Steve 'Flash' JuonThis one’s a bit odd for me. I’m going to assume people who have been riding with me for a while know I’m a huge video game nerd — hell I even have a YouTube channel about it. Despite that the fact there was a game called Samurai Gunn that came out in 2013 was a complete mystery to me, and given that Anticon legend Doseone both wrote and produced the soundtrack should have put it more in my wheelhouse not less. Then again I was equally caught off guard when I found out Aesop Rock produced the soundtrack for a satirical shoot ’em up called Freedom Finger, so perhaps there’s a pattern in my life here. If these things happen every seven years then I expect there will be an indie game in another four years with a soundtrack by The Alchemist that I miss.
Having not played the game (though given it’s from a designer of Hyper Light Drifter I assume it’s pretty good) I feel that I’m missing some of the context for songs like “Wind & Red,” though the eerie vocals saying “I’m not scared of you” paired with the Eastern influenced instruments suggest it comes at a tense moment in the game. But wait — the game isn’t a platformer, RPG, or even a tactical turn based strategy affair. Beau Blyth literally created Samurai Gunn as a joke inspired by watching one of history’s worst movies. “Samurais. With guns.” That’s it. It’s a 2-4 player brawler where only the player with the best timing (or a bullet left) survives. How deep can it be?
Perhaps that doesn’t matter. Doseone’s lyrics on tracks like “Forests & Foes” are growled in a quietly intense manner, slightly above a whisper but just soft enough to blend into the background of the action. That fits. “The EP” also includes instrumental versions of each track, so it’s possible he designed the music for the game first then made rap songs for the soundtrack, but I think they’d work as the backdrop to a duel either way. If “Flag & Threat” is meant to make you feel like you’re participating in a gritty samurai movie, then it works with or without Doseone’s vocals.
The more I listen to “The Samurai Gunn EP” the more I want to play the game. It’s usually supposed to work the other way around, but all the pieces are in place here. A rap artist/producer whose music I like, plus a video game designer whose work I like, equals a game I would almost certainly like. My only fear is that like the album itself it might be a very short experience — in fact the album is almost certainly longer. Allegedly Blyth was working on a more expansive sequel to Samurai Gunn when the game went viral, but his participation in (and the success of) Hyper Light Drifter curtailed those plans. I hope by the time I play Samurai Gunn he’s released Part Deux.