Haruomi Hosono

three new tracks on the Swing Slow reissue btw

SO HAPPY! Been praying for a Swing Slow reissue for so long. YES!

do you know when? i can't seem to see. maybe they can be bought from there now?

Cdjapan has them for preorder. I’m gonna see if Light in the Attic will carry them bc I’d assume it’s right in their wheelhouse

My favorite YMO stuff is the BGM / Technodelic period and the associated solo albums from 1981-82, so I'm down with "Philharmony" too.

I wanna know from the experts here what are the critical albums from Hosono, Takahashi and Sakamoto. Their catalogs are quite vast.

thanks frogbs. i thinjk i'll try to get them from jeset as japan to uk shipping is way cheaper.

short answer, this is easily the most critical from any of them:

https://www.discogs.com/release/2545732-Yukihiro-Takahashi-Yukihiro-Takahashis-Sexual-Voice-Message

long answer I actually have a list on RYM about this

https://rateyourmusic.com/list/JAMOOL/yellow-magic-orchestra-solo-and-related-albums/

ooh that's a great overview, thanks. haven't heard that akiko yano album among others

like i feel like the akiko yano albums people always talk about are tadaima and maybe iroha ni konpeitou?

what are the critical albums from Hosono, Takahashi and Sakamoto. Their catalogs are quite vast.

i'll give you a real amateurish, off the cuff, i've only listened to 1/10th of the catalogs kind of answer, "don't blame me!" THSTHS kind of list:

Neuromantic (T)
Cochin Moon (H)
Ongaku Zukan (S)
What Me Worry? (T)
Philharmony (H)
Thousand Knives (S)

no, those aren't their very best of the best or most representative probably, but all of these rule so much

re: akiko yano, to my mind everything up to and including welcome back (her "jazz" album ft metheny, haden, et al) are worth a listen (i actually think she was a more consistent solo artist than any of the core ymo members in the 80s) but my personal favs are japanese girl (sleek 70s jazz pop w/ heavy japanese folk inflections, she was only like 20 or something ridiculous when she made this), ai ga nakuchane (recorded in london w/ ymo and members of japan) and brooch (beautiful interpretations of schubert, debussy, stravinsky et al songs as well as some originals, performed alongside classical pianist yuji takahashi, really highlights the exceptional range of her unconventional vocal style)

worth noting that many of the lyrics on her albums throughout the 80s and into the 90s were written by shigesato itoi, best known in the west as creator of the mother/earthbound series

that's a great list karl! i would only add sakamoto's esperanto which for me is not only among sakamoto's best but one of the most special and confounding and inimitable records ever made

oh yeah also also also this is maybe better for another thread but don't sleep on sakamoto's notated instrumental works from the 90s/00s, discord in particular is a stunner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig-7opc1AWE

It hit me in the face this week that Paraiso is one of the best albums ever. I used to prefer Tropical Dandy and Bon Voyage Co. from his pan-Pacific exotica era, but Paraiso really feels like the musical and conceptual culmination of that era, with an eye toward a spaced-out electronic future (“Simoon” from the first YMO record takes it even further in this direction). It’s also just good-time party music, the most fun you can possibly have on record. Plus some of the most perfect album artwork. Need to procure a vinyl copy of this ASAP

Yeah I’ve made no secret of my fondness for that album. It hit me the same way, I thought it was cool but nothing special and then one day I could not stop looping “Asatoya Yunta” because there was something really strange and fascinating about it. Then I realized the whole album is like that. The second track is so incredible - I’ve had it on some playlists for parties and it’s one that someone always asks about.

Gerald - would also highly recommend Omni Sight Seeing from 1989. I think it may actually be his best record. While he may have spread himself a little thin from 82-85 putting out like 10 different albums in various guises this one is like a “best of” of the next 4 years. It’s also his only album that doesn’t stick to a theme, every track is very different from the previous one. Maybe that is the theme. Pretty much everything he does well is on here.

Yeah that's exactly what happened to me with Paraiso this time around, except it was "Worry Beads" that was my "gateway."

