4 out of 5

Label: We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records

Produced by: Sidney Claire Meyer (mastered by)

Though I’m mixed on the films of Shinya Tsukamoto, I am not mixed on his constant composer compatriot, Chu Ishikawa. Whether working in an industrial format – often the earlier scores, and the case here – or expanding to broader and more cinematic styles, Ishikawa’s music’s immediacy is always palpable, informed by an organicness in the construction that suggests living and breathing music, obeying within logical parameters but by no means predictable. When that’s mapped to Tsukamoto’s hyperkinetic splatter in films like Tokyo Fist, it is an unextractable part of the experience, with the same characteristics quite perfect for standalone listening.

Fist’s score is cocredited to Ishikawa’s hardcore industrial act, Der Eisenrost; certain tracks are called out as being by the group as opposed to Ishikawa alone, but the score’s sounds are all aligned, if jumping the aural spectrum from emotive ambience to noise assaults. The recording style – cavernous; a barrage of sounds banging to be heard from a distant room – recalls early Foetus, or Skullflower, but the aforementioned immediacy is the secret sauce to that, making for an appropriately unnerving dichotomy where the material sounds “dated,” fidelity-wide, but keeps threatening to evolve into something new, with sudden blaring noise, or a melody or tone that’s simply out of place (…and yet perfect). Echoes of the bands mentioned, but you can also hear Jesu springing from this loam in some of the drone stretches, and an intriguing new wave bop that’s propping up a lot of the bluster.

If there’s any fault here, it’s maybe just that the focus of each track perhaps does not lend this to being a narrative. That is: it works in film, and it works as an album of songs, but maybe is a little disconnected as a soundtrack album – without knowing the movie, I can’t exactly picture a full length film that plays to this; it would feel like every song must overtake the scene. This is admittedly a weak criticism, but I noticed I wasn’t really immersed in the music, so much as constantly in awe of its passion.