First,
thanks goes to Jessica Stan for sending this in for
review!
Composer Joe Hisaishi's Japanese Academy Award winning score for Villain is a haunting, soothing treat from beginning to end.
The soundtrack plays to Hisaishi's strength, being a very piano focused score. It mixes this in with violin work to create an elegant yet sad body of music, befitting the movie's subject matter. From the very first track,
"Faith", the soundtrack is off to a good start that continues with the almost horrorish "To Hate". Other tracks like "Uneasiness" are also stellar, packing a lot of emotional weight in how it heightens the mode.
The only downside to the score is that it sounds very similar from start to finish. It doesn't really break out or change tempo in any way, kind of keeping the same beat through out. That works to create a soothing experience, but one where its hard to separate the tracks from each other as they start to meld together. The exceptions to this are the vocal tracks "Your Story -Vocalise-" and "Your Story" which are so incredibly enchanting that they might as well have taken the academy award on their own, featuring soothing vocal work backed by a full orchestra.
Overall, this is a highly recommendable score by Hisaishi, even if it is a little on the short side at 40 minutes. Its not really a career best, and certainly unawarded scores like Howl's Moving Castle (2004) deserved the Academy Award more, but earns high marks for taking Hisaishi's normal piano work and adapting it to a more unnerving composition than listeners are used to from his work.
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