I'll second the OSS recommendation... It's the one album I've suggest to anyone who wants to get a good overview of Hosono's work.

what are the top two sakamotos?

that's the one i struggled with the most

and OSS only recently made it on spotify (well, it maybe have been years. i am still in the year 2020, in some ways), i haven't really listened it all the way through yet! i should do that this afternoon

that's a great list karl! i would only add sakamoto's esperanto which for me is not only among sakamoto's best but one of the most special and confounding and inimitable records ever made

― missingNO

and likewise, thank you missingNO and i have only listened to esperanto once! so i will put that on the playlist after OSS

Ongaku Zukan (S)

fuck, yet again i'm an idiot. i meant Hidariude no Yume (Left Handed Dream) from 1981. this one:

https://i.imgur.com/tqNbjRZ.jpg

if my ymo lore is correct, it was recorded during a time of internal tension between the core 3, and it always seems like the vibe is that sakamoto was taking a bit of a pretentious turn and trying to elevate himself into a global art star or something? i have no idea. but this album was made in the height of that (there's no definitive YMO bio that i know of so i'm not sure i have the right take on the vibe, but i thought that takahashi/hosono were both kinda irritated by sakamoto or vice versa), and it's amazing. the amount of musical territory it covers is pretty amazing, and it goes all the way from ambient bliss to legit shots at pop hits to avant-garde/experimento zone

OSS is really good :) it's pop track is buried at the back, love it :)

its

from what I've read the tension was always between Sakamoto and Hosono, both of whom came from very different backgrounds - Sakamoto was from a high class family while Hosono was more working class. which is why RS's early work was classical & more art school while HH started in folk and got really into Martin Denny. seems like this led the two of them to argue a lot about the "aim" of YMO's music. indeed I think Sakamoto did have his sights set on becoming famous worldwide (which he kinda achieved?) and wanted his music to sound state-of-the-art while Hosono was more whimsical and goofy (and perhaps a bit more "spiritual"?). I think if you compare Left-Handed Dream to Philharmony you can hear the difference in approach; in the liner notes to LHD he talks about how he wanted synths that mimicked "worldly" sounds to give the album an authentic and timeless feel while on Philharmony HH is just like "I really had fun playing with this sampler". ironically Philharmony is the one that sounds more relevant today.

afaik Takahashi was just the guy in the middle convincing the other two to stay together...from what I've heard he's an exceedingly friendly and sociable dude

takahashi's contribution to the dynamic was surely having the strongest & most straight-forward pop instincts?

fwiw I do think Ongaku Zukan is essential as well...it's not really much like YMO but the original album is stellar and may have predicted vaporwave to some degree (it's basically Weather Channel music. but really gorgeous and groovy Weather Channel music. entirely instrumental iirc). there are two wildly different versions of this album - one from 1984 (Ongaku Zukan) that's 9 tracks plus a bonus 12" or 7" (the difference being an extra version of "Tibetan Dance") and one from 1986 that's the American version, which contains 6 tracks from the original plus two with vocals, "Field Work" (with Thomas Dolby) and "Steppin' Into Asia" (with Akiko Yano). both good tracks but the original works much better, particularly "Replica" on the bonus LP which is one of my favorites tunes of his. Great Tracks actually did reissue this album last year but it's missing the bonus so I'm trying to find an original. I am pretty curious about this version, though:

https://www.discogs.com/release/6830161-Ryuichi-Sakamoto-%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BD%E5%9B%B3%E9%91%91-Ongaku-Zukan-2015-Edition

And yeah I think you could argue that YT had the strongest overall influence on YMOs sound, his solo albums at the time were pretty similar

idk about overall but very much so on naughty boys at least

hadn't heard the beatniks album before but it's cool, predominantly in-line with takahashi's solo work but a few tracks that are clearly primarily composed by suzuki (e.g. "le sang du poete") & his touches elsewhere are occasionally apparent

takahashi's contribution to the dynamic was surely having the strongest & most straight-forward pop instincts?

― ufo, Sunday, 17 October 2021 06:59 (sixteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is debatable, both hosono and sakamoto were much more active in the early 80s as songwriters and producers for more conventional chart-bound pop artists than takahashi was, who seemed to model himself more on the art rock / sophistipop archetype of bryan ferry, bowie, et al

two different recordings of one of my favourite hosono songs (again featuring lyrics by shigesato itoi). probably alone here but i genuinely think this is one of the strongest straight-forward pop songs he ever wrote ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVpYm0p3UA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jnqiesaa44

Xp Yeah Hosono wrote for chart pop acts more extensively than both RS and YT.

