Composer: Akira Ifukube.

Liner Note Author: David Hirsch.

Godzilla: 50th Anniversary Edition is the first true soundtrack music release for Ishiro Honda's 1954 topical/horror masterpiece Godzilla (known in Japan as Gojira). In contrast to EMI Toshiba's soundtrack LP and CD issues from the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on the movie's M&E ("music and effects") track as a source, the producers of this release went back to the original music sources -- that, plus a decade or more in advances in mastering technology means that this release completely eclipses the Japanese disc on a technical and musical level. One can actually hear the orchestral timbre, the textures of the individual instruments in Akira Ifukube's score, and the details of the playing as never before. Equally important, the music, fully exposed and not masked by any sound effects or dialogue, holds up exceptionally well. The producers have assembled every complete cue recorded for the original film and have appended them with the edited versions of those same cues from the finished film and two tracks of Godzilla sound effects. The annotation is also extremely thorough and, in addition to confirming certain aspects of the music that one long suspected (e.g., that the keyboard sound in "Godzilla Comes Ashore" is the result of the pianist literally playing with his fists), reveals one fascinating fact about the entire score -- that the composer never saw the finished film, with its special effects completed, when he wrote the music. That explains why some elements of theGodzilla score have been so easily transposed by the composer to the scores for films on completely different subjects. ~ Bruce Eder