― Patrick South (Patrick South), Thursday, 12 February 2004 04:57 (twenty years ago) link
I will cop to less familiarity with the later period and shouldn't generalize. Looking forward to checking out the reissues.
― (Jon L), Thursday, 12 February 2004 05:24 (twenty years ago) link
― Alex in Doncaster (Alex in Doncaster), Wednesday, 12 May 2004 21:55 (twenty years ago) link
― mzui, Thursday, 13 May 2004 08:03 (twenty years ago) link
my YMO 10 right now
1. Taiso2. Rydeen3. Firecracker4. Tighten up5. Tighten up (I can do this!)6. You've got to help yourself7. Light in darkness8. Nice Age (perverse!!!!)9. Day Tripper10. Absolute Ego Dance
B-2 Unit is indeed an excellent record. I'll have to check out 1000 Knives. I've been tetchy with Sakamoto solo releases as he's rather ...inconsistent. Haruomi Hosono's Monad Box isn't really worth it either.
I have still not ponied up for any Sketch Show releases! *forehead slap*
Ally's mom in the car when Tighten Up came on the stereo: "They sound like they're making fun of japanese people!"
― TOMBOT, Thursday, 13 May 2004 13:43 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 10 September 2004 19:02 (twenty years ago) link
― (Jon L), Saturday, 11 September 2004 06:31 (twenty years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 13:48 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 14:14 (nineteen years ago) link
I can gmail/YSI you guys sick Yamantaka eye remixes also!
― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 15:16 (nineteen years ago) link
― milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 17:33 (nineteen years ago) link
― vahid (vahid), Wednesday, 27 April 2005 18:41 (nineteen years ago) link
― joseph (joseph), Thursday, 28 April 2005 01:19 (nineteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:32 (eighteen years ago) link
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 25 May 2006 19:38 (eighteen years ago) link
Solid State Survivor's so outstanding I can't believe I didn't happen upon it earlier, the perfect synthesis of their pop orientalism and mastery of electronic texture -- the "Japanese Kraftwerk" thing really plays here, with "Behind the Mask" (bizarre history notwithstanding) something of an antidote to "The Model" (there's an absolutely hideous YouTube clip of Sakamoto playing this in the 90s that makes me shivver to even think about). "Insomnia," too, with the noirish vocoder melody that appears in the last third.
I'm only digging into BGM now, but Technodelic seems to get seriously short shrift -- the sound develops by leaps and bounds here, with "Taiso" birthing Nick Rhodes perhaps even more than Richard Barbieri ever could. Transitional, but not the worse for it. Shades of the Beatles, which would show up later on with "Lotus Love."
With Service and Naughty Boys, the music becomes extremely...digital, more symphonic. Some great stuff -- "Limbo," "Wild Ambitions" (featuring Bill Nelson's eBow pretty prominently), "Kai-Koh." These records almost sound like a different band, featuring little of the wit or bounce that kind of defines early YMO songs like "Absolute Ego Dance" and "Firecracker," with much more of an opaque Ippu-Do thing going on.
Still digging in, but with such a diverse profile, it's hard to believe these guys were left with such a niche reputation.
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Thursday, 2 November 2006 05:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― Zachary Scott (Zach S), Thursday, 2 November 2006 06:22 (seventeen years ago) link
― Patrick South (Patrick South), Thursday, 2 November 2006 07:01 (seventeen years ago) link
It's great! "Epilogue" should reduce many a grown man to sobbing.
― LC (Damian), Thursday, 2 November 2006 12:06 (seventeen years ago) link
with "Taiso" birthing Nick Rhodes perhaps even more than Richard Barbieri ever could
Clearly I meant "Light in Darkness" here.
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Thursday, 2 November 2006 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Thursday, 2 November 2006 16:52 (seventeen years ago) link
can someone recommend some other Haruomi Hosono projects aside from YMO (solo or otherwise)?
