Nobunaga’s Ambition: Record of Military Affairs

	Album Title: Nobunaga’s Ambition: Record of Military Affairs
	Record Label: KOEI
	Catalog No.: KCS-010
	Release Date: November 25, 1990
	Purchase: Buy Used Copy

Overview

In 1990, Yoko Kanno had spent years cutting her teeth in several KOEI projects, stretching the wings of her imagination and versatility while exploring wide ranges of inspiration from disparate genres and world music. There was little in the realm of music that she hadn’t dipped her toes in even at this early stage of her career, and the results always impressed. Within the long-running Nobunaga’s Ambition series, her vision remained honed on melding European classical orchestration and subtle but bold impressions of East Asian exoticism, yet her burgeoning growth as a composer allowed her flexible reach regardless, dancing and picking through established sounds and flavors across countless eras of technique like fruit in a market. Her growing maturity and complexity with the orchestra are evident as the arranged album for Nobunaga’s Ambition: Record of Military Affairs sees her stretching out of old habits and exploring intriguing tricks of texture and melody.

Body

Wholly uncharacteristic of gaming’s typically bombastic approach to symphonic scoring, Kanno’s touch with the orchestra, here as always, is restrained but possessing of a potent strength it calls upon without warning or effort, dignified yet not stuffy, capable of great drama while speaking with a soft voice that evokes the wartime era of Japan with noble respect rather than romanticism. The album begins humbly with the shakuhachi meditation of “Poetry”, bathing the album in Japanese atmosphere whilst serving a subtle narrative purpose. Nobunaga’s Ambition is a sprawling saga of civil strife and war, and the piece presents its grand tale as a Noh Play instrumental with the sighing notes looping in jagged, disconnected progressions — a haunting wail that never quite coalesces into a melody but sings of a deeply evocative time and place. The small, hollow pattering of the kotsuzumi drum and female whooping only punctuate the effect, weaving a tale of clashing emotions and warriors past with hushed, poetic verses. A flurry of strings and horns introduce “The Beacon”, a stoic but sad trombone melody gliding over a rolling sea of sawing strings as the high emotions are left to the bright singing of the violins. The counterpoint of the keening flutes and low horns is dense and lush, and after a fluttering crescendo, the waters calm and on the tail of a strumming of koto comes the delicate, whistling beauty of a forlorn shakuhachi duet, breathing a calm respite into the throes of battle before somber string counterpoint gently ushers the track back into orchestral tumult.

Kanno has already shown much growth by this stage of her career and, seemingly aware that her past scores relied heavily on snare rhythms and other tropes to convey a sense of militaristic pride, dives instead into the rich history of European music, from Classical to Romantic and Baroque, using a kaleidoscope of orchestral color and technique to instill emotions common to wartime without stressing a firmly militaristic or clichéd flavor. To this end, she constructed the album around a central collection of minisuites, a trio of musical ensembles and experiments, split into two parts each, and the shifts from piece to piece can be striking or slight. “The Wicked Gods” stews in the bitter thirst for revolution amidst a tyrannical rule. A rich, sinewy viola lament suffers strident attacks from the piano and strings, keening, scratching and spiraling into deeper sorrow before the ensemble’s disparate voices come together and march in lockstep, ivory chords pushing ever forward to guarded, rhythmic tremolos, symbolizing the empty drone of a resigned people. As if to offer a note of hope, a warm cello phrase raises its voice, soft but strong, and the performers press on with a slight renewed vigor, the viola resting control of the group to lead onward into a spirited but brief second verse. With the second volume comes the rise of the people, their story cast alight with high string stabs and undulating harmonic fragments in the piano and strings. The piece never strays far outside of the lower, earthier register, imbuing a downcast, tragic realism to the music even as it races faster and higher, trading easy sentimentality for impressionistic portent.

“The Worthy Tiger” sadly vanishes before it begins, a violin and bass murmuring with deep pizzicato plucking and arpeggios as a sole horn calls defiantly over their hushed tones. The bass takes over for a momentary sojourn into cautious dissonance, but whereas the first volume was all whispers and restraint, the second roars with a resonant, stiff-upper-lip brass processional, muscular timpani staccato and sprightly string harmonies. The horn recalls its earlier three-note progression, call to arms having been answered with aplomb, before the piece gently recedes back to as it begin with the slightest spring in its step. “The Helpful Banner” represents a rare moment of sentimentalism from Kanno, a dearly sweet, nostalgic piano duet. Complex and rich in the Romantic tradition, it would be enough to simply be a gentle, Uematsu-style ballad, but Kanno’s performance does one better with surprising turns in melody, launching into darker territory with hard runs and slams or slipping into sparse introspection. It’s a gorgeous, emotive and atmospheric bit of work and few works in game music, especially concerning the ivories, are as tightly and confidently orchestrated as this, even as it bursts into its restless, Beethoven-esque second half.

