In the first collection of music from the cult hit anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, twenty pieces of the score are presented along with three versions of “Fly Me to the Moon”. Opening with the jazz/techno/pop theme song and Claire Littley’s piano-bar-styled performance of “Fly Me to the Moon” (which serves as the base for the instrumental and “Yoko Takahashi Acid Bossa Nova” versions of the same), the rest of the album carries on the jazz flavor in sometimes-muted ways while using trimmed-down orchestral stylings and a considerable amount of piano.
Some light playfulness, like the Western swing of “Asuka Strikes!”, gives contrast to the more serious pieces with brass and strings, but even the briefest cues show some admirable care put into their arrangement. Some slight “Habanera” flavor creeps in as well, thanks to background tambourine accenting, while the general flavors experience high turn-over due to the tracks’ short length, with just a couple running over three minutes. As such, while there’s appreciable quality to all of it, things do end up jumbling together somewhat between the clear-cut opening and ending tracks, leaving it more interesting as a reference library than a stand-alone experience.
Here’s the cover art used for the 2015 reissue.
Scrambled Brains 