YOU & THE EXPLOSION BAND

• Lupin III
• Nippon Columbia
• 1978
• Japan

Yuji Ohno (大野 雄二) was born 1941 in Atami, Shizuoka. Soon after his first public appearances he became very well known in his homeland Japan as a great jazz pianist and composer. In the mid 1970s he formed his own jazz band, called You & The Explosion Band (ユ－&エクスプロ－ジョン・バンド) - where You Refers to Ohno himself. Even though he has released a lot of records during his career, he is primarly known for his scores for the anime series Lupin III. Before Ohno started scoring the Shin Rupan Sansei (New Lupin III) series in 1977, there was only some occasional 45s released of the series within its original run in the late 1960s early 1970s. But with Ohno handling things, there suddenly started to appear a relatively great number of soundtrack albums during the years. Of course these were not all for the tv anime series that run from 1977 to 1980 and from 1984 to 1985, but there was a great number of other stuff aswell. Including direct-to-video releases, yearly television specials and full length anime films. And they were really popular. Even the legendary Studio Ghibli did their share with the feature film called Castle of Cagliostro (Rupan Sansei: Kariosutoro no Shiro) in 1979 (as directed by Hayao Miyazaki). Hayao Miazaki and Isao Takahata also directed a great deal of the original 1971-1972 series by the way, but that was a time before Studio Ghibli was even established. But anyways, when the second Lupin III series began running on NTV in 1977, the boom of soundtracks also begun. Totally 48 soundtrack albums were released and most of them were composed by by Yuji Ohno. Takeo Yamashita made his little share on those too, but it was really minimal compared to Ohno. Later on Ohno have even released 15 collections of jazz arrangements of the Lupin III series with his Yuji Ohno Trio, The Lupintic Five and The Lupintic Sixteen.

This soundtrack here, simply named Lupin III, is supposingly the first one of the new series. It was released in 1978. The album starts with “Theme from Lupin III”, the original take of the new series theme. It’s an uptempo disco’ish soundtrack with some jazzy feel and there’s some dialogue in the middle as well. Next two, “Silhouette” and “I miss you babe (yes I do)”, are a little cheesy ballads. The latter one has vocals sung by Sandra Hohn. Next one is “Red roses for the killer”, a midtempo jazzy track. Then there’s “Dangerous zone”, which is an uptempo chase theme with nice breakbeats, some percussion and strong horns but on the other hand, there’s some occasional cheesy synth strings too. Next one, “Sunset flight” is a mellow groover with a hint of latin in it. It’s followed by the well known downtempo groover “Magnum dance” and a little similar “Lonely for the Road”. Last two tracks are the love songs of the album, “Lovin’ you (Lucky)” and “Love theme”. First one sung by Tommy Snyder (of the Godiego fame). Overall this is a pretty decent album and a good start for the great series.

Theme from Lupin III

Red roses for the killer

Dangerous zone

Sunset flight

Magnum dance

Lonely for the Road