― amateurist, Tuesday, 4 August 2009 14:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Haruomi Hosono
― damo tsu tsuki (r1o natsume), Tuesday, 4 August 2009 14:52 (fifteen years ago) link
Paraiso is really good. Tropical music with a bizarre electronic twist. Very odd and affecting, and quite catchy as well.Cochin Moon is an early electronic classic. Really neat stuff.His Nokto de la Galaskia Fervojo soundtrack is chilling, it's minimal (as is a lot of Hosono's stuff) but very cold and moving. Love it.
― frogbs, Monday, 15 November 2010 19:26 (thirteen years ago) link
so glad this was revived. just found a mediafire folder with all the albums and needed some guidance.
― brotherlovesdub, Monday, 15 November 2010 21:58 (thirteen years ago) link
really loving these stripped down live versions YMO have been playing this year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NTnIJ61z1w
― missingNO, Saturday, 25 December 2010 03:16 (thirteen years ago) link
Love the synth trumpet!
― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, 26 December 2010 17:47 (thirteen years ago) link
Whoah, YMO doing "Thank You For Talkin' to Me Africa"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWPbDsPYxZM&feature=related
― Naive Teen Idol, Sunday, 26 December 2010 17:48 (thirteen years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEZ3VxGWwjM
excellent video (if you can ignore the camera effects). kinda weird to see a shorthaired 70's Hosono funking out by himself. they really did keep it tight though.
― frogbs, Tuesday, 30 October 2012 12:23 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0adjDQyYSI4
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Sunday, 31 March 2013 23:48 (eleven years ago) link
amazing find
― original bgm, Monday, 1 April 2013 00:20 (eleven years ago) link
i think cindy crawford is in one of those!!
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2013 02:10 (eleven years ago) link
hah, she is! I caught her posing dramatically with a piano while randomly skipping around.
― original bgm, Monday, 1 April 2013 04:38 (eleven years ago) link
Somebody really needs to write me a good, thorough examination on YMO and the Japanese New Wave (400 pages at least). I like the process of rooting around and finding out little bits and pieces of information but I need some cultural CONTEXT dammit!
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 16:42 (eleven years ago) link
I'm thinking that Nick Kent (the guy who runs technopop.info) could probably do something like that. YMO are interesting enough to warrant their own book but Japan is such a small country that all that stuff really ran into each other at some point. Like there's 3 degrees of seperation between pretty much every one of those bands. Most of it is probably through Harry Hosono, who seemingly appeared on everything that came out of Japan from 1976 to 1990 or so.
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2013 17:42 (eleven years ago) link
Too true, Hosono is a walking infographic.
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 17:50 (eleven years ago) link
a book like that would leapfrogbs to the very top of my reading list, for real
― your holiness, we have an official energy drink (Z S), Monday, 1 April 2013 17:51 (eleven years ago) link
it's weird how popular ymo seem to be when reading about them, but every time i've asked a native japanese if they've heard of them, they haven't. maybe it's a generational thing?
― 君ちゃん (clouds), Monday, 1 April 2013 18:16 (eleven years ago) link
I've experienced this a couple of times with some Japanese aged under thirty or so, although they seem to know Sakamoto for some reason.
What's interesting is that if they are aware of YMO they're often interested that a westerner would be bothered listening to 'old' Japanese music, or even Japanese music period.
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 19:19 (eleven years ago) link
yeah it seems like japanese don't have the same retromania that americans do, but i have no idea really
― 君ちゃん (clouds), Monday, 1 April 2013 19:40 (eleven years ago) link
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, April 1, 2013 5:42 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I've not felt the urge to write about music much over the last few years, but I *really really* want to write a longform piece on Jun Togawa. Never going to happen without a rudimentary knowledge of Japanese, though.
― emil.y, Monday, 1 April 2013 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
If you want to blow the mind of a 40+ Japanese person, tell 'em you love Ippu-Do or Guernica.
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 19:43 (eleven years ago) link
I know a lot of big music nerds who have no idea who Kraftwerk are, for instance...some people just don't really care about anything older than they are
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2013 19:46 (eleven years ago) link
You know, I heard an phone interview on Resonance last week with Akiko Yano (interspersed with some of her music), it was a show called Clear Spot. Maybe you could speak directly to Jun herself? If she speaks Eigo of course.
