Jidaigeki Groove by cayce crane

Headphones strongly recommended!

Another slate of in-the-box, idiosyncratic stuff that's hard to quantify, genre-wise. Jazzy and groovy! These are inspired predominately by my love of samurai movies and other Japanese period dramas -- Jidaigeki. If you know me, you know I watch a lot of them. Additionally, these were done almost entirely on Plogue's Chipsynth MD virtual synth, which is an extremely accurate emulation of the sound chip of the Sega Genesis / Megadrive. I didn't specifically try to make video game music (for the most part), but I grew up with those sounds and really wanted to make use of the instrument.

Song notes:

- The Shadow of the World Walked With Me: Title inspired by the sort of weird, made-for-tv jidaigeki "Kasajiro: The Kappa Marriage", which was not super thrilling but had some decent entertainment value.

- Jikoshoukai: Inspired by, and samples, the absolutely superb "Red Peony Gambler" series, which stars the incomparable Junko Fuji. This series really blew me away and I knew I had to do a track in tribute. "Jikoshoukai" is a self-introduction in Japanese, and is a key recurring element in those films; I additionally wanted this song to serve as a self-introduction for the album, like "this is what we're getting into!". There's a music video I cut together from the films as well: https://youtu.be/F4eT7G1ahu0?si=NLU5CzFGncN5L4Nc

- Can You Tell Me Something About Transformations?: I originally did this for a Valentine's Day compilation we put together on the synthesizer server I'm on; I wanted to aim for the vibes of Bill Withers' classic "Use Me", so I based the drums on the pattern in that song and went from there.

- Enkidu What Enlil Don't: One of my favorite tracks in this bunch, I'm really happy with how this turned out. Not directly inspired by anything, but the Sumerian pun is too dumb not to use.

- Shimokage Way: Named for the cursed village in Kо̄ji Shiraishi's masterpiece Noroi: The Curse, although the music might be a little chill for the film's vibes.

- See You Next Mission, Flapjack Ace: Envisioned as the end-credits music for a fictional vertical-scrolling shoot-em-up arcade game a la Raiden Fighters, where Flapjack Ace is one of the selectable retro-futuristic jet planes.

- Tsimshatsui Casanova: I haven't gone back to confirm but part of this feels like it's the kind of thing that would have been in that song by Powerline in A Goofy Movie? Anyway this is named for the nickname given to Norman Chui's character in 1985 crime/action thriller Hong Kong Godfather. He's a too-cool playboy in a big white blazer and he's got both a jheri curl and a two-foot-long rat tail. It's an immensely powerful look.

- Full Circle Killing: My tribute to the beloved Raizо̄ Ichikawa and his role as Nemuri Kyо̄shirо̄ in the twelve(!) Sleepy Eyes of Death movies, an awesome series of samurai pulp flicks. I knew I wanted to do a track for him but was having a hard time putting it together, until I realized Kyо̄shirо̄ is a sort of Edo-period Duke Nukem: haughty, misogynistic, impossible to defeat. So I went with a funky death harpsichord thing that made me think of the first level of Duke Nukem II and everything went swimmingly after that.

- Withered Tree: The first track I finished for this album, inspired by the two excellent Kogarashi Monjirо̄ movies starring the great Bunta Sugawara. Loved Bunta's reserved gambler with a fighting style heavily based on scampering around. Very happy with the stripped-back groove on this one. Also cut together a music video for it: https://youtu.be/tg4u_nKGIco?si=yEamVFRVsqMRAlTL

abolish the frontier between the unfinished and the finished

cayce.zone