Here!!

I'm an Italian anime soundtracks collector!
I have hundreds of original anime cds!!

You can see part of my cd collection visiting my website:
tyuan (dot) altervista (dot) org
section: anime soundtracks
My website is only italian, sorry.

The image albums are NOT original soundtracks, but re-arranged musics from the original score albums.

Hisahishi is a Maestro, but many more are the names of Japanese animation scores (BGM, Back Ground Music).

-Takeo Watanabe, Shunsuke Kikuchi, Masayuki Yamamoto, Nozomi Aoki, Michiru Oshima, Eiji Kawamura, Yoko Kanno, Shiro Sagisu and many, many, many more.

I think that most of the anime soundtrack BGM are MUCH BETTER than the famous Hollywood movies scores.

tyuan74, October 27, 2006; 4:00 AM

I'm not an expert but, I think that "image album" features the temporary score composed in the beginning of a film production (before the final score). They are usually synth, some times feature strings and soloists (Princess Mononoke Image Album features strings, traditional flutes and synth only - quite "light" compared to the film score and of course, the symphonic suite). In the case of "The Moving Castle", the image album was recorded by a live orchestra.
So, in chronological order of composition :
a) Image album, music written & recorded before (and then used during) production
b) original score, recorded when the movie is completed
c) symphonic suite, an orchestral arrangement of the film score
Sometimes there is also "synth" albums, arranged for electronics only...

If you like big orchestral music, I suggest Giant Robo by Masamichi Amano, great stuff (The Aurora is quite good too, and Super Atragon is also quite impressive, all big orchestra & choral scores, in the same vein as his works for the Battle Royale movies).

milio.latimer, October 26, 2006; 6:10 PM