July 17, 2004, was clearly something of a landmark day in the long and chequered history of the Wu-Tang Clan. At a concert in San Bernardino, California, all nine errant members actually managed to turn up to the same show. Little wonder, then, that the gig has been immortalised as a live album: for here is hip-hop’s most ungovernable, mystical and potent crew, reunited after a few years which have seen many of them dropped by their record labels, incarcerated, neglected. And, perhaps, consumed by a cynical drive to stretch the franchise for all its worth with a sequence of increasingly shoddy records.
This cynicism is undoubtedly at play behind “Disciples Of The 36 Chambers”. Even by the standards of live albums, the sound quality is fairly grim. The RZA’s groggy soundscapes might as well be coming from a ghettoblaster at the back of the stage, while the elaborately overlapping raps are often drowned out by the crowd baying along.
As a result, “Disciples” isn’t an album you’ll return to very often. It is, though, a useful reminder of how many brilliant songs the Wu have produced over the past decade or so. While the murky snippets are hardly satisfying, they do compel you to dig out the original versions of these looming, malignant anthems: “Bring The Pain”, “Re-United”, “Ice Cream”; Raekwon The Chef’s “Criminology”; Cappadonna and Ghostface Killah’s complementary versions of “Run”; GZA’s clipped, awesome “Liquid Swords”, wherein the martial arts fantasies of the Clan are imbued with an almost hallucinatory force.
Occasionally, one of the rappers will rise above the shouty morass and assert themselves, most notably Ghostface, whose indignant splutter retains its fluency even in the midst of chaos. Occasionally, too, the whole fragile business slides closer to a shambles, chiefly when the tragically damaged Ol’ Dirty Bastard tries to take charge on “Shimmy Shimmy Ya”.
“How many people here would love to hear a brand new Wu-Tang album?” asks RZA at the death, perhaps a touch deluded that he’ll ever again be able to round up his charges. But if all nine of them do find the studio in time, there’s just enough vitality here to suggest it might be worth the effort.
