Thoughts on Yellow Magic Orchestra?

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I love them and all of their solo projects, but the sheer size of their discography also intimidates me.

Really? There aren't many studio albums, but there are a lot of live albums, which I'll admit to you

I meant more for their solo material. YMO themselves aren't too ridiculous. Sakamoto has something like 70 albums of his own though. Hosono has 10 bands. They're all stupidly prolific and I've enjoyed everything I've listened to so far.

that aspect intrigues me rather than intimidates. theres so many offshoots, solo projects, etc and their work varies so much from very serious ambient progressive electronic, ambient stuff, to production for very commercial jpop, to fun synthpop new wave. a vast spectrum of sound but always centered around interesting ideas within synthesis

that's partly why Sakamoto has a insanely high amount of albums; it's because he experiments with so much stuff, not to mention the collaborations Sakamoto does with David Sylvian and Bill Laswell among others

Good stuff desu. Why does no one talk about Naughty Boys tho? It's catchy af.

>I couldn't sleep at my bed at niiight
>I didn't have any apetiite
>FOR ANYTHIING
>for anythiing

Love em

kimi ni mune kyun till the day i die

Call me an edgelord but I just can't seem to get through 'Naughty Boys'

>sakamoto has something like 70 albums of his own though

how? you could count his solo stuff with two or three hands. or u counting soundtracks too?

racist name 2bh

youtube.com/watch?v=0uX_0ArbWSY

the name was originally intended as a parody both of Western culture and Japan's black magic obsession

wow his english is pretty good, I didn't think any of them could speak english

Yeah. I'm counting soundtracks. They're some of his best work. It'd be wrong to leave them out. The Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence soundtrack gets me every time.

They do feature English lyrics a lot, which are however written by expats, but they have pretty good pronunciation

Love this album!
dont really care for the early works

Hey, I like 'em

I'm definitely surprised that Naughty Boys is getting a lot of love here, I didn't expect that when I started this thread

Whose solo discography do you like the most? I've heard 'Thousand Knives', 'B-2 Unit', and the 'Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence' soundtrack from Sakamoto, 'Neuromantic' from Takahashi, and nothing by Hosono; I don't really know where to go next with it

where should i start with these blokes?

OP here. I own the first four studio albums, and I'd say to just go in chronological order

thank you, my brother

a bonus to doing it that way is if you like a certain member's writing, you can head to their solo albums for similar writing

Great band. Ryuichi Sakamoto also contributed to the soundtrack of the 2015 film The Revenant.

For Hosono I'd highly rec Paraiso, Hosono House, and Pacific.

I've heard a fair amount about Philharmony, do you recommend that at all?

Yeah. That's also pretty great. I haven't disliked any of Hosono's albums (though I'm not crazy about the band Happy End). Those are just the first ones that came to mind.

These guys remind me of why I love music.

i always make it to the quasi-rare ymo thread when it has died down. god damn it there is nothing i can say in here that hasn't already been said.

Well, how about favorite albums? So far, Naughty Boys has been mentioned, so start that if you wish on this thread

i'd probably have to go with bgm. but i like all of their albums a lot, including technodon.

have any of you guys seen them live? i saw sakamoto in 2010, ymo twice in 2011.

This is better than any YMO album imo
youtube.com/watch?v=szyKUuTmea8&t=6s

>gets excited to actually hear this for once
>"It is not available in your country"

damn sorry user
youtube.com/watch?v=rGo7n6CMCcE
maybe this one will work
why not just DL it? It's a fantastic piece and worth the effort

t. numale

unfortunately, still locked, but thanks for trying! I'll probably just buy it anyway because YMO covered parts of this album live and I liked what I heard

I just grabbed this from the archive if you want to listen. Great album.

mega.nz/#F!SYZmzQpY!F-s1J8XyttbL2dNjK9pjUQ

it makes me very happy to know that someone else likes it

They took what Kraftwerk were doing and put a harder pop spin on it with an Oriental twist, which I find to be a masterstroke, since they helped gkve definitive shape to synthpop as a whole

I like them so much better than Kraftwerk, honestly. YMO actually understood how to have fun.

he's the most Westernized of them all so it's not too surprising. I know Haruomi can't speak English though. I don't know about Takahashi.

