Ear Fuzz

RZA: Opening Theme (Raise Your Sword), RZA #7, and RZA’s Theme
From: Ghost Dog (Japanese Version) [JVC Japan, 2000]

Hungover and suspiciously aware of those first signs of the flu, a cold and overcast day like today has me searching for a record to soothe the repetitive pounding in my head. A gritty soundtrack to urban decay? A collection of of haunting, claustrophobic beats? An unofficial sequel (sonically speaking) to GZA’s Liquid Swords? Enter RZA’s original score to Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.

For those late to this magnificient film as I was, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Forest Whitaker gives a stunning performance as the deceptively gentle and introspective Ghost Dog, a modern-day samurai who makes a living by carrying out hits for the Italian mafia. I’ve always been a fan of Jarmusch’s bizarre and distinctive visual narratives, but for me, Ghost Dog is the pinnacle of his filmography, in no small measure due to RZA’s participation in the project. Wisely, Jarmusch specifically instructed the Wu abbott to compose a score that shared the sound and feel of Rae’s Cuban Linx and the aforementioned Liquid Swords instead of the somewhat sterile Bobby Digital material he was into at the time. So RZA (presumably) dusted off his Ensoniq ASR-10 and crafted what I believe is some of the finest music of his career.

The selections here are the stuff Wu diehards go apeshit over, and for good reason. One of RZA’s singular contributions to hip hop was his masterful embracement of the limitations of sampling technology: by deliberately extending the length of a sample, he was forced to lower its quality, resulting in the raw, gritty sound he is best known for today. Ghost Dog adheres to that ethos beautifully, and the tracks are painstakingly unquantized to boot; perhaps its only flaw is that the 16 cues here are too brief. The opening theme (”Raise Your Sword”) sets the tone effectively: ominous and menacing, RZA places clunky electric piano chords and apocalyptic strings atop a beat based around a percussive metal scraping. “RZA #7″ is probably my favorite cue, if only because it’s so reminiscent of Black Planet-era Bomb Squad. The nightmarish “RZA’s Theme” sounds like something GZA and Masta Killa would absolutely destroy.

Of course, there was a catch: fans of the film’s soundtrack understandably purchased what was available at the time (the domestic Sony edition) only to be disappointed to find non-film tracks from Wu satellite members like North Star and La the Darkman (yet questionably missing Killah Priest’s “From Then til Now,” a key moment in the film) and little of RZA’s actual score. A Japanese version of the film’s music is available, but fetches outrageous prices on Amazon and eBay, especially considering the length of the disc; phenomenal as the music is, I can’t advocate dropping $50 on a CD containing less than 35 minutes of music. (I was fortunate enough to discover a vinyl edition on Razor Sharp Records a year ago.) Suffice it to say if you come across this soundtrack at an affordable price, by all means snatch it up immediately – but take careful note of the track listing.

The RZA has two upcoming soundtracks to be released in the next month or so: The Protector, a collaboration with video game composer Howard Drossin, and music for the upcoming series Afro Samurai on Spike TV. Let’s hope one of them bears similarity to the brilliance of Ghost Dog.