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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
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Composed and Produced by:
Joel P. West
Conducted by:
Gavin Greenaway
Orchestrated by:
Mark Graham
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Commercial digital release only, with high resolution options.
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AWARDS
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None.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you seek perhaps 2021's most fulfilling surprise,
newcomer Joel P. West bursting into the Marvel superhero sound with a
remarkably effective combination of symphonic action and ethnic Chinese
flavor.
Avoid it... if you don't want to think in order to identify the
themes in these kinds of films, West supplying a wealth of complexity to
his ideas that may cause some listeners to appreciate the music's tone
rather than its motific narrative.
BUY IT
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: (Joel P.
West) Where there exists an obscure character on the page of a Marvel
comic book, box office profits are destined to follow. So the Marvel
Cinematic Universe continues to prove with its 25th feature flick,
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The 2021 movie
introduces a relatively unknown superhero to the masses, the studio's
first foray into the Asian realm even though the Chinese government
didn't want its own citizens to watch it. Over thousands of years, a
mystical weapon known as the ten rings is wielded on the arms of a
villain who conquers and pillages throughout history; originally, this
character was Fu Manchu, though Marvel lost the rights to him and, given
his racial controversies, the loss was probably for the better. The
replacement villain in this movie has a son and daughter who reject the
Ten Rings crime organization that results from these powers, with the
son, Shang-Chi, choosing to live a mundane life in San Francisco despite
training along with his sister at an early age to be an assassin.
Destiny beckons him to eventually confront his father and take over the
rings, dragging along his everyday girlfriend for the ride. The
highlight of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is the
film's adaptation of Chinese mythos into the superhero genre, and
audiences awarded the movie's theatrical release with substantial
grosses. With largely an Asian crew as well, Destin Daniel Cretton
helmed the picture, and he brought young American composer Joel P. West
into the project based on their prior work on four films. While he had
provided songs to lesser children's productions, nothing in his career
prepared him for an ethnically massive Marvel film score. It's unusual
to see a completely unknown composer receive the opportunity of a
lifetime like this, but West responded with extensive research and care
in how he handled the assignment. He spent months studying Chinese
musical traditions, both in the structures, like the pentatonic scale,
and the instruments he employed as part of his diverse London ensemble.
A 70-piece orchestra generates the bulk of the 105-minute score's size,
but West's specialty performers give it the expected Chinese
personality, one that cynical listeners might label stereotypical.
In the execution of the structure and instrumentation of
the music in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, West
succeeds admirably in not only providing an appropriate size and tone,
but he also manages to maintain that presence despite competing with
songs in the picture. Fantasy and adventure scores of immense scope and
Chinese flavor are a rarity in mainstream film music, and to this end
alone, the score is a rewarding deviation. The orchestra is well
handled, its orchestrations and mixing betraying lingering pandemic
recording restrictions. In hiring the UK Chinese Ensemble for the ethnic
component, West achieves appropriate and heartfelt solo layers that are
extremely rich and organic in performance. The pair of foremost stringed
specialists, the erhu and pipa, are joined by xiao and dizi flutes.
Chinese versions of the dulcimer and zither, the yangqin and guzheng,
are also referenced. But stealing the show is the sparsely immense
presence of Chinese percussion for the hand-to-hand fight scenes, led by
tanggu drums that were performed in circles of up to a dozen. West also
employed a variety of paigu and bangu drums and, for the metallic
element, lion cymbals and opera gongs. Of particular note in
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a lack of prominent
role for synthetic elements, placing this work apart from its peers in
the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is an extremely vibrant recording
that applies Western orchestral soloists, most notably a cello, when not
featuring one of the Chinese soloists. The composer isn't afraid to
allow extended passages be carried by these performers alone, especially
in the percussion applied to martial arts scenes. For many listeners,
this score will excel simply because it sounds fantastic for much of its
length and offers surprising layers of sophistication. On the other
hand, the music also supplies complexity to a level that may doom the
score as "sonic wallpaper" for listeners not interested in parsing out
the wealth of motific notions explored by West. The score has such an
overwhelming mass of sound when combining the orchestra with the ethnic
soloists that it could potentially play as an immensely anonymous but
still at times beautiful accompaniment. West is certainly ambitious with
his theme count and integration, but that level of complication only
serves parts of the score well while leaving others without necessary
distinction.
