Yoko Kanno (The Anime Soundtrack Maestro)
 

Was reminded of her in another thread, but she's pretty fantastic. She composes music for anime soundtracks (maybe other stuff, but I don't really know) and she covers a surprisingly diverse spectrum of music, making it easy to listen to for people who might not otherwise be able to appreciate things like jazz, the blues, classical, etc.

A lot of her music sounds like a simplified stereotype of whatever genre she's doing, sort of like she's tapping into ingrained public consciousness of what they expect the music to sound like. She doesn't seem to really explore boundaries so much as boil the music down to its ignorantly assumed essence, but she reaches for a wide range genres that you would never expect someone scoring music for a TV show to go anywhere near.

Her most famous work is undoubtedly from Cowboy Bebop.

A bit of some kind of jazz with great energy.




Some blues with tasty harmonica.




Probably my fav series soundtrack she did was for Escaflowne, where she composed classical that even the most musically illiterate person can dig, with a concentration on making it work for epic fantasy.

Classical with some epic faux-Gregorian chanting.




Kind of like medieval music made by an orchestra.




And strangely enough, some electronica that almost sounds like industrial by way of dubstep.

You miss typed Yoko Kanno's name.

However other than that you are right. I have not found a Yoko Kanno composed song I didn't like. I ended up buying all of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex OST's because they are all freaking good.

Your analysis may be the most accurate way to describe it. She dosnt try anything new yet can distil music genre into pure goodness.

The music she composes can be used to great effect such as Run Rabbit Junk in GITS SAC. When some quick action popped off in the anime and then the great guitar riffs and then the airy high victorious strums happened I was right there going "YEAH!" so many good tunes with her involvement.

Man, Cowboy Bebop was super cool. I'll have to check out more of her stuff.

Yoko Kanno's work is gold, check out Macross Plus OST entire soundtrack is amazing with Voices being the top song and most iconic.

Alot of electronic symphonic sounds in the stuff composed for the "Virtual Idol" character (in 1995 they were predicting such things as the holographic virtual pop star) and it has some great beats and vocals. Very sort of experimental feeling in over all.

One of the top anime soundtracks of all times, if not a top all time soundtrack.

Hard to go wrong with any of Yoko Kanno's work, but she's never done anything that tops her work with the Wolf's Rain soundtrack. It's got some of the jazziness of Bebop's soundtrack, but a much wider variety of styles represented (a bit of hard rock, bossa nova, folk, etc.). Highly recommended stuff.

lulz

fixed.

As usual, I'm just going to assume I was drunk. Or high.

Yoko Kanno knew how to get some good stuff out of male voices.





Lithium Flower is so great



Yet I still think Kanno's Magnum Opus Macross plus.

I'm surprised none of ya'll posted any of her work from Wolf's Rain, which is glorious. Have to agree with Anteater on this one, it's her masterpiece.

This is probably one of my favorite anime songs of all time; I love how it changes in tone and the ending rounds it off so amazingly, I wish it continued on for just a little bit longer!



Arguably some of the finest songs from the anime didn't even make it onto the OSTs, which is a super big shame. Luckily some of the people of youtube have managed to isolate/cover the songs enough to make them listenable.





Muuuuch more where that come from, highly recommended anime and soundtrack :)

I like the music she made for Terror in Resonance. She is definitely amazing!





My favorite from Cowboy Bebop, though, is Goodnight Julia