Haruomi Hosono

such as the entirety of kaze wo atsumete

is it just hosono, or maybe just me, or are japanese pop artists allowed (or allow themselves) a great lassitude...? he seems to range across so many genres, without any compunctions. the idea of switching modes so frequently doesn't seem to trouble him in the slightest.

My favorite current Hosono album is Paraiso, however I have discovered one that I have been quite impressed with. It's called "Nokto de la Galaskia Fervojo", a soundtrack to some abstract animated film from the mid-80's. As far as I know his soundtrack wasn't even used (I wouldn't know as I've never seen the movie) but the soundtrack album is very good. It's not really outwardly scary or anything, just very harrowing and cold. Really portrays a feeling of loneliness and uses some really creepy keyboard noises. At the same time it's playful and kind of cheery. It's the sort of thing that only Hosono could have pulled off. There is one absolutely gorgeous piano piece on it ("La Travida Malgojo de Giovanni") that IMO tops any of Sakamoto's similar efforts. I get chills just thinking about it.

^ crazy, i was just about to revive this thread. recently heard 'cochin moon' and 'philharmonic' for the first time and i'm kinda floored tbh

All YMO related threads are seriously some of my favorite on ILM.

^^^

here's where r1o natsume would have been chiming in had he not gone batshit and got his ass banned.

weird, that happened? would not have predicted that.

and yeah, hosono is the best. medicine compilation, NDE, and philharmonic are my faves.

What happened with r1o?

this is what my investigation turned up:

he image bombed the wdyll thread with various types of porn & got bant

― J0rdan S., Thursday, September 30, 2010 11:24 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also made homophobic slurs

― Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile (dayo), Thursday, September 30, 2010 11:25 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark

i guess r1o had some tricks up his sleeve

yipes!

Going through the Monad albums now; this is what I always hoped Brian Eno's ambient stuff sounded like. Very oddly sentimental, has parts that sort of hint at pop melodies and parts where a chord sounds intentionally "off". Great stuff!!!

Hey guy, r1o messaged me to let you know that he's fine, he just needed a permaban so he could quit ILX cold turkey and finish schoolwork, and also that he's not a homophobe.

He also wanted me to post the rest of the Monad box he had meant to post:

mercuric dance

http://www.sendspace.com/file/xiuhge

coincidental music

http://www.sendspace.com/file/agijq6

paradise view

http://www.sendspace.com/file/hr6alw

Also: Sakamoto/Robin Scott - The Arrangement

http://www.sendspace.com/file/pj0ddj

hey *guys, I mean

r10 is a homophobe fwiw.

I don't know, I'm only saying what he told me.

somehow i'm both a huge fan of hosono but wholly clueless about this monad box. which disc should i download first?

Coincidental Music is great — little short character pieces he did for TV ads IIRC. Highly melodic and memorable.

Mercuric Dance is his ambient album. His sort of gauzy, hazy sleepiness seems to take off from the last track of Music for Airports (even Eno never really did anything else like that track).

Paradise View is a soundtrack to an obscure Japanese film set in Okinawa (I think). Lots of Fairlights and tropical moods (like Sakamoto's Esperanto) with some Okinawan-sounding vocals.

I liked this description:

"An album of very interesting, sampled and re-assembled Okinawan music with an emphasis on gamelan-like sounds. I got a chuckle when a Village Voice film critic commented on the wonderful, authentic Okinawan score ("authentic" Hosono and his K250 that is). In the film, Hosono plays a supporting role as a sensitive, but out of his element Japanese grade school teacher transplanted to Okinawa. The big in-joke is that one of the teenage girls in the story has a YMO shrine in her room and seems quite infatuated, yet has no apparent interest in her school teacher and his resembalance to a YMO member. This was the first Okinawan language feature film and according to the IMDB co-stars Jun Togawa though when I saw the film quite some time ago I didn't know what she looked like or had a translation of the cast list."

