Susumu Hirasawa is a Japanese composer whose main point of access for Western listeners is via his anime soundtracks, notably for the late (and very great) director Satoshi Kon. Let's kick off with his opening theme for Kon's anime series Paranoia Agent.
The theme is agreeably barking, which complements well the demented nature of the show itself.
Moving on, here's the opening credits for Kon's movie Paprika (2006).
Harmonia were a sort of krautrock supergroup featuring the entirety of synth duo Cluster (Dieter MOEBIUS and Hans-Joachim ROEDELIUS) and hero guitarist Michael Rother from Neu! They were active from 1974 to 1976.
Watussi by Harmonia with excellent unrelated retro SF antics as visual accompaniment. Big ups to YouTube user nodint227!
(EDIT: I've had a few days to mull over Grimes and I think what I interpret as a confusion of styles is just a byproduct of someone self producing their own material in their own way. Ie. it shouldn't be taken too seriously. Original post follows.)
Until recently my chief memory of Talk Talk is their 1985 song Life's What You Make It, a stirring popper based around a piano riff, with good guitar and singing, but a bit let down by faintly angsty lyrics. About ten years ago or, so - I think - a telecommunications company or bank in my country co-opted it for some advertising. Good choice on their part, but you know, that didn't do much to for the song's rep in my mind.
I've released my third album, entitled La Bellend Époque, over at Bandcamp. It's a compilation of pop ambient tracks I've compiled over the past ten years. Go forth and listen to the album at Bandcamp, or visit the album's release page.
In 2007 I got to know Richard from the band Filmic, an NZ duo who did a fine line in ambient dubstep. I offered to remix the band and Richard furnished me with a disk of samples. Unfortunately, forgetting that the whole point of a remix is to use samples from a particular track, I ended up picking up samples from different Filmic tracks and coming up with my own track. (I've never got the hang of this remix business; leave me alone).
A few years back I checked out an album by the a group named The Harmonic Choir called 'Hearing Solar Winds'. Before listening I was a little skeptical - the group name, album name and track titles all sounded a bit new agey to me. But because the choir deal in overtonal singing, and overtonal singing by westerners, I was curious to hear it. To my surprise I found that while the album indeed was new age, try as I might I couldn't help concluding that the music was actually good.
I put this track together a couple of months ago for a video collaboration that fell through. I still liked the music, so decided to put together my own video for it and bung it on YouTube. If I wanted to be classier I'd have stuck in on Vimeo, but that might dirty the place up.
As one of Ra's Arkestra players says, Sun Ra himself was perhaps agreater achievement than his music, but he sure knew how to torture a synthesizer, and a piano. And an organ. And he also knew how to wear a lampshade.
