November 3, 2018
Studio Ghibli Records
1xLP (Black and Coloured Vinyl)
Of the 100+ film scores Joe Hisaishi has produced, 22 have accompanied the animated films of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. Over the last several years, the fantastical production studio has been releasing the soundtracks of its vaunted catalogue, almost all of which are produced by Hisaishi. We’ve been able to get our hands on three: Spirited Away (in which a young girl is forced to work in a spirit-inhabited bath house after her parents are turned into pigs by the witch); Princess Mononoke (a cursed prince attempts to appease the old gods while battling a malevolent corrupting force); My Neighbor Totoro (a pair of young sisters in post-war rural Japan befriend a large cat-like spirit, and an even bigger cat-like spirit that can also turn into a bus, birthing a billion memes).
Joe Hisaishi scores each film with the eclectic, elegant imagination that, in no small part, helped to define the magical world-building on which Ghibli has staked a sizable claim as the most successful film production company in the world, full stop. Does that make him the greatest film composer of all time? Hard to say. But it puts him in a realm of his own, no doubt.