New album "HoSoNoVa" due April 20th? Anyone have any idea what this is? It appears to be a new solo album (his first in a long time) with guests and a few covers, but that's all I could discern through Google translate

http://lottapieces.com/images/products/jayz/hova.jpg

so not a lot of info overall

yeah hopefully we get something on this in the coming days/weeks

I'm thinking of doing a Hosono albums poll but honestly I have no idea where to draw the line...plus you can't exactly compare Tropical Dandy to Coincidental Music

Speaking of - if you have Coincidental Music, go listen to the last track (the 11+ minute one); it's such a gorgeous piece of music that I think does a good job representing what Hosono was really all about. I love how it gradually segues into a Philharmony-type vocal experiment track for a while. Could easily be longer. Can't believe I never have it a fair shake until now.

damn, the last song on "Omni Sight Seeing" is so beautiful, how I wish he made more albums that were just straightforward techno-pop

been listening to tropical dandy a lot recently, liking it a lot

yeah, that lullaby-type instrumental at the end is amazing. but really Bon Voyage Co. and ESPECIALLY Paraiso are even better.

Man, 'Cochin Moon.' It's astonishing that they were using the relatively new musical form (electronic pop music) with such total control, making it sound effortless and alive in ways electronic pop made with a further couple decades rarely match. I'd say it almost makes 'E=MC2' sound a little clunky. And the production is just unbelievable--not sure what method is employed, but it has moments that create a surround-sound effect--beyond stereo, sounds around the listening point, or moving far away or nearby in front of you.

It's like Dockstader or Parmegianni or Henry--making fully-realized, emotional electronic and electro-acoustic music a decade or two earlier, while most people were just barely managing to twiddle knobs and make "UFO sound effects". So far ahead of the game, I'd be bowled over if it were released today--because it's just so good, it's decidedly secondary that it's visionary.

good description, just wanted to point out that "Hum Ghar Sajan" blows me away every damn time, I wish there were more songs like that one

I'm starting to get into his Omni Sight Seeing/Medicine Comp/NDE period and it's pretty good; essentially a mix of the different styles he's attempted, plus some very Indian-style techno, again ahead of its time. Strongly recommended, it turns out there is life after YMO

"birthday" is so cool

"happy birthday", i mean. sounds so far ahead of its time.

One last time. "birthday party"

only song i've ever uploaded to youtube is a killer cover of "sports man"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gi8futLRbM

hey that's neat! love the different vocals that occur midway through.

I always wondered what Sportsmen was about...my guess was it's about being from a family of athletes, but kind of sucking at everything?

I don't know if I can call "Birthday Party" ahead of its time; who else makes music like that??

i love how Sportsmen has this endearingly outsider/emasculated point of view as he considers fitness, it always makes me think of retro illustrations of athletes as a sort of utopian ideal.

just wanna paste these lyrics, it sounds like he's having a near-death experience (and then again, it could just be about nothing)

My car radio's playing a song
That makes me feel very strange
It's taken so long
Through the gradation of the grey scale
A landscape like I've never seen
As far as my eyes can see
Out on the road
I've seen so many shades, shades of grey
Now I'm back in the tunnel again
Every minute, every second
I can feel it getting closer
Speeding ahead
To where grey meets white

thematically, the lyrics of "sportsmen" remind me of "pride" by robert palmer (except the dude in "pride" is a total prick and the dude in "sportsmen" is humble and introspective).

i just made a ~75 minute mix of Hosono tracks, mostly from his post-YMO era (topping out at 1993 since I haven't heard anything after), focusing on the more surreal/gorgeous stuff. anyone interested?

y'huh

and yes, please, and thank you!

Hells yes frogbs, post that thing!

been spinning the monad stuff a lot lately, so this sounds right up my alley. v much interested!

Alright, here she is. Nearly every Hosono album I've heard has two or three tunes on it that hit me in a weird way, or make me want to listen to them over and over again, so I basically just put a bunch of them into one playlist and I've been listening to it nonstop. It focuses on the electronic stuff, though there are a few solo piano tracks here. I kept everything from the (numerous) collaborations out as well as his pre-Cochin Moon material since it doesn't really fit in here. Enjoy!

http://www.sendspace.com/file/r4b8ud

into this, thank you.

just discovered the tale of genji ost this week. incredible.

those shimmering, reverb-drenched percussion sounds. man.

I always hosono every day

the percussion is my favorite part of many of these tracks. listening to them all in a row it's kind of neat how consistant he is with that, even with the ten-year gap the drum loops on "Hum Ghar Sajan" and his cover of "Caravan" are very similar, ditto "Sayokoskatti"

one thing I really dig about Hosono is that there's a real sense of location to a lot of his music. it doesn't really feel like it was created in a studio. the tale of genji ost is a good example of this but really everything he does kind of transports you to a strange place.