Kanno’s strides in forsaking cliché extends gracefully to the series’ secondary characteristic with “Distant Mountains and Rivers”, a striking incantation of exoticism replete with natural beauty. Her tools are few — airy xylophone-like chimes, a peculiar, horn-like synth pad gently yawning a pentatonic melody and an assortment of other spare elements — but like a magic trick, she summons a vast sense of scale and splendor that rushes into the lungs. At times, the synth lead gives way and the whine of some string instrument I can’t quite place strains against the limits of pitch as it keens in a bed of sheer atmosphere. There’s an odd, implacable quality to the entire piece, as it sounds largely synthesized, but this is almost certainly a deliberate choice, and an ingenious one; the ephemeral alienness of the ensemble forces one to brush on the edge of the imagination just to picture the mountains and rivers of the title, subtly imbibing even more of an otherworldly mysticism to the Land of the Rising Sun without technically even using a single idiom of Asian musicality. The lovely soundscape eventually ebbs away as a lone violin dances with itself in silence. “Flame of the Battlefield” is another truncated experiment but no less powerful for its length with its mysterious electric violin slashing and plucking, the instruments’ screeching timbre expanding wildly until it’s a miracle the human ear can withstand its static-fraying extremes.

“Dangerous Fortress” tosses us back into the fires of battle with an explosive salvo of Golden Age film score flair, omnipresent snares rattling insistently as every player in the orchestra launches a three-note call-and-response stab. The trumpet takes center stage, ringing with piercing clarity over dense cinematic string clusters and crescendos with a raucous, daring performance worthy of a standing ovation. Rare does Kanno undo her own reins and launch into histrionics in this series, but when she does, the effect hits like a cannonball to the sternum; after an entire album of somber Classical meditations, the release of “Dangerous Fortress” is palpably cathartic, sweeping the listener up in a bristling, trumpeting climax of operatic, unbridled glee and heroism. After such an exhilarating high, the album lowers us with a supple touch into the mellow, plaintive melody of “Shadow”, a serpentine shakuhachi repose that coils with a cloth’s softness around a cool, dusky synth pad. Like “Distant Mountains and Rivers”, it effectively calls back to the series’ traditional Japanese underpinnings while maintaining a unique voice and structure by utilizing the “less is more” approach, as does the romantic, synth elegance of the achingly sweet harp duet “Heart”.

“Heaven and Earth Eternal” announces the triumphant end to the war and the album with a rollicking, brass-led theme, nodding to a slight Old West sound eerily enough with the its easygoing string rhythms and the humble, pastoral power of the melody; brave and carrying notes of relief, but never pushing too far in its celebrations and even slowing down in spots for moments of calm where the flute and strings articulates the lead melody. Not the strongest of cues to carry out the Nobunaga albums, a high bar for any composer to clear, but it succeeds in instilling a sense of the well-earned peace ahead. “Heat Haze” closes us out with a downtempo piano lounge ballad plucked straight from the 80’s in its simplistic structure and arch. Kanno reached out to old friend and former bandmate TETSU to provide the vocals; while his nasally, somewhat mushmouthy timbre may be an acquired taste, he belts with conviction, instilling just the right amount of reverence and pain as the song’s biggest moments call for, despite slight over-singing in spots. A touch dated, but an interesting and bittersweet end for Nobunaga’s Ambition: Record of Military Affairs.

Summary

Nobunaga’s Ambition: Record of Military Affairs sees small but significant growth in Yoko Kanno as she gradually grows out of her comfort zone and explores new ways to articulate the orchestral dignity and Japanese flavoring endemic to the series, some of them very striking. The album is curiously lacking in the rich thematic development the storied composer is known for, trading experimentation in texture and emotion for big, sweeping statements and powerhouse performances. Nevertheless, what’s here is a fine addition to Nobunaga’s rich musical litany and one of its stronger entries to date. Any Kanno fan is highly recommended to seek it out where they can.

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