it might also ne something to note that Hosono rarely if ever took lead vocals on English lyrics; I'd say Takahashi must be able to speak it to some degree since his solo material features some English lyrics although I'll admit that Barakan or Mosdell is also credited for lyrics, so it's impossible to tell. Somebody drop an interview link if you can to get an answer

being westernized doesn't have a lot to do with it. both takahashi and hosono are probably more westernized than sakamoto is, they have a deep love for american and european music and film, from tin pan alley to jazz, to all of the pre-rock and roll black music, not to mention takahashi was a well known francophile before ymo was formed, and he continued that obsession in his solo work. takahashi also does speak english (see here around 4 mins: youtube.com/watch?v=O0Ytic5OMfg), but it's nowhere near as good as sakamoto's, i think takahashi is just more shy about it. hosono definitely doesn't speak english, but i'm sure he understands most of it just fine.

I know this is drifting a little, but what Takahashi albums do any of you recommend? Keep in mind that I have listened to Neuromantic and I like it

in this interview with Bryan Ferry he's not speaking English and it looks like there's a translator.

youtube.com/watch?v=icWG3WNhgIw

I just read that Takahashi used less and less English as his solo career went on, so this seems logical; either this or as mentioned earlier, he's just shy

you can pretty much listen to all of his solo work from 1978-1990. you might get tired of his music by the mid 80s though, he's pretty repetitive and doesn't explore or reinvent himself like hosono and sakamoto.

"Westernized" was a poor choice of words on my part. I meant more that he seems to have had more direct contact, from his acting, modeling, and collaborations etc.

Hosono's work I'm the least interested in, I'll be honest; his compositions, save for 'Cosmic Surfin'' and his tracks on SSS, simply don't grab me like Sakamoto's or Takahashi's. I listen to Sakamoto for reinvention and sheer sonic flexibility, and I intend to listen to Takahashi for some good synthpop

Never heard of them. Sounds like bootleg Electric Light Orchestra.

I will send you to this part of the thread if you are at all curious

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yes. hosono goes really ambient electronica after ymo and kind of remains there until the mid 90s when he goes all acoustic/folky/bluesy/trad, which he maintains to this day. it makes sense if you listen to his work pre-ymo but it also isn't as interesting nowadays. sakamoto has that flexibility as you say, and takahashi is good for 80s japanese synthpop and nothing else.

I think you're being a little harsh towards Takahashi, because he has an impeccable sense of good melodies and harmonies; he is the man, after all, that wrote 'Rydeen', a song that continually blows me away due to how well-written it is. 'La Femme Chinoise' also has that great descending synth brass melody, which I had assumed was a Sakamoto touch, but he also gave us 'Ballet' which I could have sworn was a Hosono or Sakamoto composition due to how it just sounds in general until I actually looked at the CD liner notes

Ryuichi is a god tier producer man. Anyone else think he looks like a japanese David Bowie?

I can kind of see it.

I love YMO (they're easily in my top three favorites) but to say Kraftwerk didn't know how to have fun is absurd. Practically every other thing they've done is a joke.

looked at the cover of 'Left Handed Dream' recently?

perhaps a little. but as far as rydeen goes, as i understand it, takahashi had the melody, and sakamoto wrote all of the keyboard harmony and overall arrangement for it. when you listen beyond the melody, it's all sakamoto, his chord voicings and playing is beautiful. here is a nice example of a stripped down version but you can hear sakamoto's parts clearly: youtube.com/watch?v=rKxxN0o-a48 and here (at 5:22:youtube.com/watch?v=NYpKrcM0RxQ). i mean, they were a band, so sakamoto was used extensively to fill out the music regardless of who wrote what.

I suppose. All of Kraftwerk's material just sounds so cold and lifeless to me though.

Rydeen still has a fantastic melody though

yes but they were super humorous. dressing in suits and buttondowns. looking clean cut when the look of the musician was long hair, edgy and dirty. all the sci-fi references were super humorous... "fun fun fun on the autobahn" making fun of cultural practices, capitalist ideals, and future optimism. you seriously are an idiot if you dont see humor in their work.