I love sakamoto’s 80s work he did for tv commercials and stuff

I'm only really just catching on over the past few years, with the Light In The Attic (and others) compilations and reissues and all that, so really appreciating this discussion.

Did Hosono do a lot of production where he wasn't a (credited) writer? I was going through a bunch of Pizzicato 5 a while ago and finding I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as way back... except I was loving the very first single, "The Audrey Hepburn Complex". I look it up and whatdoyouknow, produced by Hosono! This guy eh.

He's produced plenty without a writing credit -- much of Miharu Koshi's stuff for example.

surprised that hosono's mercuric dance and coincidental music haven't gotten a mention yet. those are big time personal favorites. "windy land" in particular. so beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlXX-Bhzhrg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIsjpcn2ew

re: takahashi i just mean he appeared to be the one pushing ymo the strongest in that direction. the others certainly had strong pop instincts too, but it wasn't as much of a focus for them, especially with ymo

I've probably posted this observation on the YT thread but his concurrent solo albums are always quite similar to what YMO was doing at the time. Murdered by the Music is like a companion piece to Xoo Multiplies, Neuromantic is sonically similar to BGM, Exitentialism has Technodelic-esque rhythms and experimentation, What, Me Worry? is more sophisticated pop like Service. So I've always figured he was the one most responsible for what their albums actually sounded like

in case the two auto-generated vids i posted above are blocked outside of japan, here they are again. song is "hashire usagi" ("run rabbit") recorded by yuko kanai and miharu koshi respectively

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq-PMH_Zjxw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o75lWNaRkik

i was unaware of the yuko kanai version... it's great.

still think sandii's "zoot kook" is hosono's most impressive outside production job. so advanced with that sinuous, proto-acid synth sequence ... such a ridiculously lush chorus to boot

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

love the amorphous synth clouds that levitate the final chorus ... so glorious. he's listed in the credits so i'm guessing this part was played by sakamoto on the prophet 5 as it has that dense, detuned ensemble chorus quality he was fond of at the time

Has anyone heard the unreleased album he produced for Dynasty singer Linda Carriere in 1977? I just found out this exists, and it's kind of blowing my mind. Songs by Hosono, Tatsuro Yamashita, Minako Yoshida, Akiko Yano, and Hiroshi Sato. I can only find three full songs from it on YouTube and nothing on Soulseek, so if anyone has a rip of this let me know.

The songs I've heard sound a lot like the city pop of that period (e.g. Yamashita's SPACY and Go Ahead), though the marimba on "Laid Back Mad Or Mellow" nods to Hosono's exotica stuff. Apparently it wasn't released because the record execs thought the vocals were weak, and it looks like a demo copy was sold once on Discogs for $2,000. It's true the vocals aren't the greatest I've heard, but the production is sick.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsqMAHX29e8

if you're interested in HH's work writing and producing other artists, this massive boxset compiles a ton of it:

https://www.discogs.com/release/11508013-Haruomi-Hosono-%E7%B4%B0%E9%87%8E%E6%99%B4%E8%87%A3%E3%81%AE%E6%AD%8C%E8%AC%A1%E6%9B%B220%E4%B8%96%E7%B4%80%E3%83%9C%E3%83%83%E3%82%AF%E3%82%B9-%E7%B4%B0%E9%87%8E%E6%99%B4%E8%87%A3%E6%8F%90%E4%BE%9B%E6%A5%BD%E6%9B%B2%E9%9B%86-20th-Century

it's not comprehensive - there are some Jun Togawa tracks he wrote that don't appear here, and god knows what else. it is a near-endless source of treasure though. several of these tracks I've encountered in the wild and thought "it's gotta be him", idk what it is exactly but both his melodic and rhythmic sense are very recognizable to me

god knows what else

Includes 144 page book with additional info including a list of all(most?) songs written by Haruomi Hosono prior to 2009.

I’m surprised no sandii albums have been reissued recently afaik

co-signing "Zoot Kook", hard to believe that predates Computer World even

afaik the "lost" YMO track "Indo" also surfaces on that Sandii album, can't remember what it is though

feels like an album that ought to be re-evaluated soon

Zoot Kook is song of the day, pass the word