Gatchaman CROWDS, Volume 1 – music by Taku Iwasaki
When Bob Sakuma was asked about the musical influences that shaped his brass-with-funk-backing music for the original 1970s TV iteration of Gatchaman (an early anime the western world knows better from the savagely-edited-down Battle Of The Planets), his answer was simple: the American band Chicago, which was a hugely influential sound circa 1972. This 21st century reboot of Gatchaman, which dispenses with virtually the entire backstory of the original series and retains only some iconography and the “band of super-powered young people protecting the entire world from an alien force” premise, is graced with a soundtrack that pulls from a wider group of influences. It’s still brassy and orchestral in places, but there’s a vast pool of other influences – dubstep, J-pop, trip-hop, house, opera, chiptune…and it’s honestly almost dizzying how incredibly well all of this hangs together. Not one note or beat feels out of place or surplus to requirements.
Where there are vocals, the vast majority of them are sung in English, which I found somewhat surprising. “Gatchaman – In The Name Of Love”, despite not being the theme song for the series, makes a bold opening statement, putting the listener on notice that every possible boundary between musical styles and genres will be breached in short order. And by the way, the orchestral component of all this? It’s live players, not synthesizers or samples. It’s just a luxurious, well-orchestrated sound, no matter how much is going on with the more modern, dance-inspired elements.
Instrumental highlights include the techno pulse of “Milestone”, the breezy-going-on-goofy J-pop interlude “Tutu”, the slowly-intensifying downtempo cool of “Phenex”, the beautiful, contemplative “The Bird Can’t Fly”, the kind of dreamy chiptune-infused “Unbeatable Network”, and the four minutes of unrelenting urgency that is “Are You Gatchaman?” The unmissable vocal highlights are “Gatchaman – In The Name Of Love”, which isn’t shy about what the name of the show is at all, and possibly the highlight of the whole album, “Music Goes On”, with its luxurious all-heands-on-deck, every-style-in-one-song instrumentation and a soaring (if auto-tuned) vocal. It’s like someone said “You know, they have dance parties at sci-fi and anime conventions, and we’re going to come up with an entire album of absolute bangers that are as perfect for those as they are for the show itself.”
I think I’ve actually watched Gatchaman CROWDS all the way through once. I’ve come back to its soundtrack a lot. It fits the show perfectly, and yet it’s an engrossing listen on its own. There’s a school of thought which I’m sure would remind me that the anime itself is not aimed at someone my age. Okay, it probably isn’t. But if I’d taken a hard pass on it, I wouldn’t have been exposed to its frankly magnificent soundtrack. I’m going to make this a prime example of why I do expose myself to new sounds even if they’re not nominally “for me” – the fact is, they’re for anyone who enjoys them. And there’s a lot to enjoy here.
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- Gatchaman – In the Name of Love performed by Yutaka Shinya (3:52)
- The Core of Soul (2:52)
- Milestone (2:56)
- Firebird (3:10)
- Tutu (2:18)
- Pandaman (2:06)
- The Music Goes On (3:39)
- Phenex (3:04)
- Un Beau Leopard Violet (2:31)
- Gatchadance (3:21)
- Galax (0:08)
- The bird Can’t Fly (3:03)
- Are You Gatchaman? (4:07)
- Destruction By Rumor (2:54)
- Why I Kissed Him? (3:14)
- Fat guitar (3:29)
- Ziel der Hydra (3:38)
- Sacrifice (4:57)
- Crowds (3:20)
- Unbeatable Network (4:18)
- Love (3:28)
- Innocent Note performed by Yutaka Shinya and Maaya Uchida (3:53)
- Crowds (TV size) performed by White Ash (1:20)
- Innocent Note (TV size) performed by Yutaka Shinya and Maaya Uchida (1:22)
Released by: Indie Japan
Release date: July 1, 2013
Total running time: 1:13:00
credits – are heard in an off-kilter, almost toy-piano style as Billy’s mother gets her first look at the grotesquely mutated pods. Once these hatch, all hell breaks loose and Goldsmith upends his entire toybox on us, frequently using the unearthly cat-howl sample mentioned earlier. That occurs through several vignettes early in the Gremlins’ spree of mischief, but once that becomes an all-out reign of terror that threatens to raze the entire town to the ground, the music officially goes balls-to-the-wall. “Too Many Gremlins” would be an epic orchestral music cue for any horror movie, but it helps to sell the Gremlins as a serious threat here (don’t forget, the movie was made in 1984, and its effects were limited to the state of the art of puppetry and animatronics in 1984 – the music had a lot of work to do in making the Gremlins a credible hazard). (That being said, I’m glad that Gremlins has been neither remade nor – shudder – CGI “enhanced” in the years since it was made.)
