The music is really good, blending the familiar small orchestra with traditional Japanese instruments.

A lightly rhythmic "Prologue" clears the way for a heavier and more aggressive evolution into "Jubei", with some sparse horn figures adding definition.

Creepy long tones from strings introduce "Eight Warriors of the Demon Clown", which also uses koto to great effect. Wind instruments pick up the melody and percussion comes crashing in later for Ifukube-like moment. The next track, "Blood Wind", is a continuation.

"Kagerou" is a long (8:22) piece that's mostly an unhurried combination of melody, mood and texture, with more effective koto playing and some lovely lyrical lines.

A couple of tense action cues, "Visions" and "Devil Shadow", come next, with the latter bursting into a terrific driving groove near the end.

An even cooler groove, North African or Middle Eastern it sounds like, is the foundation for "To Those Who Face the Wind", the first of the movie's two songs. Both were composed and sung by Ryouhei Yamanashi with lyrics by Shou Jitsukawa. This one, with its infectious and energetic feel and some impressive violiln soloing, is really great.

The same koto hit starts off the next two tracks, "Pursuit" and "Devil Swordsman", both short and powerful action/suspense pieces.

"Strategy" starts off as a pensive sort of piece, moves into an Ifukube-like passage and then ends with more hard-driving action pulse music. The beginning feel is then reiterated in "Reincarnation" and developed into a mysterious and lyrical melodic line.

The shakuhachi gets featured in "Struggle to the Death", which also continues the theme from the previous cue, before the "Epilogue", unsurprisingly similar to "Prologue".

The second song, "Somewhere, Faraway, Everyone Is Listening to a Ballad", is a more typical love song but still nice to listen to.

But of course there are many. And one of them is The Music Company's Rubber Soul Jazz from 1966.

While this is ostensibly "The Music Company"'s record, the featured instrument on every track is piano courtesy of Don Randi. He's joined by Pat Smith on bass and Tommy Tedesco on guitar. The other musicians include, on some of the tracks, another great guitarist, James Burton, as well as legendary dummer Hal Blaine and Julius Wechtor on vibes and percussion.

Because I don't sit around listening to The Beatles very much, I don't actually know a lot of these songs, which means that many of them aren't the ones that you always hear.

The familiar tracks to me were "Norwegian Wood", "Michelle" and "In My Life". But all the songs are well done here, though I wish Burton had got a chance to do more. Tedesco takes several fine guitar solos, though, on both electric and acoustic guitar.

I like this record more than, well, everyone, it seems. I have one friend so horrified by its very existence he asks me not even to put it on when he's over at my place.

Maybe this is because I'm more or less indifferent to the Rolling Stones and am more of a fan of jazz guitar and Joe Pass and these kinds of, I'll admit it, sappy '60s pop-jazz-easy-listening collisions.

I don't even know a lot of the songs on this record. So to me they just sound like cool tunes with great guitar solos and, courtesy of Bill Perkins, tenor sax solos.

It helps that Bob Florence left the orchestra at home and opted for a mid-size jazz ensemble. Victor Feldman adds some great vibes playing and Ray Brown is terrific on bass, as usual.

As for the songs I do know, "Mother's Little Helper" has been swing jazzed practically out of existence and sounds like it would be more appropriate for an album of Mary Poppins numbers. But once they get through the melody, Pass takes a fantastic solo and I stopped caring what song it was.

The famous riff for "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" sounds like it could have come from a Quincy Jones bossa nova album with its flutes and backbeat. Again, this is a Joe Pass record, though, and when he steps into the spotlight, the song takes off.

Pass starts "Paint It Black" with some lush and friendly jazz chords backed by easygoing swing from the rhythm section. If this is a moving and powerful song for you when played by the Stones, you might have a panic attack if you hear this. As for me, I might try to transcribe Pass's solo.

It wouldn't be such a stretch for "As Tears Go By" to get this treatment, would it? Certainly not but, unexpectedly, this one comes across as just kind of boring.

The last song on the record is a Joe Pass original called "Stone Jazz". It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Stones and is just kind of a generic '60s bluesy groover with tasty guitar playing. It's fine.