When Carbone returned to America, feels some kind of magnet pulling him back towards Japan, so asked to his music publisher find a place into a Japanese project. He offered to him, Zito & O’Banion as a working combo, the soundtrack for the Kadokawa movie “Satomi Hakken Den“.
Known in the west as “Legend of Eight Samurai”, the film was the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1984, earning ¥ 2.3 billion, and the theme song (a ballad translated “I Don’t Want This Night To End”) the first O’Banion / Carbone big hit in Japan.
The other song composed (with Richie Zito) to the movie, “White Light“, is a very nice commercial poppy AOR tune full of magic.
The trio put together both songs and the rest of the material they’ve been working, on what become the third John O’Banion solo album: “Satomi Hakken Den: [Legend Of Eight Samurai soundtrack]”, disc also known as “White Light”, only released in Japan.
The track “Body Heat” sounds like a work-out gym song so popular those years, “Turn Out The Light” is filled with orchestral keyboards and electronic drums (a very action-movie-like tune), same with “She Dreams Of You”. I love this kind of stuff.
“We Can’t Go On” and “She Dreams Of You” are more poppy (the latter sounding as a ‘Flashdance’ left off), on “Techno Pheliac” they go pretty techno indeed, a very synth based track, while “I Need Love” and specially the beautiful “We Can Dream” are in the style of earlier O’Banion material.
The album was released on vinyl (’83) on selected countries, and never officially reissued.
This 2018 release on CD is a bootleg, but a very good one, and the only chance to have these great synth-filled AOR tunes available again. A very rare CD.
A beautiful bunch of songs.
01 – Hakkenshi’s Theme (White Light)
02 – Body Heat
03 – Turn Out The Light
04 – We Can’t Go On
05 – She’s The One
06 – Satomi Hakken-Den (I Don’t Want This Night To End)
07 – She Dreams Of You
08 – I Need Love
09 – Techno Pheliac
10 – We Can Dream
John O’Banion: Vocals
Richie Zito: Guitars, Bass, Programming
Joey Carbone: Keyboards, Syths, Programming
John Pierce: Bass
Carlos Vega: Drums