The complexity of West's themes for Shang-Chi and the
Legend of the Ten Rings is compounded by his consistent layering of
parts of these themes on top of each other and alluding to them only by
suggestion of instrumentation or minimal fragments. The lack of outright
definition of each idea is a bit disappointing, even if West's ideas can
be sorted out with enough attention. Not surprisingly, the score offers
a musical battle between themes owned by Shang-Chi and his father,
Wenwu, while secondary ideas exist for Ying Li (Shang-Chi's mother),
Xialing (his sister), and the elements of power and romance more
generally. The evolution experienced in the main theme for Shang-Chi is
quite remarkable in the score, West expressing it with menacing tones
throughout much of the work until the character overcomes the shadow of
his father. This motif is oddly simple, a basic six-note (not ten-note,
sadly) phrase that is vaguely similar to Alan Silvestri's The
Avengers theme, perhaps by accident but hopefully not. The theme
doesn't really shine until late, as at 0:10 and 0:21 into the end
credits suite, "Xu Shang-Chi," which offers it at grand scale on brass
over the Chinese percussion and plucking. Its actual origins in the film
are darkly morbid on cellos for Wenwu's influence, heard at 0:39 and
1:25 into "Your Father" and twisted in progressions by the end of that
cue. By 0:35 into "Training," the theme is militaristic with the
swirling menace from "Your Father" that embodies Wenwu's own material.
It's fragmented early on cello in "My Son is Home" and slight and
defeated at 2:33 into "Is This What You Wanted?" West saves the theme's
full heroic potential until the big finale at 1:40 into "The Light and
the Dark" and completes its maturation alongside the mother's theme at
1:56 into "Qingming Jie." While the evolution of the idea is
commendable, West really needed a bit more air time for the victorious
version of this theme later in the narrative. That said, West does
explore a heroic action variant of main theme at 2:04 into "Don't Look
Down," a rousing cue with significant Silvestri influence in the rhythms
at its conclusion. The Wenwu theme is more of a rhythmic force whereas
the main theme is a bit of a stinger given its short duration and lack
of formal secondary phrasing. By comparison, the idea for the father is
a perpetually sinister, fluid, and unresolved motif heard at 1:18 into
"Your Father," at 0:28 into "Training," and with strong shades late in
"Revenge," often accompanied by snare rhythms.
The theme for Shang-Chi's father, Wenwu, in
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings does experience,
however, notable variance and a major transformation by the end,
suggesting possible redemption. The brutal and abrasive attitude of the
theme is cemented at 1:31 onward into "My Son is Home," where it fights
off phrases of the mother's theme, and this darkness interrupts the "A
Blood Debt" cue by 4:00 and continues on brass at 0:54 into "Is This
What You Wanted?" It's even more hypnotically propulsive at 1:07 into
"Inheritance." But the salvation does come for this theme, as West
allows it to resolve in a second phrase only twice; the first instance
comes at 0:10 into "Zhe Zhi," where the idea turns pretty on solo cello
for much of the cue, and the theme achieves peace through an even softer
variant for solo cello at 0:20 into "Qingming Jie." This fuller,
resolved version of the theme is a hidden highlight of the entire score,
arguably the most beautiful blossoming of any theme West suggests. His
material for Shang-Chi's mother, Ying Li, is not as well defined, but
its greater purpose in the score is to provide ambience for the Chinese
culture of the story, so it's not always a literal character theme. The
theme is introduced by an important motif consisting of five to seven
ascending notes most often conveyed by the plucked guzheng. This motif
sometimes suffices to alone suggestion the historical and family
elements at work, though West also supplies a better rounded theme for
Ying Li that is the domain of the erhu. This somewhat anonymous material
serves at counterpoint to the main theme on several occasions, including
quite elegantly during the last minute of "Xu Shang-Chi." It's teasingly
distant throughout the courtship of "The Bamboo Spring" and fills out to
its best form in "Your Mother," by which time some listeners may find it
similar to playful material applied by John Powell to How to Train
Your Dragon: The Hidden World. The rising figures return early in
"The Waterfall," in the middle of "Ancestors," and late in "Who You
Are." They outlive the theme itself early in "A Blood Debt" and during
much of "The Deep." A touch of agony inflicts the idea at 2:16 into "Is
This What You Wanted?" The theme serves as counterpoint to the major
themes in "The Light and the Dark" before helping close out the score's
familial elements in lovely form during the latter half of "Qingming
Jie" and at the start of "Family," where it is expressed nicely on
woodwinds, harp, and the score's only piano solo.
