Divine Harmony: FictionJunction

Compositions from Japan’s Ennio Morricone

As a kid I didn't take movie scores very seriously.  They were just there in the background, and I didn’t pay much attention.  I assumed they were like elevator music. You know, just in the background, meant to be ignored. But I’m really into music (if you couldn’t already guess), and there is a lot of real music in film and TV scores.  I just had to learn to listen. 

A good movie score tells a story, toys with our emotions, and has a lot to do with how we remember the movie itself.  A great score becomes a character in the story.  Think of Ennio Morricone’s scores for “Once Upon a Time in the West” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”; or the themes from “Star Wars” and “James Bond”.  You can meet someone from another country who doesn't speak your language, but you play them the first bars of any of those themes and they’ll immediately be able to name the movie.  They may even start doing impressions of the main characters. 

Yuki Kajiura has composed the musical scores for twenty five movies and over thirty anime series, as well as the theme songs for five commercially successful video game series.  She has been called the “Ennio Morricone of Japan”, but she does far more than compose scores.  She is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, and a major record producer and impresario who has organized several successful recording groups and then produced their albums.  She also produces records for other groups.

Kajiura’s approach is unabashedly sentimental.  She does not hesitate to use tried and true methods to make us feel something, but she is not repetitive either.  Her best work feels as though you’ve heard it before and yet sounds fresh and new.  In this regard, she is like Morricone, whose scores are original, yet full of irresistible hooks, and become almost earworms. 

Kajiura has organized several stand-alone vocal groups, including Kalafina and FictionJunction.  The latter is an ensemble of four female vocalists accompanied by Kajiura herself and five additional instrumentalists who have worked with her for over a decade.  FictionJunction performed the vocal lines for many of Kajiura’s film scores.  Their hallmark is the pure quality of the individual voices and the richness of their harmonies.  The closest comparison I can make is to the Irish group Celtic Woman.  Like Celtic Woman, FJ are a bit of a supergroup, with most of the vocalists already having had significant careers prior to this. There have been seven all told who have rotated in and out of the lineup, with Keiko Kubota (contralto) and Kaori Oda (mezzo) being the constants.

In 2020, Kajiura brought FictionJunction together for a series of pandemic-limited studio one-take recordings of some of their best known themes.  These were done without the big orchestras and post-production work that went into the original soundtracks.  No cutting and splicing, no re-takes, no artificial effects.  It’s just the four vocalists and the band, with Kajiura on piano.  These recordings reveal the power of the women’s voices and the richness of their harmonies, free of the orchestral background.  I find them heart-piercing.

“Mezame” (the Battle Song) from the “Mai-Hime” soundtrack

The vocalists are (left to right):

Joelle                           Soprano           (Wakana did this part in the original soundtrack)

Yuriko Kaida              Soprano

Keiko Kubota             Alto/Contralto

Kaori Oda                   Mezzo Soprano

The instrumentalists are:

Yuki Kajiura              piano, vocals

Koichi Korenaga         guitars

Kyoichi Sato               drums

Tomoharu "Jr" Takahashi       bass guitar

Hitoshi Konno             violin

Yoshio Ohira              percussion and sound engineer)

“Key of the Twilight” (from .hack//SIGN) (Lyrics in English)

“.hack//SIGN” is an anime and movie series that asks what would happen to a computer game player who gets lost in the code and can’t get out.  It has a lot of historical parallels to early “brain in a vat” fiction tropes, which of course eventually gave us “The Matrix”.  Hitoshi Konno goes wild on the violin.

Now a look at how some of these songs sounded in live performance:

“Fake Wings”, “Ensei” & “Mezame” (Live concert, 2012)

A medley of three songs from different eras.  Watch for the unexpected, spectacular guitar shred.

Wakana Ootaki           Soprano          

Yuriko Kaida              Soprano

Keiko  Kubota            Alto/Contralto

Kaori   Oda                 Mezzo Soprano