Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email


2025 February 03 • Monday

I guess we might as well listen to the music from another Koji Wakamatsu movie. Why not? He actually just produced this one. Branded To Kill co-writer Atsushi Yamatoya was the director. The movie itself is called The Gun That Sprouted Hair (of course) and its presumably improvised jazz score by tenor saxophonist Seiichi Nakamura and drummer Takeo Moriyama is the 842nd Soundtrack of the Week.

With the exception of two solo harpsichord classical music pieces performed by "an unknown university student", the music here is all sax/drums duos.

They're mostly pretty short and sure sound like they were freely improvised.

They cover quite a range of moods and feels, however, and are all really great. Nakamura has a great tone and plays with sensitivity and depth while Moriyama is a perfect partner, assuredly providing energetic and tasteful rhythmic support.

Nakamura gets track 7 to himself and track 8 features the drums with only occasional contributions from the sax.

Track 9 is so reverbed out it you wonder where the hell they recorded it.

But really all you need to know is that this is a great free jazz tenor sax and drums duo record that just happens to be a movie soundtrack.