YMO poll: Sakamoto vs. Hosono vs. Takahashi

for me the difference between Sakamoto and Hosono can be summed up right here, in a traditional Okinawan folk song that they both covered:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9OFoQSwn8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loZ4YZXZ4As

Sakamoto's version is beautiful and pitch-perfect. Hosono's is both of those things, but it adds a little dash of the surreal (some of the vocals even sound backwards masked), and in the end it is a lot more fun.

Possibly not familiar with their respective discographies enough to vote, but if I do I'll be voting Hosono, approx 99% for the song "Sports Men" (off Philharmony), which is a jam

Hosano's stuff is generally the weirdest. not that the other guys don't get weird, but stuff like coachin moon and mercuric dance just sound like nothing else to me. and he rules for producing the early pizzicato five stuff, which i love.

Sakamoto went on and made "Forbidden Colours" with David Sylvian. Still one of my all time favourite tracks. Nuff said.

I couldn't even... Nope. This one's impossible.

Hosano's stuff is generally the weirdest. not that the other guys don't get weird, but stuff like coachin moon and mercuric dance just sound like nothing else to me. and he rules for producing the early pizzicato five stuff, which i love.

if you really want to hear something bizarre, try The Endless Talking. about half of it are 'remixes' of some of his 80's stuff, turning them into something very creepy and uncomfortable. I don't think he was on any drugs but he definitely seemed to be in an altered, dark state of mind for this, it's a total headfuck

found this video very interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U19JEDCcUfw

basically its a comp of all the commercials these guys did in the 80's (and a little beyond), and there's a ton of them. suddenly the reformation for that Kirin commercial doesn't seem so out of place. I'm not entirely sure exactly how big these guys were in their heyday so its very interesting to see, especially the Sapporo commercials w/ Sakamoto. in America you'd never see a beer commercial featuring a pianist playing a song to himself.

Wow some of those are great! Thanks for posting that, i had seen the Hosono Namco ones before but had no idea they did so many.

Thanks for that Frogbs, very cool indeed.

Looks like Arto Lindsay popping up at the end of that first Sapporo ad.

I, too, have become a bit of a Hosono convert over the years — not only for Cochin Moon but also for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_dnMkv6jJE&feature=related

you ever hear any of the F.O.E. stuff? there's maybe 2 full-lengths of this stuff, much of it pretty good, including a collaboration with James Brown believe it or not

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Cochin Moon is just such an insanely wonderful album--more sophisticated and yet so much more loose and "organic" than most YMO work, a totally enveloping sound-world. Shame it's not better known--should be in the canon of truly great electronic albums.

Close!

Kinda emblematic of the band in general.

Really want to start a "there is so much more to Hosono than Cochin Moon" type thread but I don't want to marginalize how great it is that anyone knows that album at all

... but I've only heard two of his albums and I didn't like the other one. Don't know the other guys' solo work - well, Sakamoto a bit and Takahashi not at all tbh. I'm no expert on YMO but I've always kinda imagined Takahashi was the pop guy so he would have got my vote if I'd actually voted.

what was the other one, out of curiousity?

i always found Cochin Moon's popularity a little confusing, not that it isn't great, just wonder where it got its reputation from when his other solo works are such obscurities - it isn't even one of the three or so Hosono albums that's in print outside of Japan

Because you can find it on the internet fairly easily perhaps? "Paraiso" was the other one.

I'd guess that coachin moon has crossover appeal to krautrock/Mutant Sounds types who aren't necessarily into technopop or whatever

yeah I think it must have been featured on a few blogs somewhere, I do think it's probably his most impressive album from a historical standpoint (like, "I can't believe he was doing this all the way back then...")

that said, I actually like Paraiso better, which is a unique and revolutionary album in its own right - certainly much less "abstract", but still used electronics in a way that perhaps no one had before.

Whither Patrick South?

I'll always take Harry. Love the New Orleanskinawa records too much not to.

Takahashi's "Saravah" is his great overlooked tropical disco-pop gem

yeah I wish South or r1o or lou1s were still around, oh well

kinda weird that all three of them released disco-pop albums at the same time

I am still around--I can just never seem to remember my password these days! (Got it.)

In the past year or two, I have noticed more and more YMO/technopop threads on the internet, and it makes me happy. I'm thinking that Youtube is responsible?

Takahashi made my favorite YMO songs, and I love the pure synth-pop of his solo albums. He's also the most charming singer. I love Sakamoto's synth work from the '70s to the mid-'80s (especially his production work for Taeko Onuki), but his solo albums were always too experimental and dull for me.

