Nullary Sources

Coming down the music tubes today is an arrangement of Joe Hisaishi’s “A Town with an Ocean View” from the Kiki’s Delivery Service soundtrack. The arrangers and performers are Meine Meinung, whom I love with my mouth.

I’ll follow up Colin’s review of Hana-bi with the main theme of the film, composed by Joe Hisaishi.

Colin made the observation that Hisaishi’s score is more string-oriented than Hisaishi’s works usually are. I haven’t seen the film in a while and don’t really remember much of the soundtrack at all, but I do own a Hisaishi compilation album which contains two pieces from the film, including “Hana-bi” here. Both pieces start off with only the string section for more than a minute before any other instruments come in, so you can see a bit of what Colin was talking about.

The melody here also has a full on romantic lilt, because this is Joe Hisaishi we’re talking about.

Let’s have Joe Hisaishi two weeks in a row. In fact, let’s have him forever.

This piece is “Sosuke’s Voyage” from the Ponyo soundtrack. There are a few other tunes I’d much rather have posted than this, but a ton of the soundtrack has been pulled from YouTube. How dare the copyright owners exercise their legal rights!

This soundtrack is kind of interesting because of its hilariously overt Wagner influence. This piece, however, shows none of that! Instead we’ve got a vaguely American second half which is pretty cool.

Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” performed by Lady Kim and the New Japan Philharmonic World Dream Orchestra (yes really). Conducted and arranged by the legendary Joe Hisashi.