Songs that sample Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO)

Gina X - Kaddish

http://www.artcontext.net/music/artskool/jem/ymo2.html

I heard that jennifer lopez or someone sampled computer games? I'm certain about this, but not who it was.

that shitty indie-pop song I posted on here that samples "Rydeen"

Your Mother's Got A Penis by Goldie Lookin Chain.

Jennifer Lopez used a sample from "Firecracker" for her song "Be Real" and Mariah Carey used more or less the same sample for "Loverboy".

2 Live Crew - Mega Mix II

(droppin' dat miami bass knowledge!!!)

I heard that jennifer lopez or someone sampled computer games? I'm certain about this, but not who it was.
-- mehlt, Friday, February 29, 2008 3:40 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Jennifer Lopez-I'm Real
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs8Qm85pc2A

fuuuuck

Calm down, Ryuichi... You didn't know about that Goldie Lookin Chain track?

Robert Hood - The Rhythm Of Vision

not ymo but today i found this random 80s house track called "doing it properly is xtc" by denise motto that samples "riot in lagos"

playing live on sunday! cannot wait!!!

Soul Train is coming on in 2 minutes on WGN, and it says Yellow Magic Orchestra is the featured guest! If I had a way to tape this I would. It surely would be a youtube classic.

Don Cornelius is a fucking asshole.

He asked all of their names, rolled his eyes when he didn't understand them, said "If someone offered me one million dollars to repeat one of their names, I'd have no chance". Then he said "there is a language barrier between us, of course...but I have to ask you one question...what do you think about Einstein's theory of relativity?". Then he asked if they had any other artists that they looked to for influence, and Yuki said "of course, so". Cornelius laughs, and responds with "He said of course...SO!"

Then Yuki gave a shoutout to Kraftwerk and Cornelius gave him the smug "well of COURSE Kraftwerk, duh" answer.

Here you go, Z.S.: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7nACfvMh8TY

Okay, so last night's gig in London was an odd one, I'd be interested to hear some opinions from any peeps that attended.

I (rather naively) thought we would get a greatest hits style set, but there was no Tong Poo or Firecracker or Taiso or Technopolis etc:
Not much of anything recognisable (to me anyways), we did get an encore of Rydeen and they kicked off with You've Got To Help Yourself.

The whole set-up was really interesting, for instance they had a guitarist whose role was to play directly into a computer with Max MSP or some other programm which basically transformed the sound of the guitar into splinters of icy noise, I'm not sure I heard a lick of traditional sounding guitar all evening.

There was also a chap who played pedal steel and mandolin for most of the evening, neither of which really had a marked effect on the overall sound.

It *was* enjoyable once you accepted the format and it was also great just to see them onstage (first time in London since 1980!) and to watch Yuki playing drums for instance, however I saw quite a few people leaving, I guess because they wanted to hear the well known tunes.

Thoughts anyone?

Yeah I'd kind of agree with that, once I realised they weren't playing the hits I enjoyed it for what it was, but...dunno, I'm not that keen on glitchy electronica and I guess that's what Sakamoto's doing thses days (the guitarist was Christian Fennesz btw). The ironic humour you'd get on the original albums is gone now, as is the energy - last night was pretty mid-paced, and Takahashi only moved to the drums for the last 30 minutes or so. Have they done a new album? Most of what they played was unfamiliar to me.

Strangely enough, their original inspiration Kraftwerk are playing far more enjoyable shows these days comprising updated versions of their old material due to the fact that Kraftwerk are lazy fuckers who write a new song every 10 years or so. The YMO guys are all still creatively active and I guess have a very Japanese work ethic about music production (that's not an ethnic cliche I hope - look at Merzbow, AMT et al). But due to the fact they don't come up with anything much new Kraftwerk have to play the old stuff, which to be honest is better, as is YMO's. I mean I'm all in favour of them moving forward and doing something new, but don't charge £35 for the tickets next time when people are there because of what they were doing 30 years ago. Is that churlish? I guess they'd think so!