Hosono is the one. He's the greatest songwriter, he created YMO (and invented technopop for my money), and his songs are the most magical/exotic. I didn't realize he was in so many ads in the '80s (I assumed it would be mostly Sakamoto), so I'm glad that he is so clearly recognized as a genius in Japan.

I do love how he can turn songs that are supposed to be lush and simple into something utterly surreal. On Omni Sight Seeing there's a cover of the old 30's jazz standard "Caravan" which sounds like Hosono just set up all his machines to emulate jazz instruments and turn everything into a crazy, somewhat off-key jazz session. Even his voice, the way he sounds so off yet fun to listen to, such good stuff and a clear influence for Cornelius to basically do the same thing

I voted Hosono and I don't think I've ever heard Cochin Moon! Sportsmen is my all-time favorite YMO-cru song.

New YMO single called "Fire Bird" supposedly released today!!

I may have posted this elsewhere, but Ryuichi Sakamoto wins for most essential solo album.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_9W8m5Uv_fIE/SaCdoPJsPHI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/_ES4hjFB3UQ/s400/thousand.knives.jpg

This is a must-have for YMO fans. All 4 YMO members appear on this album, making it practically a YMO release. It definately sounds the most like them.

That's right, I said all 4 members. The poll leaves out the very important '4th member', Hideki Matsutake. Another must-hear is Unit by Matsutake's project, Logic System.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXO5IIIhVy8

Sorry, forgot to take the 's' out of https:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXO5IIIhVy8

Yeah, that album is perfect, IMO.

I love the Hideki Matsutake album Edo (actually it's a collaboration with two other people). Mellow Tangerine Dream-ish mixed with more traditional Japanese acoustic stuff.

Which one is perfect? Thousand Knives is close, except I don't care for the song Grasshoppers. I think this keeps the album from perfection. Also, sometimes the songs feel too long (Thousand Knives is almost 10 minutes long).

I like 2 3rds of Logic (which I mistakenly named Unit. Matsutake's Digital Moon has some pretty excellent covers of James Bond songs.

Ha I really like "grasshoppers", actually. I just think the album's a wonderful long playing experience; melodic, exotic, truly a pleasure from start to finish.

thousand knives, I mean

"Unit" is quite possibly my favorite YMO-related track.

here's a really great track from Coincidental Music, this is a good indicator of what planet Hosono was on, even after YMO's split

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

I found this on a Libary Music blog and I thought it was a pretty dead-on YMO record. I posted it to a YMO listserv and the other YMO nerds didn't think so, though.

Marcello Giombini - Libra

it definitely feels like the first YMO record

Complete Service (After Service remixed/resequenced by Eno) was at Aboeba for $75. *groan*. I know a lot of people are down on later YMO but I really like After Service, especially the arrangements of the earlier songs.

After Service remixed/resequenced by Eno

Whoah, really? When? I need to hear that.

It's not really super noteworthy. I have both After Service and Complete Service and sonically there isn't much of a difference. In my opinion the best live YMO era was 1979-1980, when they were still improvising quite a bit; the 1983 stuff is good but it doesn't really add much to the studio versions, y'know?

i vote Hosono, for a number of reasons. his output--as a band member, "solo" artist, producer, songwriter--is enormous. he was ubiquitous in japanese pop of the 1980s, esp. the electronic-pop axis. but above all the _breadth_ of his work is astonishing. it's difficult to think of ground he hasn't covered in his long career. and through all that the quality is pretty startlingly consistent. I had the big "HOSONO BOX" (4-disc anthology of his work from late 1960s to early 2000s) and aside from some live Suzie Cream Cheese/Happy End recordings with dodgy sound quality (he covers "Mr Soul"!) it's just fucking aces back to back.

i think one aspect of his career is uniquely or especially japanese. it doesn't appear to me that japanese culture has much of a firm distinction between the popular and the avant-garde. hosono has maintained a very high-profile career while recording, on and off, some truly adventurous, even "difficult" albums. or rather, his music (and his individual albums) just kind of collapse any distinction between "experimental" and "popular." he can record/produce ambient records while writing/producing the title song to a ghibli film while making a pop album with YMO, and the music has evident traffic among these various modes. generally speaking this applies to the other YMO members too. it's almost as if the music industry or just the public rewards that kind of adventurousness. sakamoto strikes me as a bit more invested in a Romantic notion of the musician, and I don't think he takes as many chances as Hosono or Takahashi (the latter is just prone to low quality control at times).

it's really impossible to overstate hosono's importance in japanese music, IMO. i can't think of a single stateside equivalent for his popular appeal, breadth of output, longevity, and just plain awesomeness.

i even like his recent-ish album covering english-language standards.

