Eiko Ishibashi - Evil Does Not Exist

Eiko’s compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards. Her longtime partner Jim O’Rourke played the guitar and mixed and mastered the recordings when they were done, eliciting further the necessary nuances of atmosphere and mood that one would expect in one film, much less two!
Evil Does Not Exist was released last year in Japan and Europe, and has already won several prestigious awards (Best Picture – BFI London Film Festival, Asian Film Awards, Grand Jury Prize – Venice Film Festival, Best Score – Asian Film Awards). In the United States, the film debuts nationally in May 2024, distributed by Janus Films/Sideshow.
Following their collaboration on 2021’s Oscar winning Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi & filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi up the ante with a deeply inspired synergistic exchange: music for images, visuals for sounds - every nuance mixed & mastered by Jim O’Rourke.

Evil Does Not Exist is an expansive new soundtrack undertaking from Eiko Ishibashi, a stellar further display of her ability to explicate the depths of the unspoken in her music. That it is also the soundtrack to the new Ryusuke Hamaguchi feature is marvelous news for all who loved her score for his Oscar-winning 2021 film, Drive My Car. That her music harmonizes effortlessly with the state of nature as depicted in his film, a nuanced tale of humans’ uneasy efforts to maintain co-existence with the delicate state of the planet, is a further profound achievement. At play here, though, is much more than fantastic new music from a powerful new film — it is evidence of a vital recomposition of the relationship of sound to narrative, and composer to filmmaker.

Eiko’s compositions are scored for violin, cello, guitar, drums and keyboards. Her longtime partner Jim O’Rourke played the guitar and mixed and mastered the recordings when they were done, eliciting further the necessary nuances of atmosphere and mood that one would expect in one film, much less two!
Evil Does Not Exist was released last year in Japan and Europe, and has already won several prestigious awards (Best Picture – BFI London Film Festival, Asian Film Awards, Grand Jury Prize – Venice Film Festival, Best Score – Asian Film Awards). In the United States, the film debuts nationally in May 2024, distributed by Janus Films/Sideshow.