One thing I forgot to mention - the sound was absolutely amazing, although they could have done with digging the Prophet 5's out of storage too.

The trouble with keeping tabs on a band like YMO (and a lot of japanese music in general) is a dearth of info on the net that is actually in english.

ALl the members have very confusing and extensice back catalogues and cross referenced collabs etc:

Maybe much of what we heard last night was Sketch Show or HASYMO material (HASYMO being an acronym suggested by Sakamoto for times when he participates in Sketch Show projects, meaning Human Audio Sponge Yellow Magic Orchestra)

I agree, whilst I enjoyed the gig, they could have totally blown the roof off, I don't think it churlish of us to expect more old material considering how long it's been.

I wonder how many people present were clued in to the fact that there was to be new (or unfamiliar material) and could it even be classed as YMO music?

I think half new / half old material would have been a good compromise, but I don't think they'd agree.

Here's me thinking that I could die happy having seen them rip through Tong Poo in the flesh.

Makes sense that it was Fennesz guesting on guitar given his totally arbitrary presence, I'd much rather have had seen Bill Nelson.

(several xposts)

Well, I was there and was disappointed. Not so much by the lack of "hits" in the set (I had no expectations, since I know very little YMO anyway - I've only heard their first album I think) but that what they did play was very dull. Also, I was hoping it would be a lot more... you know, analogue. I guess I should have been paying more attention to what YMO have been doing recently.

Surprised by Matt's comment about the sound, if you mean the sound quality. I thought it was appalling at times: very muddy, especially at the start, and way too much bottom end. There were a couple of occasions when a vocal mic wasn't up at the right time too.

Gobsmacked to note at the end that it was Fennesz on guitar. Frankly, I think it would have been much better - less cluttered, for one thing - if they'd managed without his contribution and that of the guy playing pedal steel (or whatever it was).

Plus points: I liked the use if trumpet and euphonium; that worked well. And all three were in good voice.

I was up in a box on the left hand side and the sound was pretty good, if a little on the sharp side. I had a clear view as to who was playing what and I could see that a lot of the backing vocals were coming from computer/pro-tools.

Oh yeah, and there was one song (one of the few I quite enjoyed) which had a very prominent 'keyboard' melody ... only nobody was playing it, so it must have come from the computer too. Argh.

I was in seat E32 and it sounded fine from there, although when I said absolutely amazing I'm comparing it to your average rock club with a shitty overloaded PA system, so...I'll downgrade to "pretty much good". They're all still looking dapper these days, if anyone wants a fashion report.

The merch stall was very tempting, lots of nice solo stuff there including whaqt looked like a Hosono box set of early stuff, pity I'm skint Waaaah!

So, after a bit of nosing about I've sussed that what we saw was by all intents and purposes a HASYMO concert, interpolating YMO songs (Ongaku, Rydeen, Help Yourself) and various Sketch Show and Sakamoto (that awful anti-war song) songs with newer actual HASYMO songs like Rescue (which was the 'Get your mind right, progress or regress' one.)

it looked as if ryu was playing then looping certain keyboard phrases, in "rydeen" for instance it looked like he played the first verse live on the xylophone, then moved to his larger keyboard for the rest of the song while the main xylophone riff still played.

"riot in lagos" sounded amazing. i thought it was a great show, but some of the sloganeering was fairly misguided.

Right well I've been talking about the show with my Japanese missus (who was there too). She reckons that from the Japanese point of view, just performing a retro greatest hits show would be insulting the audience in a way by not bothering to come up with something new. This is especially relevant because YMO were always known for being futuristic anyway, and looking to the past would go against their initial reason for existing. This is just a wildly different point of view to what we're used to in Europe or America or wherever (I'm trying not to say "the west"), where the vogue has gone more and more towards those Don't Look Back concerts or reformation greatest hits shows.

Don't know if this is actually the case, but food for thought I suppose.

Z S, I agree with your assessment of the Soul Train interview, though I believe Yukihiro said "Of course, soul"--and I think Don actually understood what he said. But yeah, his whole "look at these funny foreigners" attitude toward the band made me cringe hard. And him calling Kraftwerk a "record"...LOL.

