Haruomi Hosono - Philharmony - Living, Dining, POLLING - except you can't choose Sports Men

Platonic

Imai Hisashi's favourite Hosono album! (posts vmic)

I remember being struck by Funiculi Funicura on first listen. Let's see if that holds up.

(Today the mood I'm in I really want to vote for Air Con and its beautiful atmospheric effects)

Platonic is the one I think "ehh, well" when I look at the tracklist and song lengths, yet always lose my mind over when the album's actually playing. I feel like it shouldn't work as well as it does. Is it the mix?

LDK is probably my favorite Hosono song, imo it's even catchier than Sports Men. and I really love that wild violin solo. I've dropped it into many a mix

Yeah, I actually agree that LDK is better than Sportsman. More of a banger, while Sportsman is maybe more melodic and old school YMO. I would probably vote for it over Sportsman if that track were on the poll.

But I'm still entranced with Air Con and I'm going to vote for that.

A thought popped into my head earlier about a record that makes a really good companion piece to this album - Franco Battiato's La Voce Del Padrone. Do people know here know that record? It too processes a huge swathe of western music history from classical to the beatles to synthpop in a similarly absurdist style and came out just before Philharmony. I like to think that someone somewhere in 1982 had them on either side of a C90 as they've drove their sportscar along the curving roads past Mont Blanc ...or is that Mount Fuji?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43e0Bv4P_3k

Oh, those are swell references there, NickB, for this Battiato banger-of-bangers I, being Italian, of course know by heart. I still have to hear Philharmony myself! I was listening to No-Man's Album Years podcast some time ago, and they did mention Battiato in 1981 but, like any other non-Italian, they only know his '70s prog, pre-pop works, and liquidated this one as "Battiato turns Europop", failing to notice the Glass/Reich-minimalist influences and also, I would say, some contempo-postpunk ones such as Peter Gordon or Andrew Poppy/Lost Jockey.

Great call on that Battiato, NickB!

Heard "Sports Men" in the wild at Grecco Romank's album release on Saturday so just as well that's not an option in this poll ... love LDK but reflex-voted for "Funiculi Funicura"; the cosmopolitanism of that and YT's French pop moves on Saravah! made a big impression on me when I was getting into the wider YMO universe.

That Battiato song is awesome. I'll be checking out the full album.

Three songs in, and this Battiato album is amazing!

These little connections of 'if you like this album, you might like this other album' are a nice human touch. I'm a big fan of Teh Dreaded Algorithms (which have introduced me judgement-free to a lot of music I'd never otherwise encounter). But this is the kind of international connection only a knowledgeable human would make.

Luminescent / Hotaru means even more now that I know it's a (lyrical) reference to one of my favorite Chu Kosaka songs. That and the title track on here, and I guess Picnic would count too -- these bright, warbly, spilly (near-)instrumentals that you imagine some magpie dragging away to its nest -- so special! So warm and, as the Hotaru lyrics have it, "sooooo.... sweet"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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

I do have a soft spot for Birthday Party though. My birthday a couple years back was a shitty one -- entire day at work, not enough time between classes to come home, family asleep by the time I got back. But I did listen to Philharmony for the first time ever, and it felt like the Hosono of 1982 had voyaged through the chaos and confusion of the space-time continuum for the express purpose of giving me a very strange hug.