It's a lot more rigid and mechanical, yeah. It's their shtick. I used to have a similar opinion of Kraftwerk. Once you understand their angle better the humor becomes a lot more apparent. Also, Kraftwerk's melodies aren't as "flashy" or immediately emotionally potent but they're very effective. Check out Computer World or Electric Cafe. You'll realize all the synthpop and electro that shamelessly copied them following never quite reaches their peak.

While I mostly agree with you "fun fun fun" isn't the lyric. I used to think it was though.

yes, although i prefer the overall harmonization rather than just the melody.

I see the humour. I have a harder time actually having fun with it though. It's just less of my style than YMO.

OP popping by. Kraftwerk was actually the first band I actively listened to at the ripe young age of 6 (I'm not lying for attention, my dad played it for me and it sent me into something close to a trance), and looking back, I can see that inherent humor, but humor was never why I listened to Kraftwerk. I loved them because they sounded different from literally everything I've ever heard, even YMO.

next year is their 40th anniversary. with sakamoto's health currently stable after cancer treatment, and hosono being 70+, i'm pretty confident next year will be a big YMO year and possibly the last year the three of them do anything related to ymo. hopefully they'll do a short tour that takes them through japan, europe, and north america.

hideki matsutake who assisted ymo with synth and computer programming in the early days, and who has his own synth project called logic system (highly recommended), is performing with a ymo tribute band in japan that is going to also feature the jazz fusion guitar legend kazumi watanabe who toured with matsutake and ymo from 1978-1979. i wouldn't be surprised if this basically becomes a warmup for those guys for 40th anniversary, especially since ymo's live lineups are also pretty well documented and some fans have preferences over the live ymo lineups so 2018 should be an interesting year for ymo.

>contemplating hopping on hype train

Out of curiosity, how close is Hideki Matsutake's work to YMO or YMO members' solo careers

most patrician YMO solo project coming through

>it might also ne something to note that Hosono rarely if ever took lead vocals on English lyrics
He actually does fine every time he uses English lyrics though

youtube.com/watch?v=PxvjXDAfPhk

It's maybe notable that he was in Happy End, they were one of the first rock bands to have Japanese lyrics. I think it's more likely that he didn't feel the need to use English.

hideki matsutake's work is like early ymo/kraftwerk, largely instrumental, heavy on melody/sequencing. there's only like 3 studio albums i think, the first 2 being really good. i don't remember much of the 3rd but it came out way later i think.

matsutake has a pretty cool history as well. he knew hosono as he was coming up, they worked together on several recording sessions for other artists. matsutake is known to have been isao tomita's successor basically, as he trained directly under him, learning everything he could about synthesis from tomita. his own work as i mentioned is pretty small in terms of overall discography, but he worked on a lot of great and classic albums in the 70s and 80s, including ymo and related, assisting in synth and computer programming.

ehh, i give his english a 6/10

youtube.com/watch?v=hDvstYDxm8Y

Masami Tsuchiya is the Japanese Bowie

I should listen to Tomita, I've heard loads but haven't actually gotten to him

>who got molested down in old hong kong
my sides

okay that's a little worse. he sounds a lot more careful on Pleocene

Jun Togawa is my reference for bad English enunciation

youtube.com/watch?v=3vNeI872ats

although actually I've heard way worse than that...

I don't think the Logic System stuff is as strong as YMO. It's got the sound but the music isn't as good.

I think that the reason YMO extensively used vocoders early on is specifically because of two things
>covers up bad enunciation, which makes sense if they were just picking up English
>sounds cool

usually it doesn't cover up bad enunciation so much as just make everything unintelligible

they also slathered effects all over everything to the point that you can't hear shit, especially on BGM

youtube.com/watch?v=v5WJ3BiJ5jg

Well, all YMO members were prolific and quality songwriters, so I'm not really surprised on the music front; neither is the sound, because Matsutake did the synth programming for them

I really only noticed this on 'Behind the Mask'; I like and listen to BGM a lot and it's never bothered me in the slightest

I don't think it's a problem really, they're just covering up their voices much more than you hear on most records, even for that era

the vocals are admittedly clearer on BGM than pretty much anything before it but even then, they are pretty hard to make out at times; the mixing on the 'Day Tripper' cover has the most unmodified vocals of anything before Naughty Boys, but I find that they mixed the vocals lower solely to avoid the 'Japanese pronouncing English' stereotype. 'Technopolis' doesn't count here because it's just spelling the title and 'Tokyo'

