In 2010 Ethbo Records released their much lauded compilation album Killing Melody: Instrumental Music From Japanese Pinky Violence Movies. Ethbo’s release, similar to those of labels Finders Keepers and Crippled Dick Hot Wax, packages a number of themes to forgotten and/or cult films with extensive liner notes and breathtaking stills. Killing Melody does for Pinky films what Beat Of Cinecitta Vols. 1-3 did for Italian sex comedies; recontextualizes their sound and draws attention to the genre’s merits both historically and aesthetically.
As with any compilation release of this kind there is usually one composer whose work stands out. In this case it is the music of Kenjiro Hirose. Kenjiro Hirose is best known for his scores of Lady Snowblood: Love Song Of Vengeance (dir. Toshiya Fujita, 1974), Lill, My Darling Witch (dir. Umetsugu Inoue, 1971), The Merciless Trap (dir. Jun Fukuda, 1961), and Gamera vs. Viras (dir. Noriaki Yuasa, 1968). His work featured on Killing Melody comes from 1974, and reflects a number of musical trends in exploitation film the world over. Michel Magne, Bruno Nicolai, Piero Piccioni, and Georges Gavarentz all utilize the same brassy sound, evoking a rock n’ roll strip tease, sleazy and uninhibited. What makes Hirose stand out from this crowd, as well as his peers on Killing Melody, are his interests in incorporating a discordant element of jazz, free floating solos between guitar and keyboard in a point/counter-point structure.
Hajime Kaburagi (best known for scoring Tokyo Drifter) is featured the most heavily on Killing Melody. His work here is far more typical of the trends in Pinky film music, often sounding remarkably like the themes to 1960s American cop shows. Kunihiko Murai (who scored Tampopo and two of the Zatoichi films) has the second most tracks on Killing Melody. His themes come closest to sounding like those of European exploitation film scores, especially the work of Manfred Hubler. This sound is heavy with fuzz guitars, highly repetitive, and probably the sleaziest sounding of all the tracks on Killing Melody.
