Fancy a bit of kitsch to kick-off the year? Then look no further than this collection of previously unreleased soundtracks to Shaw Brothers movies from the De Wolfe music library…
In the late 70s and early 80s, De Wolfe came to dominate the market for music library companies, supplying what is often referred to as ‘incidental music’ to a host of films and television programmes. In fact, during that time there were very few shows on British TV that weren’t using their music. From The Sweeney to Max Headroom, Minder to Dr. Who, Whodunnit to Spitting Image, even Monty Python’s Flying Circus! Tracks from their libraries have even been become popular theme tunes, including those for Van de Valk and Roobarb and Custard.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that one of the other great icons of the time, the Hong Kong movie making machine Shaw Brothers, also used their tracks to score some of their later work… should it?
The collection, complied by Joel Martin and co. at De Wolfe, is a myriad of styles and approaches. There are ornate orchestral works like Waiting For The Man (used in Shaolin Mantis), which sounds like it could have come from an Alexander Korda production or swashbuckling epic from the 30s and 40s; energetic 60s action themes like Counterspy (used as the theme for Dirty Ho), Suppression, which sounds rather like the theme to Sapphire And Steel (Two Champions Of Shaolin); the jazzy, Miles Davis inspired Moonbird (Heaven And Hell); Spaghetti Western themes like For And Against (Return To The 36th Chamber); dynamic stings lasting just a few seconds; funkier, rhythmic tunes like Two Seconds Precisely and Dr. Witch-Wot (Heaven And Hell); and some more bizarre entries like Electro Beat 5 (The Kung-Fu Instructor) and Electro Beat (The Master), which sound like death by Space Invaders (though were undoubtedly innovative at the time).
It’s entertaining to think that due to their inclusion on some of the most infamous kung fu films of the late seventies, these tracks have been sampled by much of the hip-hop community, and easily influenced the Wu-tang Clan’s RZA on soundtracks for Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai and Kill Bill.
There’s no doubting the tracks selected by directors and producers at Shaw Brothers from the De Wolfe library were influenced by the music they’d used previously. (Often ‘borrowed’ from other film scores without permission, James Bond was a particular favourite of Hong Kong films way in to the 1980s.) As a result these sound rather dated for the time they were used, it hints at the scale and oversized spectacle expected from Shaw Brothers movies – with lavish sets and costumes their studio system was itself coming to an end, soon to be usurped by smaller studio’s like Golden Harvest able to take risks.
Kung Fu Super Sounds is a quirky, fun and fascinating insight into music only previously heard on the soundtracks themselves. Due to its very nature, it’s difficult to listen to in more than bite-sized chunks. You wouldn’t, for instance, put this album on to relax to, or even as background music. (Which is kind of ironic, isn’t it?) It lacks the consistency of early compilations such as Bite Hard: The Music De Wolfe Studio Sample 1972-80 (Barely Breaking Even Records, 1998) and Shut It! The Music of The Sweeney (Sanctuary Records, 2001), both of which kept to the more accessible, funky end of the spectrum of music used.
However, as the Shaw Bothers films continue to be reappraised thanks to the availability of the Celestial Pictures remasters from distributors around the world, such as IVL in Hong Kong, Dragon Dynasty in the US, and the new, revamped Momentum Pictures offerings in the UK beginning next month, is there a better time to enjoy these tracks in their full glory?