The three remaining, lesser motifs in Shang-Chi and
the Legend of the Ten Rings may pass by most listeners, foremost the
identity for Xialing, the sister. Its two-note phrasing makes it far
more abrupt and fragmented than any of the score's other themes,
debuting throughout "Three Days" on somber cello and yielding to the
mother's motif by the end. It supplies the basis for the erhu melody of
"Together Soon" and returns early in "Grief," but don't listen for it to
make an impact. More obvious are West's motifs for power and romance.
The power motif is a simple ascending phrase heard with grand force at
0:35 into "Xu Shang-Chi" and continuing underneath Wenwu's theme at 0:44
into "Your Father." It recurs during the middles of "Revenge" and "My
Son is Home" and closes out "Inheritance." The romance motif immediately
follows the power motif at 0:56 in "Xu Shang-Chi" and is its lush,
descending counterpart. The motif returns in the middle of "My Son is
Home" but truly shines at 0:56 into "The Waterfall," where it receives
nice woodwind accompaniment. A major performance concludes "I Won't
Leave You Again" at 3:37, mingling with the mother's ascending motif.
It's at moments like this that fleeting comparisons to Klaus Badelt's
phenomenal The Promise will become tempting. The romance motif
reprises its suite format at 0:30 into "The Light and the Dark,"
arguably the score's most appealing melodic cue outside of the
"Shang-Chi." A few of the action cues stand apart and merit a call out;
the solidly singular action cue, "Stay in the Pocket," contains an
impressively developed, long crescendo, proving that the technique can
indeed still be mastered in the Hans Zimmer era of overuse. The
narrative flow of "I Won't Leave You Again" is also excellent even
without obvious themes, a characteristic that defines the best moments
of the score as a whole. West's enunciation of themes isn't always
clear, but that lack of easy identification, while disappointing, isn't
always necessary because of how well he nails the performance inflection
of each cue. For instance, the "Family" cue doesn't truly resolve the
various themes, but how it adapts the mother's theme to the
ever-reliable instrument of familial comfort, the piano, is highly
effective. Still, the album experience concludes awkwardly with this
cue, the "Shang-Chi" suite perhaps better moved to the end due to the
lack of a superhero-appropriate bookend to the main theme. The 68-minute
presentation does offer some slower moments, and the percussion-only
fight material may deter, but this score overall is a very impressive
blockbuster debut for West.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Total Time: 68:16
1. Xu Shang-Chi (2:55)
2. Your Father (3:13)
3. The Bamboo Spring (3:18)
4. Your Mother (2:05)
5. Training (1:55)
6. Brother and Sister (1:38)
7. Three Days (1:24)
8. Don't Look Down (4:09)
9. Revenge (1:35)
10. My Son is Home (2:19)
11. Zhe Zhi (2:55)
12. Together Soon (1:14)
13. Stay in the Pocket (1:45)
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14. The Waterfall (2:28)
15. Ancestors (4:12)
16. Who You Are (2:39)
17. A Blood Debt (6:16)
18. Grief (2:05)
19. Is This What You Wanted? (3:17)
20. The Deep (2:35)
21. Inheritance (4:29)
22. I Won't Leave You Again (4:13)
23. The Light and the Dark (1:46)
24. Qingming Jie (2:17)
25. Family (1:36)
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There exists no official packaging for this album.
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