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 19:46 (eleven years ago) link
emily - have you read this?http://www.groundzeromongkok.com/2010/12/memory-and-gender-in-music-of-jun.html
― frogbs, Monday, 1 April 2013 19:47 (eleven years ago) link
oops, XP
― Late night with Amazing Bo (MaresNest), Monday, 1 April 2013 19:47 (eleven years ago) link
Frogs, yeah, it's a good piece (and I love the toilet ad it links to), but I want more! I guess really I want something book-length, with a really good biographical content as well as analysis.
― emil.y, Monday, 1 April 2013 19:51 (eleven years ago) link
basically, a book version of this would be the most amazing thing:http://park10.wakwak.com/~techno/jgenealogy.html
― original bgm, Monday, 1 April 2013 21:53 (eleven years ago) link
and yeah, togawa is really fascinating. would read all of these imaginary books.
― original bgm, Monday, 1 April 2013 21:54 (eleven years ago) link
Wow - I need to hear that Akiko Yano Resonance show.
― That elusive North American wood-ape (Capitaine Jay Vee), Monday, 1 April 2013 23:49 (eleven years ago) link
Side B of the debut is interesting to me since all 3 tunes do clearly go together but they were all written by different members. They never really did anything like that since. I think back then the band was just supposed to be a one-off on a sort of gimmicky concept so they were all going outside of their usual styles and clearly having a lot of fun with it. in YT's solo catalogue you'll hear songs like Nice Age or Ballet or Cue, but not La Femme Chinoise. nothing Hosono did really sounds like Mad Pierrot.
― frogbs, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 16:50 (five months ago) link
The After Service version of “La Femme Chinoise”
― brimstead, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 17:47 (five months ago) link
For my OPO
Taiso for me, but it's only a hair ahead of like 20 other songs of equal stature, imho.
― Maresn3st, Tuesday, 30 April 2024 22:23 (five months ago) link
Just heard this for the first time. Takahashi's vocals! Goes to show how far five years of constant singing can take you.
And both those Gradated Gray live takes are awesome. The guitar brightens the choruses up, which is pleasantly disorienting. I love how sedate both arrangements stay and how psychedelic both get, in their own ways. Great woozy piano-led outro in the Hosono version.
Taiso could go for fifteen minutes and still wouldn't get boring.
― TheNuNuNu, Thursday, 2 May 2024 00:11 (five months ago) link
Naughty Boys always ends SO SOON.
There's a much improved translation of Lotus Love over at the blog:
https://grainsparrow.blogspot.com/2024/03/translation-lotus-love-yellow-magic.html
(In addition to stylistic fixes, I made a major error in the version originally in this thread -- misread one kanji, ruining a beautiful line...! Sorry Harry.)
― TheNuNuNu, Tuesday, 7 May 2024 19:16 (four months ago) link
Sports Men isn't the kind of song you'd think would move a man to tears, and yet, here we are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QusyWLaSQf4
2008, huh. Must be one of the all-time "damn shame"s of modern music that the HASYMO-incarnation YMO didn't record a new album.
Frogbs, you ever heard Hen Ogledd? Their album Free Humans is a huge favorite of mine. When I first heard HASYMO's Rescue, I thought, "Whoa! Sounds like the wellspring of Free Humans!" And then when I first heard Underworld's Space, I thought, "Clearly someone in Hen Ogledd loves Underworld." So it might do something for you.
― TheNuNuNu, Thursday, 16 May 2024 01:51 (four months ago) link
I still feel happy that I caught that concert, I was a little perplexed at the setlist (and to some extent the inclusion of Christian Fennesz in the line up) at the time, but it makes perfect sense now.
― Maresn3st, Thursday, 16 May 2024 12:06 (four months ago) link
haven't heard of them but I'm listening now and it's cute. kind of reminds me of the Ann Steel album actually. pretty long album but it's entertaining me so far :)
I've wondered for a while what a HASYMO album would sound like - the singles were okay but felt kind of stopgap. Tokyo Town Pages is nice but it doesn't hit me the way the stuff on Loophole does. idk, maybe their styles were too far off. Sakamoto in particular was so far away from any kind of pop music at that point. that London concert ruled though. amazing how for a YMO 'reunion' they only played like 3 YMO songs. probably the right decision though.
