Ryuichi Sakamoto - Ongaku Zukan - P.O.L.L. in the Backyard

replica :))))

^ played it four times since starting this poll

I'm gonna vote Replica too. its such a stunningly beautiful piece of music, especially the final two minutes.

I always had a weird affinity for this album and how much the jazzy arrangements reminded me of Weather Channel music. but all the digital sampling makes it quite a bit different from any of that. you can really get lost in a lot of these tracks.

for me I didn't really get into this album until I heard the original version, instead of the one called "Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia" which was meant for us Westerners. nothing against "Field Work" and "Steppin Into Asia" but I think including those (especially "Field Work" as track 1) changes the tone of the album a lot.

I’ve only absorbed side a of this album and it’s fabulous

I started listening while gardening, and the album just went on and on and on and never seemed to stop? For hours. As the sun went down.

It was then I noticed it was the ‘deluxe version’ and remembered you said there were an extra 30 songs on it! Some of them are very good (there’s one that genuinely sounds like Amorphous Body Study Centre era Stereolab) but it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Going to have to find the proper version and give it another listen.

I voted the final track. Placid and haunting.

And that rarest of things -- artful use of a children's choir!

That's funny, Ether. For sure if you try to take it all in at once, it'll get samey, especially on a first listen.

In general, YMO-family releases can be a hot, hot mess of alternate versions of albums, with different tracklists & mixes &c. When I taught a YMO elective last spring, I had to be really careful with the debut and Xoo Multiplies, and still there were students who got in touch with me the week we did Xoo, saying, "What the hell?? Why is half of this identical to the album we did last week?" (while the others were saying "What the hell??" too, but that's just Snakeman)

Even my least favorite songs on here have a lot to recommend them. Tabi no kyokuhoku has the gorgeous melody in the bridge, those insane four-beat intrusions of the beat, and a perfect outro. Self Portrait has a comment on China's streaming app that goes, "All I want is to live my life as if Sakamoto's Self Portrait were my theme song."

It sounds like Ryuichi's graduate thesis for Yellow Magic Orchestra. "Right, here's what I've learned these last six years. Now can I go off and do my own thing?"

(It meaning the album, not just Self Portrait.)

Having listened to this several times now, haha I think I might actually love some of the bonus tracks more than the album tracks?

But I'm voting for Mori no Hito partly because I really wish I could run away and live in a forest. But mostly because the vocal harmonies are absolutely exquisite. The first time it hit, on 'me ni mienu mono o daite', honestly a shiver ran down my spine. They're so smooth and so perfectly blended that i can't even tell you how many harmonies there are, or what the intervals are, but there's just something so blissful about them. Truly sublime.

That's a gorgeous description, Ether. When I was teaching that elective, the last Ryuichi we covered was Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, discussing which put me pretty far out on the emotional edge cause that record means a lot to me. Then at the end of the class, as a sample of what Ryuichi did next, I put on Mori no hito, and made myself cry. One of my favorite classes I've ever "taught."

After a lot of relistening, I've succeeded in narrowing it down to four: Paradise Lost (oh that groove), Hane no hayashi de (oh that bridge!), Mori no Hito (oh that sweet melancholy) and Replica (oh those icy synths).

I'm surprised some vaporwave artist hasn't made something amazing out of Paradise Lost yet, seems like low hanging fruit tbh

speaking of I remember Vektroid once claiming Sakamoto 'invented' vaporwave (something she's often credited with)...she didn't elaborate but I always suspected it might've been this album

I bought Neo Geo on the strength of the Trouser Press review which made it sound like this next level cross cultural electronic experiment. But I actually found it to be pretty chintzy. It was only when I heard this record many years later that I felt I was hearing what I had imagined, with perhaps a slightly more orchestral flavor.

Not sure which track I’d single out, however.

I bet at the time it was released it probably felt that way. It hasn't really held up though. Still a fine album just not as special as the others.

