Even if you aren’t big into jazz, there is a very good chance that you’ve heard the deep vibrations of Kamasi Washington’s tenor sax. The Grammy-nominated musician has put out multiple studio albums, and counts Raphael Saadiq, Lauryn Hill, and Kendrick Lamar as some of his past collaborators. And more recently, he composed one of the three mesmerizing soundtracks to Shinichirō Watanabe’s new anime series Lazarus.
Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, the shows Watanabe’s most well known for, are testaments to his own love of jazz and hip-hop. Both series used their soundtracks to amplify the emotional and visual strength of Watanabe’s storytelling. And even though it’s a very different kind of narrative, the same is true of Lazarus.
In each of Washington’s tracks you can feel the existential dread baked into Watanabe’s latest vision of the future. Lazarus chronicles a misfit team’s fight to save the world after the whole of humanity learns that it has been poisoned with a lethal toxin disguised as a painkiller. With extinction appearing imminent, society starts to unravel and people’s lives begin to fray. But as much as the idea of dying terrifies Lazarus’ characters, their predicament also inspires a twisted kind of exhilaration — one that you can hear clearly in “Vortex” and “Lazarus,” two of Washington’s more electrifying tracks.
When I recently sat down with Washington to talk about his work on Lazarus, he told me that he had no idea that “Vortex” would ultimately become the show’s opening theme, or how Watanabe went about deciding which of his songs would be used. As an artist whose own approach to making music was shaped by Watanabe’s work, the opportunity to collaborate with him on a project gave Washington a reason to stay optimistic during the covid-19 pandemic.
But while Washington was more than ready to craft a banger soundtrack, he was a little surprised to learn that Watanabe was looking for a proper album — not just songs that could soundtrack a sci-fi drama, but something that could stand on its own, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Which anime series were big for you as a kid?
Growing up in the late ’90s before the internet was really a big thing, anime was still a bit niche and we had to find VHSs and eventually DVDs of random stuff. You’d find something, and end up borrowing and trading with your friends, which is how I came across Macross Plus, Ninja Scroll, the OG Street Fighter II V series, and obviously, Dragon Ball Z. I’m a Berserk fan, and I love Grappler Baki and Ghost In the Shell.
Seeing those shows and movies as a kid, their stories felt so unfiltered and raw in a way that spoke to me, and the artistry of their animation just kind of blew my mind. It still does — I was watching Akira the other day, and I was just like, ‘his is beautiful, man.’ Visually speaking, it’s just gorgeous. And then there’s Cowboy Bebop [created by Watanabe], which absolutely informed who I am, musically, as an artist.
Was there a lot of back and forth between the two of you as you were crafting the songs?
There wasn’t, actually. We had a couple of really long talks where he broke down the concepts behind the series as a whole, the action-focused animation style, and then what he was looking for from me, musically. More so than other times when you’re doing a film score or something for a TV show, you’re really looking at the exact moment, and you’re trying to put music that feels like the perfect framing element.
Watanabe gave me a series of situations, like “there’s a guy breaking out of a prison,” or he’d say things like “the song should sound like a flashback of someone finding and going through a bunch of evidence.” But he wanted me to build the entire soundtrack with a focus on evoking feelings as opposed to writing songs meant to match or fit into a specifically planned-out scene. That’s how I write music instinctively, and Watanabe was really emphatic about wanting this to just sound like an album as opposed to music written for a film or show.
There’s both a hopelessness and a darkly thrilling emotional element to Lazarus’ story that’s all wrapped up in this question of “how would the world change if everyone thought they were about to die.” What feelings did you find yourself tapping into as you started building your soundtrack?
Yeah, it’s hard to put into words, but a sense of urgency and that feeling of recognizing people’s duality were two of the big ones. There are no really clear-cut heroes or villains in this story. All of these characters are people doing what they think needs to be done in a wild situation. There’s one scene where [one of the show’s protagonists] Axel has to take down a person from his past who he was in the army with, but has since turned down a dark path. And Axel doesn’t want to turn on them, but he has to. Watanabe couldn’t show me the exact scene at that point, but I could relate to that conflicted feeling, and I tried to channel it into the music.
Was “Vortex” always meant to be the series’ theme?
You know, I actually thought “Lazarus” was going to be the main theme, but it ended up being played in the first episode during the chase scene. I didn’t exactly know how Watanabe was going to decide which songs to use where. I feel like any of the tracks could have become the theme, but I always trusted that he would know which one really encapsulated the show’s essence. So I gave him all of the food, and let him organize and arrange the courses.
Horns are such a big part of your soundtrack, but talk to me about the choral singing. Were there specific emotions you wanted the sound of human voices to evoke?
The singing is playing slightly different roles in different songs, but that sound creates a sense of bigness and scale. In “Lazarus,” the melody is so fast, and that [singing a few notes] is supposed to feel like something’s trying to get you, but they can’t quite. In my mind, it’s almost like a giant chasing after a speedster who’s just out of reach.
In “Sageness,” I thought of the voices as spirits coming back to tell you something directly. But in “Lie In Memory,” I thought of the chorus as griots who are telling the tale playing out in an epic reality. With “Vortex,” which did become the main theme, the chorus is a little more playful, but there’s also this sense of falling. And that energy felt right because there’s a quirkiness to all of these characters even as they’re spiraling into this almost psychedelic, disorienting maze of a reality.
You mentioned being a Cowboy Bebop fan earlier. Were there any things about Cowboy Bebop that informed your approach to developing music for Lazarus?
I didn’t intentionally try to make Lazarus sound like Cowboy Bebop, but I’m sure that some of it got in there subconsciously because Watanabe’s an artist I really admire. A lot of these songs were very influenced by the later work of Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, and New Orleans street beat that’s kind of meant to make you feel like marching. But at the same time, the spirit or core inspiration behind each track originated in early conversations Watanabe and I had about feelings.
