract electronics in the last two tracks on Information would appear to have informed the opening minute of the film’s score album.
According to a fan site, Hisaishi was only originally hired to create an album for the manga while someone else was intended as the film’s composer, but Takahata and the director loved his work and asked Hisaishi to score their movie.
That director’s name is Hayao Miyazaki.
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Next time: THAT score, a forgotten gem of a track, and one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.
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Was really surprised that Hisaishi wrote the Score but listening to it I can kinda hear rough versions of some of his stuff from later that decade. 'Love Theme' is actually kinda lovely.
