W. Michael Lewis and Mark Lindsay — Shogun Assassin OST
Sometime in the second half of the 1980s, I was introduced to Shogun Assassin by a friend who had an nth generation copy on a VHS tape. He sold it to me as the goriest Japanese martial arts movie I would ever see, and at that point in time, it certainly seemed to be the case. Shogun Assassin was actually an edit of the first two movies from the Baby Cart series, Sword of Vengeance and Baby Cart At The River Styx. Robert Houston who was responsible for re-editing the movies for a Western market sanctioned a new score from two composers who had enjoyed success with 1960s rock bands, W. Michael Lewis was the keyboard player with San Franciscan psychedelic rockers Quicksilver Messenger Service whilst Mark Lindsay was vocalist for Paul Revere and the Raiders. Both men had worked together on other soundtracks during the 1970s and were becoming well-versed in the art.
As well as the stylish and extremely gory on-screen antics of Shogun Assassin, the soundtrack immediately struck a chord with me. The opening piece of music used in the movie was a nice electronic piece that featured a truly memorable narration by Gibran Evans, who was the voice of Cub for the western edition of the movie. This has since been borrowed by Gza from the Wu Tang Clan on the title track from his Liquid Swords album. This makes up the opening track on this newly released CD soundtrack. Track two is "Daigoro’s Theme", a lovely warm-sounding electronic track that has a distinctly Japanese folk feel to it. "The Ball and the Sword" is another piece that uses dialogue from the movie with some lovely ambient electronic music, "Assassin with Son" uses the same keyboard riff as the previous track but turns it into a fully formed electronic movie score, that wouldn’t sound out of place on one of John Carpenter’s late 70s movies. "The Ninja" is next and is musically based around album opener, "Legend of Lone Wolf", but without the narration. "Voyagers", on the other hand, has a very traditional Japanese flavour to it, with the synths replicating traditional Japanese instruments. "Three Hundred Forty Five" is a short piece with more of Gibran Evans's wonderful narration, this is followed by "Crimson Sky", a slab of heavy, progressive electronica that has its roots firmly planted in 1970s prog rock. "Eyes of A Demon", is a darker piece with a lovely warm synth sound and some really nice proggy runs, whereas "Dune" goes full-on Keith Emerson-style prog rock, it has a lovely phat synth sound that I just adore. It’s a little more up-tempo and makes a perfect choice for action sequences. Up next is the astonishing "Lone Wolf’s Theme", this is probably the finest track on the album and is the music that plays during the movie's legendary trailer. It’s an uptempo slab of synthy goodness that is adored by fans of genre cinema as an iconic piece of music. The final track proper is "A Wish, is Only A Wish", which is another classic piece of Evans narration with some background music, before we are treated to the audio drawn from the movie’s theatrical trailer.
Overall, this is an essential release for fans of Shogun Assassin, the late 70s/ early 80s electronica, and genreal fans of exploitation and horror movies. The score is one of my favourites of all time and the narration by Gibran Evans is superb. The CD is lovingly packaged with some stunning artwork and a great essay by Randall D. Larson. The sad news is that this is limited to 500 copies so once they’re gone they’ll be difficult to track down, so make sure you nab a copy while you can as these won’t last long before they’re turning up on Discogs for crazy prices.