OP here. I'm surprised that I managed to get this thread past the 6 hour mark, let alone the 1 hour mark. I'm happy to see others know lots about this terrific band, and I've learned lots from it. Thank you all. Carry on.

to be clear, he shared the synth and programming duties. sakamoto and hosono had worked extensively with synths and early computer sequencers before ymo. but certainly matsutake was the guy that would help if they couldn't dial in a sound exactly as they wanted it, or a sequence on a modular synth. especially since ymo worked with deadlines, there was no time to fuck around so 100% good use of studio time was essential (insert ironic japanese stereotype here that is actually true tho).

it worked for them, it's a cool effect. i'm still not sure what effects chain they used on takahashi's vocals to get it to sound the way it did so consistently in the early ymo albums, or even in his early 80s solo albums.

although you can hear their voices clearly by the time they get to naughty boys and service. certainly the live stuff from the 1983 tour has less effects on their vocals. a great, clean vocal performance (minus the standard reverb everyone has) by takahashi is on 'flashback' from 'what? me worry?' which is also composed by sakamoto.

Matsutake's involvement live was also beyond essential. Sakamoto said somewhere that the latest tours have been a hell of a lot easier because he doesn't have to worry about programming everything as quick as he can, simply because it's all button pushes away nos on today's equipment. I've never seen Matsutake on stage in live videos for anything past 1981, so what was that all about? Could it have been that he was obscures or under the stage, which were both common practices at the time? I know for a fact that Yes had a second keyboardist underneath the stage to properly run samples/effects/Fairlight, so that's very plausible

The usual super 80s vocal effect chain is an Eventide H949 and AMS RMX16. Probably they were using the same shit, just more of it.

>especially since ymo worked with deadlines, there was no time to fuck around so 100% good use of studio time was essential (insert ironic japanese stereotype here that is actually true tho).
Well that's kind of true of anyone who's in a studio on a budget. Studio sessions in the UK or US at the time were usually a massive cocaine binge.

>Could it have been that he was obscures or under the stage, which were both common practices at the time?
Those tours also went for a deliberately much less cluttered presentation, with most stuff sort of hidden.

It could be though that half of it was just played off a tape.

yeah live he's well respected, it looks like he's doing nothing but he's legit making sure the primitive computer sequencers don't crash and that his modular moogs (which were all his) didn't fry on stage, all while tweaking filters and envelope amps, etc.

as far as his involvement in live shows post 1981, i think mainly because ymo took a year off in 1982, he focused on working on his own project and then worked on a bunch of other people's albums who wanted that synth/computer programming. the final ymo tour in 1983 was a mixture of live performance and backing tracks/sequences running off roland mc4 or actual 2 inch tape reels synced.

YMO were madly efficient, they cranked out loads of material in just 6 years, not to mention all the live stuff that's gradually surfaced over time

I would fly to Tokyo to see a show.

Japan, a band YMO has directly influenced (I'll gloss over Sylvian and Sakamoto's working relationship right now), did use actual tapes that were entirely visible to the audience for stuff such as saxophone tracks or repetitive sequencer material

I think the efficiency mostly shows on the stuff that they produced for other artists. If you look at just the stuff that Hosono produced in the early 80s, he's cranking that shit out like crazy, and for the most part it's all excellent quality

as i understand it, all of the live stuff, which is great for posterity, was rush released by their former label alfa records when they were going bankrupt in the 90s until they were finally bought by sony i think. but yeah a ton of superfluous releases happened in the 90s related to ymo and stuff alfa had in the vault. i don't think the guys in ymo are interested in their live stuff as much, but i wish they were. i really want a proper stereo remix of the hurrah 1979 new york show. but i have a feeling the mastertape with the mono foldown of a stereo mix with shitty camera angles is all thats left of that show. at least the 1983 stuff can definitely be remixed, as brain eno did in 1992 (although it sounds like absolute shit imho and i prefer the original mix from 84).

it was kind of a trope in England the 80s to have a reel to reel on stage playing the drum track

Cocteau Twins even featured it in a video
youtube.com/watch?v=NhGoZLudKyk

i was thinking of finally going to japan this year, but i think i will wait until next year once i see whats happening with the ymo 40th anniversary stuff