Seatbelts

Formed in Tokyo, Japan in 1998, Seatbelts is a band led by Yoko Kanno, a composer and keyboardist best known for her work on soundtracks for anime films, video games, television series, adverts, and live-action motion pictures. She began her career by composing the soundtrack to the 1986 video game Nobunaga’s Ambition. Yoko Kanno continued to compose and perform music for soundtracks, but when presented with scoring the anime series Cowboy Bebop in 1998, she brought together a group of musicians to help record the music. Naming the band Seatbelts, they performed a myriad of styles including jazz, rock, blues, funk, electronic, and J-pop. Seatbelts released three albums in 1998 – Cowboy Bebop, Cowboy Bebop Vitaminless, and Cowboy Bebop No Disc – followed by Cowboy Bebop Blue (1999), Ask DNA (2001) and Future Blues (2001), which featured “No Reply”. There was also a series of remix compilations, a boxed set, and a collection called Cowboy Bebop Tank! THE! BEST! (2004). While Yoko Kanno continued her career, the Seatbelts project remained dormant until they re-appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. They re-recorded “The Real Folk Blues”, the ending theme of Cowboy Bebop, to raise funds for COVID-19 relief.