This
CD, limited to just 1500 copies, compiles music from
all of the Toho owned, not produced as the booklet
states, Zatoichi films. This includes both those Toho
released and those that Daiei released to which Toho
now simply own the rights for due to an agreement
with Katsu Productions. This release, like their The
Best of "Lone Wolf and Cub" (LLLCD-1017),
is a re-release of sorts of an older King Records
CD, Zatoichi Musical Journey 3 (KICA-3025).
A lot of content has been removed though, which will
be discussed later. First, though, let's get down
to the music that is here.
The disc starts off with Sei Ikeno's work for Zatoichi
the Outlaw (1967). Sadly, the cues from this
film sound a little muffled outside of the very clear
vocal track "Farming Song". This is really
a shame as Ikeno has really stepped up into his own,
much improved since his earlier work on films such
as The Secret
of the Telegian (1960). Next up is a single
track from Zatoichi
Meets Yojimbo (1970). Rather unfortunate there
isn't more music from Akira
Ifukube's score for the film present. Furthermore,
the only track that is here contains sound effects,
in the form of wind, and some dialogue from Shintaro
Katsu. It's not straight from the movie though, since
the film opens up with a baby crying and none of this
is included. So it was a direct choice to include
the wind and the very specific dialogue that they
did, although why this was done is beyond me.
Following this is the show stopper of the disc: from
Isao Tomita
comes the wonderful score for Zatoichi
Goes to the Fire Festival (1970). There are
a total of nine tracks for this movie, more than any
other on the disc. The selection includes such great
tracks as the very soothing "Title Back"
and the very energetic "Great Sword Battle on
the Oil Ship" which is a perfect blend of more
contemporary instruments with trumpets. The music
from this film finishes with the great "Ending"
theme, which is a reprise of the opening credits although
with a nice swell in the audio added to the closure.
After this comes Tomita's second foray into the Zatoichi
franchise with Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman
(1971). Sadly, Tomita hangs up his more traditional
scoring with a few experimental touches for a soundtrack
that is almost entirely experimental with only a few
traditionally orchestrated tracks thrown in. This
was Tomita's almost full shift toward synthesization,
which he would eventually master a few years later
for his excellent work on Prophecies
of Nostradamus (1974) but at this point he
still needed a lot of refinement. The result is a
lot of ear splitting tracks such as "Main Title",
"The Invincible Chinese Sword", "Wong
Gong and Kakuzen", and "Break! Chinese Sword/Ending".
In truth, the instances of trumpet work, still a trademark
of the composer, are about the only breath of relief
from this soundtrack.
Moving on, the disc includes two tracks from composer
Kunihiko Murai, who is grossly overlooked. He did
two films, and only has a single track from each of
them included. The quality for the first of these,
from Zatoichi
at Large (1972), is really bad too and even
fades out and back in awkwardly meaning a film source
was probably used. The cue from Zatoichi in Desperation
(1972) also sounds to be in slightly poor shape as
well, which is rather unfortunate as the composer
did some interesting work for the series. Finally,
the disc ends with Ifukube's score to Zatoichi's
Conspiracy (1973), a great score from the
maestro. It opens up with the very soothing "Zatoichi
Takes Edo Highway" before going into the more
upbeat "Main Title". The selection here
lacks the general punch that most are familiar with
for Ifukube, but falls back on some very nice lower
key work from the composer.
Now, as previously mentioned, this disc is a re-release
with some content taken out. The removed content includes
the tracks for Zatoichi Challenged and Zatoichi
and the Fugitives, which is to be expected as
the movies are not owned by Toho unlike the others
on this release. The content for Zatoichi
the Outlaw (1967), originally on Zatoichi
Musical Journey 2 (KICA-3024), has also been added
in, although La-La Land Records has thankfully broken
the themes up as they were originally present as a
single suite. Otherwise, though, this disc is mostly
the same as the 1998 release. The track titles are
even mostly the same, with a few exceptions such as
"Title Back" for Zatoichi
Goes to the Fire Festival (1970), although
this was probably just a mistranslation of the King
Records track title which is "Title Background"
or "Film Credits" as they are often translated
as.
Bottom line, this is an uneven release. It contains
the fantastic scores to Zatoichi
Goes to the Fire Festival (1970) and Zatoichi's
Conspiracy (1973), but some of the other selection
is iffy, either in terms of audio quality or the theme
itself. This is also a very short CD. It would have
been great had La-La Land fleshed out some of the
films hardly represented here, especially Zatoichi
Meets Yojimbo (1970) which deserves far more
than one track for it. Since so much content was removed
from King Records' originally full CD the disc could
easily have done with some more music added.
As an odd side note, the front of this release credits
Shigeru Ikeno as a composer. This is a straight
Romaji translation of his name, but Sei Ikeno is
more commonly used to identify him with, and the
back and side of the release credit "Sei Ikeno" as
well. So it seems there was a disconnect with whoever
did the cover and the rest of the packaging for
this release.
Rating:  |
|