It’s amazing that so much of one of Jerry Goldsmith’s most memorable scores had to wait this long for an official release, but the sound quality and the abundance of previously unreleased material make Gremlins worth the wait.
Is there anything that songstress Yoko Kanno can’t do? Starting out as a video game composer in her 20+ year career, she quickly moved on to other avenues such as anime series and films. Her ability to combine styles and influences such as jazz, classical, electronic, and rock music give her a unique and delightful sound.
Be Human, then, should be recommended to fans of the show or fans of Yoko Kanno (who, in all honesty, are probably to be the one and the same). Otherwise, people who are just starting to listen to Yoko Kanno’s works should probably get a Seatbelts album to find out why Kanno’s music is much lauded in the anime world.
“Subtle†isn’t normally a word used in connection with Godzilla. However, Akira Ifukube’s soundtrack to the original Godzilla movie is deceptively subtle.
Finally out after nine years (just one year shy of the movie’s tenth anniversary) David Arnold’s score for Roland Emmerich’s remake (a 2-CD set, limited to 3000 copies) of Tokyo’s resident bad boy displays all of the pluses and minuses of Arnold’s previous collaborations with Emmerich.
The Best Of Godzilla: 1984-1995 is the second disc in a two-part set of the music of Godzilla (the first disc covered the years 1954-1975). This album contains selections from the films The Return Of Godzilla to Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, which also serves as the second “era” of Godzilla movies. Astute readers may notice a gap of 9 years between discs: This wasn’t a decision on GNP Crescendo’s part not to include those years, there just simply weren’t any movies being made then.
It’s no large secret that Godzilla’s popularity has helped him wreak havoc and chaos on Japan for over 50+ years. But while all the action and mayhem is displayed on the screen, one thing tends to get lost on moviegoers: the music. Fortunently, this disc helps rectify that. Containing the best selections from Godzilla’s tenure on the big screen, The Best Of Godzilla: 1954-1975 is the first part of a two disc set (a companion CD was released as well that covers the years 1984-1995). 
It’s a damn shame that this soundtrack was released only as a composer promo (which is a private pressing of a score paid for by the composer as an audition piece for future work as the studios look the other way, a kind of barely-sanctioned bootleg). Just as the movie Galaxy Quest itself was a hysterical spoof of all things Star Trek, throwing the out-of-work cast of a cancelled cult sci-fi series into the middle of a real interplanetary war, the music from that movie is a glorious send-up/homage to just about every composer who has laid their sonic fingers on that genre, from John Williams to James Horner to Jerry Goldsmith. And the sad thing is, for the most part, it’s a much better listening experience than, say, Goldsmith’s own score from the most recent Star Trek movie. In some ways, with this being the soundtrack to a spoof, the music had the same opportunity as the actors: to ham it up beyond anything that would normally be allowed in the object of the parody. David Newman (102 Dalmatians, Bowfinger, Anastasia and many others) rolls out snare drums, blaring brass, roaring bass notes, thick choral textures…in other words, just about every musical trick denied to the current composers of the Star Trek TV spinoffs. But this isn’t to imply that Galaxy Quest‘s score is all bombast – far from it. There are some musical moments of wonder that put anything since Star Trek: The Motion Picture to shame too.
