Rating: **** (4 out of 4)

Availability: Widely available

If you're looking for the tribal beats of the Akira soundtrack or the poppy tunes of Chisa Yokoyama, this is not the place to look. Please Save My Earth is the popular Japanese animated fantasy about... well... what is it about, anyway?

The music of Please Save My Earth ranges between new age and classical with beautiful, soft, flowing tunes, such as "Prologue - Time of Gold Flowing" and "Between Ages," the first two tracks of the disc which have an airy, new age feel about them that manages somehow not to remind you of the train wreck that is John Tesh. The piano and flute of "The One That Flows" have a distinctly classical flavor combined with the sound of a modern sythesizer, while "Wounded Wings" makes full use of an orchestral string section to conjure up emotion and mental imagery that alternately warms and chills the heart.

Standing in contrast to the rest of the album is "A Song Without A Song," a new age song with a heavy industrial edge, featuring Japanese lyrics performed by Akino Arai. The song shifts between short segments of breathy, wind-blown vocals and instrumentation and a hellish swirl of industrial clanks, electric guitars, and low synths. The contrast is stunning and makes for a fantastic breaker early in the album.

Please Save My Earth - Image Soundtrack is a tapestry of sound and music, forming images and emotions with instrumentation and vocals. The JVC release in America features a full color cover with some English translations included. The music is the original Japanese.

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