Music is central to the anime sequence RahXephon. The titular robotic searches for the facility to “tune the world,” whereas his enemies, the stone Dolem, are named after musical notation and assaults per music. The present’s soundtrack lives as much as its central motif. Legendary anime composer Yoko Kanno supplied the theme music, sung by voice actor Maya Sakamoto. Within the meantime, Ichiko Hashimoto scored the soundtrack and ending theme. Hashimoto’s music spans three hours, unfold over three CDs, not together with the movie The vast majority of the focus. It’s comparable in dimension to Yoko Kanno’s equally huge soundtrack Cowboy Bebop.
Immediately, most anime followers could be extra more likely to acknowledge Kanno’s identify than Hashimoto, because of the previous’s work on widespread anime sequence together with Macros Plus, EscaflowneAnd Wolf rain. Her music for Ghost within the Shell: Stand Alone Advanced is as iconic as Kenji Kawai’s rating for the movie. In the meantime, Hashimoto has solely scored one different anime, the Code Geass spin-off Akito the Exiled. A decade separates these two sequence; Hashimoto has not composed for anime for the reason that final episode Akito in 2015.
Whereas I used to be researching RahXephon for Anime Herald, I found that Hashimoto’s profession was rather more intensive than I believed. Initially, she is a sporadic voice actor. She performed the primary character’s mom RahXephona posh and sympathetic villain function. A few years later, she appeared within the 2012 cult basic Lupine III: The lady named Fujiko Miinewho voices one other imply mom. Hashimoto was additionally featured within the Fujiko Miine spoken phrase theme music “New Wuthering Heights.”
It’s important to transcend the confines of the anime trade to see the complete image of Ichiko Hashimoto’s profession. Since 1981 she has launched greater than twenty albums. Her most up-to-date, “Show,” was launched in 2021. You’ll be able to stream it right now together with “duo,” her 2016 collaboration with bossa nova guitarist Yoshiro Nakamura, and her 1992 album “Romantic after Ame.” Nevertheless, my suggestion to you’ll be to search for her very first album from 1981: “Coloured music.”
Hashimoto and her frequent collaborator Atsuo Fujimoto first met as “substitute band members” throughout Yellow Magic Orchestra’s first Japanese tour. The 2 hit it off and determined to make an album collectively. That album was ‘Coloured Music’, impressed by jazz and funk pioneers Sly & the Household Stone and Miles Davis. “Coloured Music” is a superb, albeit unconventional album with totally different sounds and instrumentation. Tracks vary from jazz to disco and early deep home. My household, who I performed this album for on the best way to a nature park, informed me it “sounded prefer it was written by aliens.” To me it appears like sparks flying round in an infinite huge area.
“Coloured Music” was launched underneath Higher Days, a sub-label of Nippon Columbia Co., Ltd. His friends included the Japanese reggae album “Picker Energy”MARIAH’s 1983 basic “Utakata no Hibi” and – in fact – Ryuuichi Sakamoto’s ‘A thousand knives.’ Higher Days captures a second when Japanese musicians appeared overseas for affect. Pecker turned associates with Bob Marley. Sakamoto collaborated with David Bowie on a movie. The guitar riff is available in ‘An excessive amount of cash’ one music from ‘Coloured Music’ appears to have been ripped straight from it ‘Take me to the river’ by the Speaking Heads.
Nevertheless, ‘Coloured Music’ represented just one facet of Ichiko Hashimoto’s pursuits. One other facet is represented by her self-titled album from 1984 “Ichiko.” ‘Ichiko’ trades eccentric sonic textures for spare piano and a melancholic autumn environment. Hashimoto’s vocals solely hardly ever intrude, like a creak within the eve of a really outdated home. “Ichiko” bears the stamp of Satie and Debussy. In a single piece for Vulture, Andy Beta factors out the screening of the 1963 movie The Wispand the recording of Satie’s music as a turning level in Japanese popular culture. Within the Eighties there was a ‘Satie increase’ in full swing.
Since “Coloured Music” represented the spirit of the Higher Days sub-label, “Ichiko” is a product of JVC’s Music Inside sub-label. Music Inside distributed so-called ‘ambient music’, designed for ambient quite than energetic listening. Artists reminiscent of Hashimoto, Yoshio Suzuki and Masahide Sakuma tried to mimic Satie’s repetitive ‘furnishings music’. This didn’t imply that Hashimoto and her colleagues weren’t bold. In any case, they have been inspired to take larger dangers by the bubble financial system of the Eighties. This was an period when Haroumi Hosono of Yellow Magic Orchestra composed “Watering a flower” particularly to take heed to in MUJI malls.
Immediately, Higher Days and Music Inside have pale into the previous. Whereas Ryuuichi Sakamoto and his fellow Yellow Magic Orchestra artists have been canonized, divisive artists like Hashimoto stay simply exterior the highlight. Nevertheless, that solely signifies that they’re ripe for rediscovery by music consultants. A type of consultants is Chee Shimizu, a DJ who runs the Natural Music file retailer in Tokyo. Shimizu has been a supporter of Hashimoto’s work for years; he offered ‘Coloured Music’ in his 2013 e book ‘Obscure Sound’. (It was final revised in 2020.) In 2016 he was the mastermind a “membership edit” vinyl of two songs from ‘Coloured Music’.
Shimizu and his colleagues have been trying to find the previous few years that is itclassic Japanese pop music. It is a craze that existed lengthy earlier than the “metropolis pop” fandom in the USA. Daisuke Itō op Housing advisor goes again to at the least the Eighties, when ‘comedian artist Takashi Nemoto and music critic Manabu Yuasa started reissuing a slew of obscure, out-of-print kayos. kyoku (outdated Japanese pop) information.” Immediately, DJs exterior Japan search the nation’s music historical past for worthwhile deep cuts. Wamono represents a possibility to rediscover and recontextualize previous masterpieces and their creators.
Japanese ambient music within the fashion of Music Inside has undergone its personal renaissance in recent times. YouTube algorithms have pointed worldwide followers within the course of Hosono’s “Watering a Flower.” In the meantime, musicians like Spencer Doran from Portland hold defending the style. “Ichiko” stays comparatively obscure by comparability. However Hashimoto’s work may very nicely be embraced in the identical method as new cult classics “Via the Wanting Glass” and “Utakata no Hibi.”
Ichiko Hashimoto’s music has by no means sounded prefer it used to to me. Albums like ‘Coloured Music’ look to the longer term as a lot as they search for components in a number of genres. Hashimoto may play and sing bossa nova, however she may additionally play Satie. Even in recent times, the place she has established herself as a ‘jazz pianist’, she continues to stretch and take a look at new issues in her albums. RahXephon’s soundtrack encompasses her extraordinary vary. However that soundtrack is simply a part of what Hashimoto gave us.
I’ve seen individuals specific frustration with the presentist bias of anime fandom previously. I agree, and but I believe the existence of individuals like Ichiko Hashimoto factors to one thing extra elementary. Hashimoto is not a lot an “anime composer” as he’s a composer who has come by the anime trade. She can also be a musician with a long time of expertise who has contributed to at the least two vibrant cultural actions within the historical past of the Japanese music scene. It is actually the anime trade that ought to be grateful to have had her, even when it is only for a short second.
