North London Food & Culture

So what is Sendo Senshi all about then?

When is a film soundtrack not a film soundtrack? When it's part of a high concept project from this K-Town musician

Kung-fu! Shooting the trailer in Aces & Eights
Kung-fu! Shooting the trailer in Aces & Eights

Tufnell Park-based composer Alan D. Boyd dropped us a line to alert us to Sendo Senshi, his score to a “fictitious” film. That’s right, a film that’s not film. Although there is a trailer.

Intriguing: the Sendo Senshi poster
Intriguing: the Sendo Senshi poster
Confused? Don’t be. “I wrote it as my alter ego,” he says, “Alessandro ‘Saseko’ Motojima, “the 70s master of b-movie and ‘whitexploitation'”. It all started when an artist who creates movie posters for imagined films of that era asked me to contribute a piece of music for a compilation album. Instead, I penned a whole score to the single poster of Sendo Senshi, which led to us filming a trailer – and then making more artwork to accompany it.”

Phew. And as you might imagine it’s a pretty cool slice of 70s-inspired kung-fu score music featuring K-Town musician MAo Yamada, written and recorded at Alan’s studio on Queen’s Crescent. Even Fun Lovin’ Criminal Huey Morgan has been all over a couple of tracks on 6 Music.

But perhaps most interestingly for some readers, the trailer was shot in various familar locations, including Hampstead Heath, Jackson’s Lane Theatre, Queen’s Crescent, Junction Road – and Alan’s fave local bar Aces & Eights:


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So convincing was all this that in a recent review for a US blog the writer admits that at first he thought it was actually a lost 1970s film: “then it hit him”, says Alan, with a smile.

And if you’re a fan, you might also be interested to know that his soundtrack to the 2009 BBC production of Day Of The Triffids (also recorded in his QC studio) was finally made available to download a week or so back too.

Sendo Senshi (OST) is available on vinyl and cassette from Rough Trade records. Or you can download it, of course, from all the usual places. Find out more about Alan here

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