Sunday is all about putting your feet up, turning the volume up and queuing some music to get wholly lost in. During the week music always seems to accompany doing something: programming, walking, writing, pretending you can't hear the other people in the office talking about you. It seems somewhat of a lost past-time to simply sit and listen.
there's something alluringly infectious about this sentai inspired quintet
What better way to celebrate this than the release of the Kids on the Slope soundtrack? Any Yoko Kanno release is a cause for celebration; that this has jazz ensembles from Takashi Matsunaga, a noted master of the genre, as well as vocal tracks from well-known artists such as Aoi Teshima is a special treat. I can't claim to know the first thing about jazz or how to approach it for a better appreciation, but as the adage goes, I know what I like. It's still on heavy rotation so my final opinion is still gestating but the tracks effortlessly blend easy listening and jazz sessions with Kanno's signature background melodies - unique but not overpowering.
A few years ago I almost lost the hearing in my left ear. The gory details are best omitted, but I was left with (what the doctors claimed) was 20-30% hearing and only two thirds of the bones I should. For all intents and purposes I was deaf in that ear, a lopsided and mono world where car alarms didn't exist (a boon at 3am) but wearing headphones was painful.
Two years and two operations on I have most of my hearing back. All of this is just context for me to say: my hearing is precious to me and I am precious about it. It is a cliché to say that you don't know what you've got until you've lost it, but when it's personal it really brings it home.
Putting together Production I.G. and Shirow Masamune is cause for celebration nowadays; most noted for his hand in the blindingly excellent Ghost in the Shell universe, even his lesser known works such as Appleseed and Dominion Tank Police stand out as unique and filled with his trademark personality. Given that, it may seem odd that Ghost Hound seems such a vast departure from his other works.
it is difficult to pick fault with Ghost Hound when it is so expertly produced in all areas
It is less odd when one realises that the series is liberally adapted from a work that Shirow created twenty years ago, that the screenplay is penned by Chiaki J. Konaka and is directed by Ryutaro Nakamura, both of whom were in the same positions for Serial Experiments Lain. It then becomes all the more apparent where the mind bending, perception altering experience comes from. Starting with a trip into the protagonists dream, Ghost Hound never quite lets go and always has that ephemeral, dream like quality to its story, visuals, and most prominently, its sound.
