An honest to goodness Internet musical scavenger hunt. Hit that red button up there now. I came up with 10 questions to test your Internet searching mettle. Many of the questions will take you to specific sites on the Web. Some of the questions require you to read into the site to find the answers. So here they are and good luck. Post your answers in comments when you find them all or when you ...
Yoko Kanno’s most recent release is OST 4 for Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex which can only be found in a new box set with all the other soundtracks (OSTs 1-3, Be Human, and Solid State Society OST ).For OST 4 , Kanno has done something interesting. The album consists of only one track, dubbed “Smooth Inside The Shell (No Break Disk),” that is a 49-minute-long compilation of unrelea
Here's one more Yoko Kanno track for you today. It's an instrumental track from the anime Turn A Gundam. It's basically a nice, relaxed jazz tune that probably wouldn't have sounded out of place on Cowboy Bebop.Enjoy this laidback track. Oh, and isn't the title great?
My review of CM Yoko by Yoko Kanno is now up at Blogcritics Magazine. Here's an excerpt:Although best known in the U.S. as a top composer for anime such as Cowboy Bebop and Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Yoko Kanno has had a lengthy and varied career. She has composed for live-action films, TV series and specials, and video games in addition to producing for other artists. However, h...
I'm a big fan of composer Yoko Kanno's works and up until recently, I posted songs from her twice a week.I had noticed a couple of times that some of her work sounded uncomfortably close to the work of others. However, as other Yoko Kanno fans have dug deeper, they have found that "uncomfortably close" doesn't even begin to describe it.A Japanese site has posted some YouTube videos that are qu...
It's a new month for Yoko Kanno posts and that means...no theme. Absolutely none at all. I'm just going to post two good songs every week. Posting all that Cowboy Bebop made me a little tired of it, so I decided not to do that for another set of soundtracks I like. So, the randomness begins with a track from the anime series Escaflowne. The music from this show is really different from tha...
Ghost In The Shell STAND ALONE COMPLEX Solid State Society OST
I have just posted my review of the GITS:SAC SSS OST (I'm sorry but I can't write that incredibly long title again) on my main blog. Here's an excerpt:The Solid State Society OST is the fifth soundtrack from the GITS:SAC franchise, coming after OSTs 1-3 and Be Human. You might think that with four other albums preceding it that the SSS OST might just be the dregs. Fortunately, this is not the c...
Time for another Yoko Kanno Day post and this one is quite different from Tuesday. Today's track is from the anime series Arjuna. This is a case where Kanno's music is better than the show it was written for. Into The Another World, the first Arjuna soundtrack, is one of Kanno's best albums. It's a combination of great pop with some unusual music that kind of defies description. There are ...
Today's (late) Yoko Kanno Day post features two dramatically different songs. Song #1 is "Black Escaflowne" from the soundtrack to the Escaflowne movie. This is a big, rousing song. Like most of the Escaflowne, it puts me in the mind of some great classical work. And damn if the ending doesn't kick ass.
After Tuesday's older Yoko Kanno song, today's track is much, much newer.The song is called "Go Dark" and it's from Yoko Kanno's most recent album, the soundtrack to the anime Darker Than Black.It's an instrumental track that's a little similar in style to the work Kanno did for Cowboy Bebop. One of the things that sets this song apart is the overall feel. While Bebop pretty much just went fo...
Today's Yoko Kanno Day track comes from Escaflowne. Most of the stuff from Escaflowne is classical, but this one isn't. It's called "Machine Soldier" and it's a dark track that I would describe as industrial but not in the sense of genre. I mean that the sounds recall stuff of the industrial age. There are sounds that resemble steam horns and clanging and other things like that.
The second Yoko Kanno Day track for today is from Escaflowne. It's a song I really like that I can't believe I hadn't posted already.It's called "Epistle" and it features the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Even though some of the stuff she does with them can sometimes sound similar, I just love whenever she works with this orchestra and chorus. Everything just sounds so damn epic....
The second Yoko Kanno track today comes from another soundtrack I've neglected posting, Brain Powerd. I've only posted one track from this soundtrack before (the epic pop song “Light Of Love”) even though it's actually grown into one of my favorite works by Kanno. I can't really say why I kept avoiding posting tracks from this show. I guess it's because much of it is pretty much a tradition
Well, it's time for me to make up for missing BOTH of the Yoko Kanno Days this week. First up is another track from Brain Powerd. It's another classical track. It's called "Run" and it's performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. Yoko Kanno has worked with this orchestra many, many times. In addition to Brain Powerd, she's worked with them on pieces for Escaflowne, Wolf's Rain, Turn A...
You're in for a treat for today's Yoko Kanno Day post. Today's track is from the rarest Yoko Kanno album in existence. The track is "The Creation" from the album of the same name. Released in 1991, The Creation is a five-song suite that was meant to be accompanied by Seiji Fujishiro's paper cut-out artworks depicting events from The Bible. Each of the songs on this soundtrack represents a d...
