Finally making it’s way to an official vinyl release, the Kenji Kawai soundtrack for the 1995 fan favorite manga film Ghost In The Shell see’s a beautifully packaged release complete with 45 and booklet.
Cut from the original master reels at Emil Berliner Studios (formerly the in-house recording department of renowned classical record label Deutsche Grammophon), the album comes in two versions: a limited collector’s edition (LP and bonus 7″ housed in sleeve with silver gilt printing, Japanese obi, and 24-page liner notes) and a standard LP.
The haunting score is composed by Kenji Kawai, one of Japan’s most celebrated soundtrack composers alongside Joe Hisaishi and Ryūichi Sakamoto, whose work includes Hideo Nakata’s Ring (1998) and Ring 2 (1999), Death Note (2006), Hong Kong films Seven Swords by Tsui Hark (2005) and Ip Man by Wilson Yip (2008), and countless others. Kawai’s compositions see ancient harmonies and percussions uncannily mesh with synthesized sounds of the modern world to convey a sumptuous balance between folklore tradition and futuristic outlook. For its iconic main theme “Making of Cyborg”, Kawai had a choir chant a wedding song in ancient Japanese following Bulgarian folk harmonies, setting the standard for a timeless and unparalleled soundtrack that admirably echoes the film’s musings on the nature of humanity in a technologically advanced world.
Ghost in the Shell is widely considered one of the best anime films of all time and its influence has been felt in the work of numerous movie directors, including James Cameron (Avatar), the Wachowskis (The Matrix), and Steven Spielberg (AI: Artificial Intelligence).