Imagine passing a random stoop sale and finding some valuable comic book that a mother is selling for change unwittingly without her son’s knowledge. That’s sort of how we found this song. While trying to download something no longer for sale from a file sharing site, a folder full of Japanese MP3s appeared in our inbox instead. Definitely not the bastardized kuduro that was intended. But gamelan metallophones caught our interest, and it was worth ensuring its intentional use from here on out. Called “Heart of Sword,” this track was masterminded by the Japanese artist Goro Ohmi and featured on an EP never released called Niji Sinden. It’s Halloween music from 1983 that jumps from clasiscal to gamelan to electronic. One of the players featured on the album is named Saptana, a Javanese artist who taught gamelan in Japan during the late 70s and early 80s, according to this study of the music’s life on the island nation. Saptana was also part of one of the first gamelan performance groups in the country, called Lambang Sari. Goro apparently was inspired to write this EP by a comic book of the same name. His interest in animation continued with the anime series Guin Saga, which he wrote and performed the soundtrack for. (Art by Yousef Alshaikh.)
Goro Ohmi — “剣の心 (Heart of Sword)”
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