Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO)
Before the new wave movement, 1970s iconoclasts had already been hard at work upsetting Japan’s music scene from a more traditionally arranged—and frankly maudlin—sound known as enka, to a more Western-style sound called kayōkyoku. One of these bands, the folk-rocky Happy End, was at the forefront of this movement.
Still, it was when the band’s founding members, Haruomi Hosono, ditched his acoustic guitar in 1978 that new wave legend Yellow Magic Orchestra was born. Together with Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto, YMO helped evangelize the use of a synthesizer as a mainstream instrument and normalize synth-pop as a legit music scene.
During their tenure, YMO produced a prolific amount of output that oscillates between straight-up, funky, danceable tunes without lyrics and playful spoken-word skits that skewer the corporate business world, as well as robotic covers of Beatles tunes.
Their eponymous debut, Yellow Magic Orchestra, captures a jubilantly Asian aesthetic with various riffs on the pentatonic scale, while also underscoring the tech-heavy shift that Japan was undergoing, best displayed with two arcade game covers (the theme from 1977’s Circus and 1978’s inimitable Space Invaders).
Later on with Solid State Survivor, tongues finally began to loosen, with vocals buried in effects, reminiscent of The Talking Heads’ Fear of Music. However, it was Multiplies where the band found their original sound and style.
The “bleep-bloops” have been replaced by fully fleshed-out songs with instruments and vocals that blur the line between Talking Heads’ influence even further. Moreover, the band’s five clever Snake Man Show skits break things up nicely and flex their comedic chops.
The year 1981 saw the release of two albums: the less playful yet technologically advanced BGM and the sample-heavy industrial Technodelic. By the time 1983 came around, YMO’s sound had mutated from avant-garde to obviously livelier, danceable tracks with embraceable vocals found on Naughty Boys, while Service’s poppy feel bled into Bowie-esque territory (“Shadows on the Ground”).
Finally, after a 10-year hiatus, the band reunited for 1993’s Technodon, where an older, hipper YMO had embraced the spirit of the 90s with acid-house beats, trip-hop feels, and samples galore.
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