Given the unnatural origins of Toho’s new beast, Ifukube decided it
should possess an equally unnatural voice. Upon scouring the studio’s
on-site instrument collection, he dug up a beat-to-hell contrabass
missing its entire back frame. He detuned the E-string, donned a pair of
leather gloves, and instead of drawing of a bow across the strings like
any respectful musician, proceeded to wrench his hands up and down the
instrument’s neck as if strangling the woodwind. After suitably abusing
the contrabass, sound technician Ichiro Minawa took the recordings and
processed them at various speeds, predating Houston’s
chopped-and-screwed sound by about half a century. Garnished with a few
additional zoo animal noises and echo effects, Godzilla issued its first
chest-rattling roar not long afterwards.
