tomorrow's susumu hirasawa's birthday, might just fuck around thread some of my favorite songs of his

a propulsive piece of technopop lead along by string and choral samples and a really catchy chorus, hirasawa's voice just sells this one so hard

the original title song on his largely cover-based album Switched-On Lotus, this is a song that is joyful and life-affirming, and was written specifically in memoriam of his transgender friends who died too young.

Simcity is one of my favorite albums of his, and it explores a distinctly asian flavor of cyberpunk based on his travels to Thai and subsequent friendships and collaborations with the katoys from there. This is the start of the loose "Thailand trilogy."

Siren came afterwards and further refined the style established in the last two albums. He further drew on local folklore about mermaids as well as recent themes of war and the ghosts of the past(hence the double-meaning title).

The song I first posted was from Technique of Relief, which was the arguable culmination of this little era of his career.

That's probably my favorite album of his. There's not a song on there that I would skip.

Turning the clock back to his debut, I'm really partial to his solo acoustic piece "Venus." It kinda has a mediterranean feel to the chord structure and sound.

If you're from outside Japan, your first exposure to this man's music probably came in two forms, the works of Satoshi Kon or the 1997 adaptation of Berserk. He rarely works on anime but when he does, the results speak for themselves.

Kon's first project with Hirasawa was on Millennium Actress, and the soundtrack drew on Hirasawa's first self-published solo album Philosopher's Propeller, mostly in remixed forms, but one song that was put in unaltered was the unforgettable "Rotation."

The following album he made might be his most explicitly political to date, being influenced by the War on Terror and the destruction of American imperialism, this song in particular just oozes a furious righteous anger uncharacteristic of Hirasawa.

Right around this time he did his most singular soundtrack for Kon, his score for the great Paranoia Agent, another work that feels way too relevant to modern times and the music for the series reflects that.

His most famous work to date outside of Japan is, of course, his work on Kon's sadly final film Paprika. Again pulling from his then recent album White Tiger Field, you know and love this shit and it's absolutely infectious.

Hirasawa-san has an extremely varied and complex discography spanning several genres. It's hard to find and listen to any of his pre-2000 work outside of youtube unless you have a VPN, but post-2000 you can buy his work here. They ship internationally.
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