As for the recent YMO gig, it sounds about what I'd expect if it actually was billed as HASYMO. If it was YMO, then, yeah, I would have expected to hear more classics. I'd love to see a video of them doing "Ongaku"! One of their greatest tracks.

Viola! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFs880dNtmM

A couple of years ago I bought, from E-Bay, a load of these awesome (of maybe slightly dodgy provenance) Chinese or Taiwanese DVDs of most of the YMO video material that came out in the 80s (79 and 80 World tour stuff, video collections, a Budokan gig and the Technodon gig), last night made me dig 'em out and have a YMO splurge.

thanks for the reviews everyone. I get the feeling I would have liked this show, I kinda like the HASYMO youtubes I've seen.

love that new version of ongaku, I want to have easy listening nightmares

So here's the official setlist that I got from the Commons blog:

Yellow Magic Orchestra
15 JUNE, 2008
at Royal Festival Hall/LONDON

01: I-SHIN-DEN-SHIN
02: SPORTSMEN
03: FLY ME TO THE RIVER
04: MARS
05: FLAKES
06: RIOT IN LAGOS
07: ONGAKU
08: RESCUE
09: TURN TURN
10: TOKYO TOWN PAGES
11: THE CITY OF LIGHT
12: SUPREME SECRET
13: WONDERFUL TO ME
14: TIBETAN DANCE
15: WAR AND PEACE
16: RYDEEN 79/07

ENCORE-1
CHRONOGRAPH

ENCORE-2
CUE

That actually looks like a great setlist to me. Hopefully all of these are up on Youtube (MaresNest, I haven't clicked your link yet, so they may be!). "Sportsmen" is one of my favorite Hosono songs, and I can imagine what it would have sounded like at the show because Takahashi covered (and contemporized it) on the recent Hosono tribute album.

Oh, and here's the blog I was talking about (thanks Paul!). It's got some nice pics of the YMO crew.

http://commmons.com/staff_blog/index.php

The Soul Train with YMO played over the weekend and we TIVO'd; Robin can't stop watching it.

Guardian review:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/06/meltdown_a_magical_evening.html

still so funny that clapton covered "behind the mask"

...and really, really badly.

fucking hell, has anyone else heard the human league's drum n bass cover of "kimi ni mune kyun"???

"Kimi ni Mune Kyun" was also covered by Jan Linton,and who under the name "dr jan guru" made releases with Bill Nelson, Masami Tsuchiya and Richard Barbieri of Japan. These are hard to track down as most of the releases seem to come out in Japan only but I ve found some downloads at a UK site www.burningshed.com/store/janlinton and on itunes.
"Sequential sakura" which is co-credited to Barbieri, really reminds me of YMO at times too, quite nice.

Here's their 2010 World Happiness setlist:

Lotus Love (Hosono on vocals)
Daytripper
ONGAKU
TAISO (Sakamoto Ryuichi sang through a loudspeaker, issuing orders to two male dancers who joined the band onstage for this number)
Thousand Knives
Behind The Mask
Tibetan Dance
Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa (with Crystal Kaye on vocals)
Rydeen
Fire Cracker
Encore: Hello Goodbye (Takahashi Yukihiro on vocals)

This seems a lot more like the kind of set most of you were expecting. Been youtubing a few of these and found it pretty good. For the record I really did like their 2008 sets with mostly Sketch Show material, though I understand that they were kind of dull. Stuff like "Mars" and "Flakes" work well on the record but they don't make sense live. And yeah I could definitely go without hearing Sakamoto's "War and Peace" again.

https://youtu.be/m_ds-XKtVds

Does anyone know if this is an authorized sample

wow

its viper so absolutely not

what about this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aS1HEhfIuLA

look if it introduces a bunch of teenage shitposters to the magic of YMO then I'm ok with it

21k views in a day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sg7Qh8uzSw

lmao

what the fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpXfkU89yIY

absolutely insane discovery

truly, what the fuck

:(