Agreed. I really enjoy Neo Geo but it's where Ryuichi's (temporary? '97's Discord is awesome) slide into merely interesting / bizarre versus bizarre AND ingenious begins.

Futurista, meanwhile, is still absolute top-shelf RS.

Paradise Lost you say?

Not a cover, but I'm increasingly wondering if this was some kind of homage from Hoshino Hidehiko:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llN9BV9K-EM

(Sorry I will stop trying to drag Gunma's biggest YMO fanboys into everything.)

voted self portrait

Ah, no way. Neo Geo is gorgeous. It's also his most "New York" record. Play it loud!

Would like to say "Replica" as it has my great love Simon Jeffes fingerpicking a cuatro on it, but all these decades later it would still have to be "Zen-Gun" (aka Ma mère l'oye). Incidentally, does anyone have a back story about both the first and the second title given to it?

(Neo Geo is but the next step to Beauty.)

Just listened to my top four back-to-back, and am no closer to making a decision.

Great to see the Neo Geo defenses pour in. I started to like it (even) more when I (blasphemy maybe but) subbed the instrumental version of Risky in for the Iggy version. Iggy does good work on it, but he's so front-&-center, whereas I keep just wanting to indulge in Ryuichi's Okinawan exotica.

Neo Geo is fine but very much a typical Laswell studio session of the era. His cross cultural misfires tend have the disparate elements coexist but rarely blend or catch fire. So where Ongaku Zukan has a lot of brooding Fairlight atmospherics and jazz samples swooshing in and out, Neo Geo has a lot of comic book funk tracks like “Shogunade” with its walloping beat, koto-y synth melody and shouting Japanese guy and Burroughs samples. Even the less goofy tracks like Parata have a more two-dimensional—and yes, New York—flavor to them compared to this record.

Some of Sakamoto’s more straight ahead orchestral stuff also tends to leave me a little cold. OZ by contrast really does strike this perfect balance between Ryuichi’s “music for sophisticates” with the often outrageous Fairlight experiments of Milton Parker-fave Esperanto (which I also like but don’t love).

Yeah, I haven't made headway with the orchestral soundtracks yet. I can tell The Last Emperor has way better melodies than The Handmaid's Tale, but the latter has synths goddamit, synths!

I've just finished a loud playthrough of Neo Geo -- enjoyed it, but NTI's point about coexistence-not-blend is otm, I think.

Just re-listened to Esperanto and feel pretty much the same. While I love the sample palette I just find some of it hard to listen to over long stretches. No such problems with this record however.

"Shogunade" is probably my favorite track on Neo Geo. it's ridiculous but I kinda love it. the impression I get is that Sakamoto's stuff comes off way better when he's being a trailblazer, doing things electronic artists hadn't really done before (or were just starting to), not so much when he or whoever he's collaborating with is following trends or trying to put his own spin on this or that. granted sometimes it works - "undercooled" from Chasm, a weirdass hip-hop track with CD skipping noises, is really really cool. but there's some trip-hop stuff he did in the 90s which straight up sucks. at least that's how I remembered it.

I was borderline crestfallen when I first heard Heartbeat after buying it at Newbury Comics. The record has its moments -- the Youssou N'Dour track is good, as are both the Sylvian tracks (natch). And using J. Geils' Magic Dick is inspired (if not what he's used for). But the peppy house stuff with the likes of Dee Dee Brave on that record was close to unlistenable in 1992 and remains so today.

i only know sakamoto in passing, but this is one of the ones i'm familiar with because an old buckwild beat came from this album. it's a fun one for sure. the polyrhythms are goofaround good, with "replica" being one of the most enjoyable sound puzzles i've assembled. i also have a soft spot for "mori no.hito."

there's a middle school by my house called "Etude" and every time I pass by it saxes start blaring in my head

You guys study YMO like some people are studying the Dead Sea scrolls

(I love YMO by the way)

They are the urtext of my music taste, so it's only fitting!

not cool to compare one of the most important historical documents of our time to the Dead Sea scrolls

One profoundly shook what scholars thought they knew, and one’s a bunch of crumbly old paper.

