Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2016 October 17 • Monday

The 435th Soundtrack of the Week is Shunsuke Kikuchi's score for War of the Insects.

I, uh, accidentally deleted everything I had written about this and don't feel like going through the whole process of trying to reconstruct it.

Many of the cues are short, often less than a minute long, and create miniature atmopsheres of tension, suspense and mystery with occasional startling moments. Electric guitar, organ and percussion are used effectively, as are insect sounds in some places.

There's some island music with lullaby-ish string melodies and saxophone playing, softly supported by electric guitar.

In some cues arpeggiated strings are used to create a pensive mood with electric guitar, piano, horns and reeds adding punctuation.

There's some source music for an on-screen radio. Some of it is like acid surf and some of it reminded me of Takeshi Terauchi's surf rock interpretations of Japanese folk songs.

One of the themes is poignant and touching, a bit similar to Akira Ifukube's melancholy cues.