Released
at the turn of the century, this compilation focuses
on the science fiction movie scores done by Akira
Ifukube during the Showa era. Like any compilation
that covers this much material (excerpts from 15 movies
are present), there is bound to be some disappointment
in the great themes left behind on some of these scores,
but that's unavoidable. As an introductory CD, this
disc does a good job of covering a lot of Ifukube's
best work from this era though.
One thing that's interesting
to note about this compilation, though, is that the
music here is presented in stereo, as opposed to the
normal mono presentation that these themes were originally
recorded in. However, Toshiba's efforts in doing this
generate some mixed results. For example, the rechanneled Destroy
All Monsters (1968) track sounds very nice
here, while the cue from Frankenstein
vs. Baragon (1965) doesn't really benefit
at all from the multi-channel format. Suffice to say,
if one's sole interest is in this release is hearing
some of these cues in stereo, and they already have
this music elsewhere: don't bother. The difference
tends to be marginal enough that the CD isn't worth seeking out for that reason alone. It's still a decent, if not uneven, effort though that Toshiba does deserve some praise for.
Overall, this is probably one of the better compilations for the well known Ifukube science fiction material. I prefer full albums to compilations any day of the week, but at least Toshiba does something a little different with this by converting the material to stereo to make it stand out from the crowd of the regular sea of other CDs based on this material.
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