Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2025 March 31 • Monday

The 850th Soundtrack of the Week is Shunsuke Kikuchi's music for the Japanese TV series Abarenbo Shogun (The Unfettered Shogun). Apparently it's a samurai series in which the main character, a fictional shogun, wanders around in disguise, righting wrongs and all that, with most people unaware that he's the shogun.

This is a pretty bare bones CD. The titles of the cues are industrial strength: "V-15", "II-29", M-72" and so on.

But the music is really nice, mostly stringed instruments with a little bit of synth here and there. The occasional shamisen and shakuhachi show up, of course, and there's good use of vocals as well as the obligatory pop song theme.