Anyway your enthusiasm TNNN inspired me to listen to this album! I have never really explored the solo material and side 2 is the keeper for me. Side 1 is not quite to my taste but I love the remix of Tibetan Dance.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Glad this excitable heart is making things happen.

Hane no hayashi de and Replica fell in the semifinals, with Replica beating Hane in the third-place match. Now it's down to Paradise Lost vs. Mori no Hito

Arrrrrrrrrgh what do I do

These threads are easily the best thing about ILM these days. I have learned so much! (Honestly, I wish I could inspire other people to pay this level of attention to the artists that I love.)

You've certainly inspired me, Ether, it's just that the VPN connection I rely on is so sporadic I can't always follow YT links where they lead. Or rather, the problem is that times the VPN works rarely coincide with times I have available to re-read / dig in / and listen. (For me at least, if you put names of songs above links, it'd help! I could look them up through Chinese streaming even if the VPN was down.)

I did listen to the Paradise Lost you linked above and had questions, which I'll take up in the B-T thread in a bit.

But also, ILM loved and studied the YMO universe long before I showed up to swim in its splendor, and in fact it's the ILM threads about them that helped my obsession get as deep as it has. It's a lot harder to make headway with something new (see my Morio Agata thread) (yes, that was a shameless plug)

That's a very good point - I realised after I posted the YTs that the titles of the songs might not come through. (But there's always the question of whether one should use the original characters, the romanji or the common fan-translated titles.) I used to talk to a couple of Chinese fans on social media so I know that their music is available, I'm just not sure where or how.

ILM is such a fantastic resource in that way. I've been reading and learned about bands I haven't seen written about in English anywhere else.

(But there's always the question of whether one should use the original characters, the romanji or the common fan-translated titles.)

For posterity, just drop 'em all in.

Thinking about [Sakamoto's] Paradise Lost: it's really not just the groove, much as I love every time RS does reggae. It's also how sweetly laid-back it is. And maybe most of all, the mixing in this song is ALL-TIME. How many different synth sounds are on this thing? But whereas on Thousand Knives and YMO's debut RS would have the different synth sounds he was playing around with take turns, here they're all layered on top of each other, like dewdrops atop moss atop stones atop the soil. Also, this is totally my subconscious mind's favorite, it's by far the Ongaku Zukan song I hum the most.

Sorry, that honestly wasn't a beg for attention haha! I'm being genuine when I say I learn so much on these threads. But my spiderwebby brain can't help but make connections. My path into YMO-beyond-the-hits was the fact that they were such a huge influence on the bands that I adore. So there are a lot of bits where I hear a YMO-related piece of music and think 'oh, so THAT'S where B-T or SB got that idea'.

That 'dewdrops on mossy stones' is a nice way of describing the aesthetic of this album. I'm on holiday at the moment. I was visiting the Japanese Garden at Kew yesterday and listening to that precise sound. The gentle layering of different leaves in the garden. The gentle layering of birdsong and running water and dripping.

Paradise Lost gets it. It's that pristine piano in the verses, and the subtlest of subtle drum fills back into the chorus.

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

Oh wow, that's some spread! Also I think based on all the discussion I was imagining more votes. I figured, like, seven Replicas and then stuff fanning out underneath it.

Respect to the silent participant who voted N.J.P.

That was me. Nam Joon Paik is one of my favorite artists.

How many different synth sounds are on this thing? But whereas on Thousand Knives and YMO's debut RS would have the different synth sounds he was playing around with take turns, here they're all layered on top of each other, like dewdrops atop moss atop stones atop the soil.

Here he is much later, at the turn of the century, soloing in his way on two songs of one of my favouritest albums ever (the pinned comment has the tracklisting with the minutage):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNZBClF9cU0

But there's always the question of whether one should use the original characters, the romanji or the common fan-translated titles.)

For posterity, just drop 'em all in.

Please please add titles with youtube embeds to help future readers after such links inevitably break.