Dragonfly
The Seventh Track
Joe Hisaishi — Kiki's Delivery Service Image Album, original Japanese LP (Studio Ghibli Records)
The story
An image album composed before the film was complete — music written to evoke the atmosphere of a world not yet born. On the black record that turns like dark water, crossed by the lantern's golden circles, the seventh track bears a name: Dragonfly. Here, Dragonfly ceases to understand herself as a brief track between two silences. She discovers that silence is not absence, but the listening space in which an unfinished world may begin.
“Can music remember a world that does not yet exist — or does it make room for that world to arrive?”
The full story comes to life in The Dragonflies’ Odyssey.
The object, in the collector’s words
The original Japanese LP "Kiki's Delivery Service Image Album", released by Studio Ghibli Records. Created before the film's completion, the album features music composed by Joe Hisaishi to express the world and atmosphere of the still-unfinished film — the nostalgic air of a European seaside town and the heartwarming growth of a young witch finding independence and confidence. The jacket shows Kiki and her broom before a mirror, with Jiji beside her — one of the defining visuals of the film's early production. Among its twelve tracks, the seventh is titled "Dragonfly". Original pressing with obi and insert/liner notes, highly sought after by collectors of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki and Joe Hisaishi — unlike typical soundtracks, Ghibli image albums are prized for the dreamlike concept music that inspired the film itself.