― frogbs, Thursday, 16 May 2024 14:00 (four months ago) link
The first song on the Ann Steel album is killer!
I've got some exploring to do where YMO live is concerned. I feel like I know the studio catalogue inside and out at this point. But I went to look up the setlist of the London 2008 show and found out it has a DOUBLE ALBUM PROFESSIONAL RELEASE, what?! With Fennesz in the band indeed?! I did research into all the live releases back when I was getting started (with frogbs's help over on RYM) but the details didn't mean as much to me then as they of course do now... especially now that I've seen and cried through the back half of that Sports Men... and that was only song TWO of the night.
Also, Philharmony has rocketed up into my favorite albums of all time. It sounded a little thin and scattered for a while, like Hosono had let his usual "Master Overseer Producer" side slide so that he could indulge more freely in the sheer joy of tinkering around with a new synth/computer/toy. But listening to it obsessively this past week has revealed plenty of ingenuity, beauty, and emotion. Amazingly structured too, it turns out.
― TheNuNuNu, Friday, 17 May 2024 04:00 (four months ago) link
I love that I still have Technodon and the Sketch Show records waiting for me (and countless solo albums, productions, etc). I've been listening to almost nothing but Hosono/YMO since September 2023 and there's still so much just to hear for the first time, let alone reconsider/re-evaluate.
― TheNuNuNu, Friday, 17 May 2024 04:03 (four months ago) link
There's another DVD/CD release from Lyon that I'm guessing came out around the same time as the London Meltdown gig, not sure if the set lists differ much, or the lineup even.
Three years later they were doing a more straight ahead (for them) YMO set some of which is on YT and you can probably still buy somewhere - https://www.discogs.com/release/8467134-Yellow-Magic-Orchestra-Live-In-San-Francisco-2011
― Maresn3st, Friday, 17 May 2024 08:48 (four months ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp2P_zNG1A
Yet another for the "great live versions of Gradated Gray" folder. Hosono/Takahashi harmonies are the best. Incredible YT drumming.
― TheNuNuNu, Friday, 17 May 2024 15:19 (four months ago) link
I'm sure you'll like the Sketch Show stuff, they play a lot of it in those live shows so you probably know some of the tracks. I was surprised how well those albums held up actually, I kinda thought that glitchtronica pop sound was something that you could always tie back to the early 00s but it still sounds amazing
Technodon is an album I really didn't care for when I first heard it, it makes way more sense in context of their 90s solo albums though. like don't compare it to the other YMO albums, compare it to say Medicine Compilation. you could tell their styles weren't really jiving at this time but it actually sounds pretty great, I mean for me the big revelation was simply hearing it on a nice system where the bass really came through
― frogbs, Friday, 17 May 2024 20:05 (four months ago) link
also I kid you not the reason why I listen to Technodon so often is because the place I work loves to give out these mint chocolates called "Frango" which always makes me think "Pocketful of Frangos"
actually there are a few good advertising jingles in there. Be a Subaru Man
― frogbs, Friday, 17 May 2024 20:16 (four months ago) link
y'all are making me feel like I should give HASYMO another go. I don't mind that sound and I always found the recordings to be fine but... I can't imagine ever wanting to listen to HASYMO instead of regs YMO versions of any of those songs either. maybe this is the year it clicks tho!
― (⊙_⊙?) (original bgm), Monday, 20 May 2024 21:09 (four months ago) link
I missed Original BGM's post back in May. Did you try? Did it work?
I honestly haven't been able to make it past the first two tracks of that London '08 live album yet. I just keep getting stuck putting You've Gotta Help Yourself and Sports Men on repeat. Too beautiful. I love how Takahashi's voice aged.
