Such a wealth of culture available to us! During the last decades, the number of books, music albums and films has been exploding – and my must-read, -listen and -see lists follow suit. In addition to all the new works being published, just as many are being dug up from the depths of our cultural cellars and attics, dusted off and sold in a new (retro!) package. How can I ever read, listen to or watch all of what is good and beautiful?!
On one of my many lists a very special title has been waiting for quite a while: Katsuhiro Ohtomo’s Akira. It has been influential for the development of Anime in Japan, but more importantly it made the genre popular in what we like to call ‘the West’. This may still sound as something for children and lonely nerds, but nothing is further from the truth (or maybe I just like to think it is. On the other hand, everything that used to be nerdy seems to be hip nowadays – or is it just that being nerdy has become hip?). Akira is a very adult, serious and rather deep film using animated graphics to tell a (admittedly slightly strange and) dystopical science-fiction story about the rise and fall of worlds and the adolescence of a bunch of Neo-Tokyan kids.
One of the things that intrigued me most was the film’s music. The musical background composed by Shôji Yamashiro matches both the estranging story and the time of production: the late 1980s. Yamashiro used synthesizers to weave an intriguing soundtrack very fluently underscoring the images and the story. He uses themes for the different characters, echoing the ‘classical’ soundtrack composers such as Nino Rota or John Williams. I found the ‘Doll’s Polyphony’ especially intriguing. You can listen to the complete soundtrack on Soundcloud.
Yamashiro’s music reminded me of the 1980s experimental band The Art of Noise. I stumbled upon their LP ‘In Visible Silence’ in a secondhand shop and bought it only on grounds of the album artwork and its great title. Check out Eye of a Needle, for instance. You can find the full album on Grooveshark. The piece has a similar psychic atmosphere as ‘Doll’s Polyphony’, mixed with relaxed jazz percussion and some great xylophone improvisation. I find the complete 1986 album very intruiging. Its repetitive patterns forerun techno music and the mixing of samples has been taken up by DJs. But most of all, I find their music very amusing. Whatever their initial intentions might have been, ‘In Visible Silence’ makes me laugh – not because I find it silly, but rather because great art always tends to make me laugh, if not the opposite.
emile wohlfarht 