Godzilla: Japanese Original 60th Anniversary Edition＜限定盤＞

While it launched a long cycle of colorful monster movies that became a locomotive for the Japanese film industry, Inoshiro Honda's original 1954 Godzilla (aka Gojira) is a very different film than the many sequels that arrived in the years that followed; a dark, somber allegory for the tragic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Honda's original never plays its story or its giant monster for laughs, and has retained a forbidding power decades after it was released. Akira Ifukube's deep, resonant musical accompaniment adds a great deal to the film's emotional impact, and this reissue preserves the original soundtrack recording of his score. Ifukube cleverly uses horns to add a martial tone to the action sequences, while moments of dread are scored with sustained string passages and pianos, as the bass keys generate an ominous flavor. While the audio unwittingly points to the improvements in fidelity that have been achieved in film scoring after six decades, the music and these performances are as effective as they've ever been, and this music is still a touchstone in the history of Japanese film music. ~ Mark Deming

Godzilla: 50th Anniversary Edition is the first true soundtrack music release for Ishiro Hondas 1954 topical/horror masterpiece Godzilla (known in Japan as Gojira). In contrast to EMI Toshibas soundtrack LP and CD issues from the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on the movies M&E ("music and effects") track as a source, the producers of this release went back to the original music sources -- that, plus a decade or more in advances in mastering technology means that this release completely eclipses the Japanese disc on a technical and musical level. One can actually hear the orchestral timbre, the textures of the individual instruments in Akira Ifukubes score, and the details of the playing as never before. Equally important, the music, fully exposed and not masked by any sound effects or dialogue, holds up exceptionally well. The producers have assembled every complete cue recorded for the original film and have appended them with the edited versions of those same cues from the finished film and two tracks of Godzilla sound effects. The annotation is also extremely thorough and, in addition to confirming certain aspects of the music that one long suspected (e.g., that the keyboard sound in "Godzilla Comes Ashore" is the result of the pianist literally playing with his fists), reveals one fascinating fact about the entire score -- that the composer never saw the finished film, with its special effects completed, when he wrote the music. That explains why some elements of theGodzilla score have been so easily transposed by the composer to the scores for films on completely different subjects. ~ Bruce Eder

Godzilla: 50th Anniversary Edition is the first true soundtrack music release for Ishiro Hondas 1954 topical/horror masterpiece Godzilla (known in Japan as Gojira). In contrast to EMI Toshibas soundtrack LP and CD issues from the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on the movies M&E ("music and effects") track as a source, the producers of this release went back to the original music sources -- that, plus a decade or more in advances in mastering technology means that this release completely eclipses the Japanese disc on a technical and musical level. One can actually hear the orchestral timbre, the textures of the individual instruments in Akira Ifukubes score, and the details of the playing as never before. Equally important, the music, fully exposed and not masked by any sound effects or dialogue, holds up exceptionally well. The producers have assembled every complete cue recorded for the original film and have appended them with the edited versions of those same cues from the finished film and two tracks of Godzilla sound effects. The annotation is also extremely thorough and, in addition to confirming certain aspects of the music that one long suspected (e.g., that the keyboard sound in "Godzilla Comes Ashore" is the result of the pianist literally playing with his fists), reveals one fascinating fact about the entire score -- that the composer never saw the finished film, with its special effects completed, when he wrote the music. That explains why some elements of the Godzilla score have been so easily transposed by the composer to the scores for films on completely different subjects.