Scariest song on YMO's BGM

Loom gets scary but ends up all nice and tranquil… like death or something?

The title stands for "Background music",[1] though Japanese TV and press advertising alternately used "Beautiful Grotesque Music".[2]

gotta go with the song that really did freak me out first time I heard it, "Camouflage", particularly the last 1:30 or so

for me the reason why the general freakiness works so well on this album is because everything they'd done up to this point (minus like, "Insomnia") was so cheery and had a sense of humor to it, this on the other hand sounds like the machines are trying to assimilate them

have always found "everybody RAP!" vaguely threatening

WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP

ack

On the other thread, you say that the band members found this era "dark"; but since this was the first and, for a long time, the only YMO record I heard, I'd have called it sometimes "aloof" or "opaque" at most. They do like to toss in ominous key-changes into the bridges.

I guess I'll choose "Camouflage" for the weird detuned synths.

this on the other hand sounds like the machines are trying to assimilate them

otm

And maffew, that made me laugh. For me, in Rap Phenomena, it's all those unsettling synth riffs...!

he always sounded despondent to me when he tells people to rap. Like jeb bush“please rap”. Maybe I’m just contrasting it with the more amped up energy of early MCs

it was a disquieting move. most MC's only wanted you to scream, not take their job.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this is maybe their strangest album, "cue" is this soaring, transcendent synthpop song but the rest is all so ominous

Was gonna say, you could make an argument for any of these tracks besides Cue.

Oh, exactly as OP says :)

The initial inspiration for the song came from the Ultravox song 'Passionate Reply', released in January 1981 as a B-side to their 1980 song 'Vienna'. After hearing the song, Hosono and Takahashi were inspired to write a song with a similar arrangement and production sound.

Sakamoto was invited to take part in the proceedings, but refused to do so due to his distaste for the song. According to the man himself, he was repulsed by the idea of recording a song that so explicitly imitated another band's record. It didn't help that Sakamoto was not very keen on Ultravox in general.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Dammit! I'm partway into Side B, thinking I still had time... probably would've gone Camouflage. Sakamoto's evil synth riff and Takahashi's backwarped vocals, too much.

Lot more posters in this thread than votes -- did everyone procrastinate on their relisten too long, like me?

And I love that one of the four votes is for 1000 Knives.

That was me. Never thought of the music on this album as scary but the title “1000 knives is” a bit “obscure hammer horror”.
Now, “Key” *is* a scary song!

Sakamoto's distaste for Cue became legendary in Japan, so he gives it 2-3 pages in his (very spare, tell-almost-nothing versus tell-all, first autobiography). I get the sense that, even if he didn't like the Ultravox song that inspired it, he loved Cue -- what he hated was the fact that Hosono and Takahashi really did go and make it without him. Kinda like -- if you invite me to take part and I say no, that means you abandon the idea! Not that you make it without me, as if I'm expendable T_T

He felt they were taking revenge on him for having made B-2 Unit (which Hosono and Takahashi loved, but it is the kind of album that might make someone's bandmates think, "Ah, he doesn't really need us around, huh?")

One of the themes of the autobiography is "I was insufferable when I was young and don't know how those two put up with me" -- if mixed with a certain degree of pride at being the band's most standoffish and aloof member. He writes about how Techodon was the worst experience the band ever had making an album, because he himself kept insisting that they make a trendy techno album, in keeping with the times, and kept shooting down H & T's ideas. But there's no pride in the Technodon chapter, just compunction and "what the hell was I thinking...?"

He felt really sad and left out when Sketch Show got going, and finally he told them as much, and so: HASYMO. He then writes proudly about how Takahashi -- very, very cautiously -- broached the possibility of playing Cue live again, since it was such a fan favorite, and this time -- in the new, harmonious era -- Sakamoto said "YES!" and had a blast performing it.

I kinda wonder what might've been had HASYMO never gotten going. Both those Sketch Show albums are great but it feels like they were really onto something at the end. With Sakamoto on board suddenly it IS a YMO revival, which entails a lot more looking back, also Sakamoto had a ton of stuff going on so they didn't have time to write or record much, and then it just fell apart naturally. those HASYMO singles were okay and I did like the live album they did, but it's not like the Sketch Show stuff, I think those albums still sound excellent today

Right... good news for their friendships, bad news for musical productivity.

damn, forgot to vote! for the record, would've gone "rap phenomena". it's unsettling in a jump scare kinda way to me.

This is such a desolate album.

I know it has songs like Rap Phenomena and Cue, but those little electrical currents of joy and silliness merely call attention to the darkness they're traveling through.