Also, Original BGM, OTM for repping Sakamoto's soundtrack to Wings of Honneamise years ago (other thread, but It's All One Thread). My mp3 player's touch-screen broke and for a few weeks the only album I could listen to outside was Wings of Honneamise. Magnificent stuff. Like a more colorful and extroverted younger sibling to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
And lastly I'm gonna toot my own horn for a minute, but it's all for the greater glory of KYUN! My Japanese has gotten better and so I made a new translation of Kimi ni Mune Kyun that I think is more accurate and makes more sense than the one on Genius.
https://grainsparrow.blogspot.com/2024/07/translation-my-heart-goes-kyun-for-you.html?m=1
― TheNuNuNu, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 09:59 (two months ago) link
And frogbs, that's amazing about Technodon. I'm inching closer towards it myself... wanted to take your advice and get up to speed with everybody's solo stuff before listening. I'm caught up with Hosono (Medicine Compilation foreverrr) and up to Beauty with Sakamoto now. I love both Neo Geo and Beauty. Just gotta spend some time with Heartbeat (which I know has a killer David Sylvian feat!) and give a few more listens to my frogbs-curated playlist of post-YMO Takahashi, and then I'll finally allow myself to try The Big Don.
― TheNuNuNu, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 10:04 (two months ago) link
really fun to read those translations...I dunno if Japanese love songs are just deeper somehow or if all the strange terms of phrase which don't really translate to anything English speakers regularly say just makes them seem that way.
never heard that soundtrack before...I made an attempt to get into all his soundtrack work a while ago but there's just so much of it!
― frogbs, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 14:10 (two months ago) link
I mean you'd never hear Air Supply imploring someone to "leap through time" or "meet outside the world"
― frogbs, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 14:12 (two months ago) link
I'm slightly surprised Heartbeat isn't available on any streaming services, it's great. I've rinsed Sayonara a lot since RS passed. And Cloud #9 is another low-key classic Sylvian/Sakamoto collab.
― bamboohouses, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 14:27 (two months ago) link
It's a language with like 100 sounds. There isn't as much of a tendency to rhyme because it can get very samey. So they just get absolutely jiggy with it.
xp
― maf you one two (maffew12), Wednesday, 10 July 2024 14:32 (two months ago) link
Oh, is that what accounts for how little rhyming there tends to be? I thought it was just Takashi Matsumoto being a trendsetter.
On the other hand, the ridiculous proliferation of near-identical rhymes that verb conjugations create means Japanese rap music sounds soooo smooth. It's like they can't NOT be constantly multi-syllable rhyming.
What are these Sayonara and Cloud #9?! I thought I already had a pretty good grasp on the songs they'd done together. Very pleased to find out that's not the case. Bamboohouses, do you know Grains (Sweet Paulownia Remix)? The latest singing Sylvian has done -- new lyrics written for/about the dying Ryuichi -- set to a remix of what I think was originally a Sakamoto/Alva Noto collab. Amazing piece.
― TheNuNuNu, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 15:37 (two months ago) link
Also, though, Matsumoto (lyricist of Kyun, and also the lyricist in Happy End, back in the day) is awesome at love songs in particular. He likes to draw very particular scenes and evoke very particular emotions... usually from a girl's perspective, no less, since the majority of his lyric-writing was done for "aidoru." Wonderful idiosyncratic stuff. If only the love songs that fill western charts had such careful and ingenious lyrics.
― TheNuNuNu, Wednesday, 10 July 2024 15:43 (two months ago) link
What are these Sayonara and Cloud #9?!
I listened to Heartbeat, and now have answers. Great record. I'm loving this whole "international big-name feats over auteur bedroom-studio pop" period of Sakamoto's career. The albums sound like collages. Futurista is clearly where this whole approach was born -- nobody talks about Futurista! But it's fantastic. And then it's like Neo Geo and Beauty and Heartbeat expand out from that center, sounding more and more polished. But Sakamoto's weirdness is still evident in the whole if not always the parts.
― TheNuNuNu, Tuesday, 23 July 2024 08:34 (two months ago) link
In September of 1981, Hosono, Takahashi, and Sakamoto took the members of Kraftwerk to a Roppongi disco.
― TheNuNuNu, Thursday, 12 September 2024 15:31 (three weeks ago) link
And the members of Kraftwerk danced.
― TheNuNuNu, Thursday, 12 September 2024 15:32 (three weeks ago) link