Strap in; this time we're going all in with another favorite of mine, the indescribable (and often incomprehensible) seventh soundtrack CD for the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena: Revival Record Of The Rose Egg SOFIA -Middle Ages Revive! - (or just SOFIA).
Don't get scared off just because this is tangentially related to anime. SOFIA is an incredible beast of an album whose influences include psychedelic rock, choral compositions, and avant-garde folk. It's really hard to pin down a specific genre for this thing because its composer, experimental legend J.A. Seazer, has a career that's equally difficult to describe. In the same vein, original anime Utena is a timeless work known for its progressive storyline, impressive visuals, extremely memorable characters, and so much more. I did warn you, there's a lot to talk about here!
Let's get into the artist before we go deeper here. It'll help. J.A. Seazer is a Japanese composer that's been a member of its underground avant-garde scene for as long as it's been there, basically.
He began his career in the 1960s, at the height of Japan's radical Student Revolution movements; in those times he was a composer for underground legend Shuji Terayama and wrote the score for his most famous works, including the noted Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets.
His style is as unique as any great auteur. Known for ghastly sounding choruses, prog/psychedelic rock influenced instrumentation, and a love for the dramatic flair, it was undoubtedly Seazer's skill that helped bring Terayama's works to such wide acclaim.
After Terayama's untimely death, Seazer continued to work within theater and film music - until the mid 1990s, when anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara, forever inspired by "the scream wanting to change the world" embedded in Seazer's music, approached the composer and asked him to compose for his radical new anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena, a surrealist story using allegory and stylization to tell of young people wanting to change the world - meaning, they wish to change themselves.
The rest is history. Utena forever changed the landscape for anime and Japanese queer media. One of the series' most consistent and powerful images were the episodic duels characters would fight amongst each other, wherein their ideals and motivations would clash metaphorically and physically, backed by songs that enchanted and choruses that spoke lines that spoke deeply about characters and beliefs.
Check out this video above for an insight into how this all works together. There's really no way to describe it without watching it; and once you do, pay attention to the music. See how it builds and adds to the tension; check the haunting lyrics and the way they play with language, philosophy, and foreshadowing.
Now imagine all of that cranked up to 11. That is what SOFIA is; Seazer let loose in the wild, radical world of revolution; Seazer throwing it all at the wall, and all of it sticking.
Without further ado, it's time to get into SOFIA.
The first thing you'll notice is that this record is like no other. From the first minute it's dramatic, eerie, playing with off-kilter and unpredictable melodies and instrumentation. There's synths, guitars, unstable percussion, and, of course, the insane chorus. Much of the music revolves around the lyrics, giving us our first point of inaccessibility; without consulting a lyrics sheet, it's possible to completely miss out on the tone and message of some of these songs, especially when the singing is often amelodic and on a completely different wavelength than the music behind them. (Luckily there are ample translations for the lyrics, if you're interested!)
The tracklist ebbs and flows as the moon's reflection on the ocean. The first two songs are exciting, dramatic; the next two are slower, chilling, and futuristic. They're rife with references to philosophical texts, important authors, and deep, humanistic ideas; fourth track "THE SOLITARY HISTORY OF LIFE IN A PETITE UNIVERSE", for example, speaks on the insistence of one's existence in an otherwise merciless and chaotic world ("I am here" is repeated at least 5 times), all juxtaposed with allusions to Plato's allegory of a cave. Next track "CRADLED IN THE GRAVE OF THE WORLD" is as dismal as it sounds; starting with a rousing cry of "Why a fate of love and hate? / Why a destiny of massacre, cruelty?", it mourns that there's no hope for changing the total fate of the world, comprised as it is with so many people, voices, possibilities; but at the same time, why are we subjected to such dark fates?
I feel I might be a little harsh calling this record inaccessible. Even if you don't understand the words, there's plenty of strong musicianship and intense crescendos. "ABSOLUTE DELUSION [DAS EROTICA]" (embedded right above) starts out with an exotic percussion and synth combination that borders on mind-bending; the chorus acts as instruments themselves, adding to the moments, dragging them out, creating some sort of uniquely hypnotic psychedelia. Ideas are thrown together everywhere like soup ("Libido; enigma / Genesis: the origin of all creation / All is one absolute desire..."). I can't emphasize enough that nothing out there in the world of music sounds like this.
The last few songs are my absolute favorite, for they're where Seazer starts to abandon the "duel chorus" formula and starts to get really weird. "SHURA - FLESH CONSTELLATION IN THE αψζ NEBULA" is fast-paced, thrilling, and charged with energetic electricity. My favorite song on here, "WE WHO HAVE CAST OURSELVES ASIDE BECOME FALLEN ANGELS", is a chilling dirge that features the chorus at their most haunting and mournful. This is the kind of song I'd like to die to; something really hypnotic, enlightenment-inducing.
If you can't tell yet, I really love this kind of daring, original music - it holds no hesitation in being completely different than anything else out there, holds no punches in trying to achieve its specific goal and style. Ideas are played with and deconstructed, in tracks that seem to redefine what it is to tackle music with philosophical yearnings and questionings. I particularly connect with the result here, in which everything that exists, everything that we strive for, is broken down (in an unabashedly Buddhist context) into desires, desires that are so strong and unbreakable that they enter the realm of the erotic.
You owe it to yourself to check out SOFIA - and to watch Utena. Even if you're not a huge anime fan, it's quite accessible, more dense than most media out there, and completely unforgettable. Much like the soundtracks for it, in the show everything works together to a terrifying degree, with an end result being one of the most highly revered cult classics Japan has ever produced.
"Not only I, but all people are / Fallen angels who discarded the self..."
DREAM...
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