RED LIGHT BYTES: The Red Light Roundup (4-24-2024)

Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...

Overview

It’s live! Friend of the Force JD Cowan’s Star Wanderers is crowdfunding now on Kickstarter. Published by indie pulp legends Cirsova, dive into eight electrifying tales of justice served by two of its most unique agents in a science fantasy thrill-ride. Available in digital and physical formats, and featuring a special musical single by yours truly available EXCLUSIVELY through this campaign, as previewed in the soundtrack of the collection’s trailer.

Last time you’ll see it headlining until we’re in its final week. On with da cultah!

A Moment of Cool from Kenichi Sonoda’s Riding Bean (1989, Hasegawa)

Quick Classics: RIDING BEAN (1989)

I’m calling this segment “Quick Classics” because, in an effort to make this newsletter easier on me, I’m diving into my back catalogue of Letterboxd reviews for films I love or find fascinating, and feel are project-relevant. It won’t all be reheated leftovers however, as I’ll be expanding on them as necessary.

We’re going to give special attention to animated films in this column. This is partly due to legendary flicks like Heavy Metal and Fantastic Planet being foundational to my love of SFF and the creation of this series, but also just because. Who knows, if all goes well, you might even see 365 in motion one of these days! Let’s start with one of the great cult favorites of weebdom.

Riding Bean is a live-wire 1989 OVA about an overpowered outlaw in a mean machine foiling the plans of a kidnapping crook, based on the manga by Gall Force and Bubblegum Crisis designer Kenichi Sonoda.

Sonoda is like if Shinichirō Watanabe of Cowboy Bebop fame was exclusively obsessed with Bullitt, Dirty Harry, and Vanishing Point with a side of Blues Brothers action-comedy.

In short: Kenichi Sonoda is my spirit animal.

If you’ll permit me to talk craft for moment, I’m very guarded about my muses. Things will influence me at the subconscious level, and work their way into stories without me “looking” as it were. Because I’m aware of this, I take curation very seriously. I won’t watch, read or listen to something that I think will interfere with my vision for a project, whether it’s 365 Infantry or parts elsewhere. I haven’t watched Mad Max: Fury Road, Chris Prynoski’s Motorcity, or fellow cult anime Redline because of this. The running theme between all of them is that they’re simply too much.

Not that they’re bad, not that I don’t like them in concept, but that they go so far over-the-top, it doesn’t feel right for me to watch them while I’m making 365. Perish the thought, but the man who’s making the weird furry post-apoc cyberpulp series has his limitations!

Fortunately, Kenichi Sonoda avoids this by cushioning his automotive insanity with insane attention to detail and keeping the action street-level. The car chases in this OVA are legendary and for good reason, they’re wild and chaotic, packed to the rafters with carnage, but with a sincere realism that bowls me over every time I watch them. The way the guns look, the way the cars move, it all works flawlessly and anchors leading man Bean Bandit’s superhuman abilities and the ghoulish villainy of kidnapper Semmerling. This is the kind of madness I aspire to when writing for series like Urban Avenger.

Sonoda’s taste in cars, guns, and tight scripts locked-and-loaded with wisecracks and unfettered style is the kind of white-knuckled anime I can get behind. Hell, when the man names his title character after a legendary hot rod (which, if not intentional, is a helluva coincidence), you know we're in good hands. Add in excellent animation under Yasuo Hasegawa’s direction, eye-catching character designs, and a slamming R&B fusion soundtrack by session veteran David Garfield, and you are treated to a slice of late 80s oldtaku goodness…with just one catch: the dub is kinda rough.

It does the trick, and if the man sets his shit in Chicago, I’ll listen to it in English, but there was something perpetually off about the energy and deliveries, to the point where it gets endurance-test-levels of jank. But muscling through its a breeze when the entire production is a 48-minute thrill ride loaded with heart, humor, and classic Japanese excess anchored by an immense attention to detail. Recommended without reservation, and you best believe we’ll be talking ‘bout Gunsmith Cats in the future! Available now from AnimEigo on DVD and coming soon to Blu-ray!

Indie Spotlight: X-06 FUTURESPY

They were spotlighted in the old format, and we’re spotlighting them again in the new because such a change has also occurred in James Baxter’s loving send-up to 60s spy-fi and classic ITC action. The audio drama masquerading as off-air soundtracks to a lost television series has recently graduated from one-man-show to full-cast audio drama in the exciting affair of “The Brain Centre!”

Top scientists are being groomed and absconded with to the Eastern Bloc, and it’s up to Agent X-06 to go undercover and find out to what end these brilliant minds are being used for. Posing as an electronics specialist, and contacted by the seductive Nadia, all roads (or perhaps rockets) lead to the titular Brain Centre. Exuberantly performed, tautly paced, and brilliantly produced, the illusion of the series and its analog origins are carried off to the letter. It’s not 100%, for very few digital (and stereophonic) productions can manage that, but its sincere admiration for its forebears and near-total emulation of their formats and stylings makes suspending disbelief a cinch. Send Baxter & Co. all the support you can spare them, for this show has earned it.

Streetwise Caviar

I think we’ll just have to keep bouncing these back-and-forth for the time being. One week’s a Top 10 roundup, the next is a spotlight on the crème de la crème of awesome albums and stellar songs.

Now here’s a question: what albums make you think of the future? Not in that they’re conceptually ABOUT the future, or that they’re exclusively produced with the latest tech, but that they SOUND like the future. I’ve been racking my brain around this and have found two very peculiar answers for myself.

1979’s Breakfast in America by Supertramp may seem an unlikely answer at first. An album sleeve saluting stereotypical ideas of Americana, and a set of songs as much about society and love as they are about co-leads Rick Davies and Roger Hodgson’s personal differences that would lead to the latter’s exit.

And yet, by virtue of the bouncing Wurlitzer electric piano alone, there’s a strange synthetic veneer to the pop-meets-prog style of the band that has never quite been captured again by either party after parting ways. I’ve shared the song “Child of Vision” before, but that in combination with the legendary “Logical Song” really feel like messages for the present about the future, about conformity and the impositions placed on us day-to-day.

Now for a choice I can’t even make a thematic argument for, so bear with me. Ever since I first listened to 1980’s Triumph by The Jacksons, something in my gut told me this was an album of the future, based on verve and vibe alone. It’s there in that chromium-plated Jacksons logo and that dazingly surreal “Can You Feel It” music video. It came out after brother Michael’s 1979 landmark album Off The Wall, and it’s that elevated sense of production and songwriting blended with the R&B institution’s group sensibilities that produced a pop funk album that sounds like nothing else before or since.

I highlight “Your Ways” as an example because it manages to carry off everything that works about it. Dynamite orchestral arrangements, chillingly ageless synths, a paranoid streak in its lyrics (penned, to my surprise, by eldest brother Jackie) and the true running theme of the album: Michael abusing the living hell out of his falsetto, singing in a register that can effortlessly slide from exuberant to almost mournful. You can tell once that part of his voice had matured, the King of Pop was in love with it from word go.

The synergy between all, and on tracks like MJ’s infamous “Heartbreak Hotel” or synth-heavy album closer “Wondering Who,” the whole LP sounds like discothèque hits from a surveillance state, something Michael would carry over into his solo work with planet-smashers like “Billie Jean” and second-look gems like “Who Is It” or “Stranger in Moscow.”

Help me out here, soldiers, what albums do YOU feel hail from the future? Let us know in the comments below!

Conclusion

I think I’m letting my mid-century obsessions show, but what the hell, if it’s the source of my power, it’s the source of my power. Stay searching, stay jamming, and always dig where no one else will, soldiers. Be seeing you!