Godzilla has been enjoying a revival for the last 12 months or so.
The bubble will burst no doubt but for now you can still find boxes of videos
of the original Japanese Godzilla movies in video shops. Then again we also
get albums like this.
Fourteen of the 22 tracks are by Akira Ifukube who wrote the famous bubbly
slightly brainless (suitable for dinosaurs) march which has overtones of
Prokofiev and Sousa. Much of the music is in a similar 'fun' style even when
other composers deputise for Maestro Ifukube.
There is, by the way, nothing which I recognise as typically Japanese in
these tracks.
There are dollops of rattlingly golden fanfares from the trumpets and rough-edged
raspberries from threatening trombones. In track 6 (King Kong vs
Godzilla) Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King was clearly
in the compser’s mind at the time. Track 3 has a touching (and tinkling)
picture which reminded me of the Russian steppes. Koroku’s romantic
love theme from the 1984 Godzilla is extremely successful and must
be doomed to appeal to Richard Clayderman’s arrangers. The original
suggests the composer had learnt from John Barry. Sugiyama in track
16 (1989, Godzilla vs Biollante) takes John Williams’ Superman
music as an exportable model. The last track (22), mysteriously, has a dismally
commercial ‘rap’ song by a guttural male vocalist some minutes
after the end of Ifukube’s march from Godzilla King Of The Monsters
(1954). Can anyone identify the song and the singer? It is not listed
on the disc contents.
This collection of new recordings is fine for souvenir collectors and is
fun. It delivers great sound and depth. The purists will want the exhaustive
2CD Silva Screen collection of OST extracts. For more general collectors
who want to sample the genre there is Silva Screen’s rip-roaring Monster
collection.
Reviewer
Rob Barnett
VARÈSE SARABANDE
VSD5969 [64:23]