Right. It seems like there was a time where Hosono was connected to just about everything. There is definitely something odd and endearing among nearly everything he does. As you mention he's done just about everything under the sun, but I think all of it is unmistakeably him. Like he just has this very singular musical mind - his cover tunes especially feel like something very familiar translated into a foreign musical language. There are modern groups (like say, Boards of Canada) who work very hard to capture that aura of surrealness that seems to come so naturally to Hosono. That's why I've found Paraiso so fascinating; he obviously intended the album to be odd, but I wonder if he envisioned it turning out as off-kilter as it did. I've still been really enjoying the Swing Slow album - it's kind of minimal in a way that really, really gets under your skin. It's music that is supposed to be warm and danceable but instead has this sparse and cold atmosphere about it.

Sakamoto I've always remained interested in, his music always felt very well-thought out and professionally done, almost to a fault. Like most people on the board I think the B-2 Unit/Esperanto/Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence era contained his most interesting stuff. But I feel they guide the listener a bit too much. I loved the 2005 album Chasm just because it did so many different things but unlike the other two I don't think Sakamoto has his own 'stamp' - you hear the soundtracks he does (and many of his post-84 solo albums) and they could be anyone.

Agreed that Takahashi's quality control isn't always the greatest but he does have a very consistant aesthetic and I think he understands the mechanics of a good pop song. Some of the stuff he does just really knocks it out of the park. Relistening to several of his albums I think he's one of those guys that seems to work best when he's trying new things. The songs that don't stand apart in some way tend to drag.

it's looking more and more like hosono's my all-time favorite musician lately but I still can't work up the energy to listen to his new covers album. but you guys got me curious. I just can't say I'm much of a fan of anything past '95 or so, but even so, that leaves an incredible body of work - his solo stuff, YMO, old bands, collaborations, his production work for other artists, all the cool stuff on non-standard records (this was his label, right?). endless!!!

sakamoto is similarly restless... maybe even more so. but I think you're right, his stuff is not as distinctive as hosono's and it makes the sheer number of releases a little more daunting. and I particularly dislike those solo piano albums where he re-arranges the old hits. why does he do this SO MUCH? but he still reliably cranks out good records. I go back to the recent one with taylor deupree a lot, for instance. particularly the last track with ichiko aoba. and I like that he still collaborates with so many different musicians, young ones too.

I haven't really gotten around to much takahashi stuff yet. he seems the least interesting to me since the solo stuff I've heard has been a little patchy (and sometimes worse than that). but one day...

just to add that in the YMO videos Ryuichi acts terribly self-consciously, Takahashi is OK (more at the presence/modeling axis), but Harry is flat-out great as a comedic actor. (case in point: Kimi ni mune kyun)

Harry is flat-out great as a comedic actor. (case in point: Kimi ni mune kyun)

^^^^ The sweet little Youtube video - posted on some YMO thread - of Hosono celebrating the release of his new album bu dancing jauntily around his home studio and miming the instruments.

he cracks me up in the "wild ambitions" video too

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/228799/pics/hosono_wild_ambitions.png

Lotsa acting here

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

and I particularly dislike those solo piano albums where he re-arranges the old hits. why does he do this SO MUCH?

true, although to be honest Hosono is kind of heading in this direction lately too. i've watched youtubes of some recent tours where he arranges a lot of his songs as cocktail jazz and while it's more than listenable it's not exactly striking except on rare occasions.

the problem w/ sakamoto's piano albums is that the self-conscious minimalism doesn't really do his songwriting favors. sometimes less is, well, less.

i DL'd this two-CD collection of music produced/written by one or more members of YMO (but sung/released under the name of other folks), from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s for the most part. it is... so good. when i'm back home i'll look up the title (which is in japanese characters).

hosono's catalogue is so much that sometimes I just hit "play" on iTunes and listen to it for hours upon hours... which then becomes a problem when I forget which song that caught my attention belongs to which album.

i DL'd this two-CD collection of music produced/written by one or more members of YMO (but sung/released under the name of other folks), from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s for the most part. it is... so good. when i'm back home i'll look up the title (which is in japanese characters).

curious about this. sounds similar to yellow magic kayokyoku but that's 3 discs?
http://coolestsound.jp/Various_Artists_Yellow_Magic_kayokyoku_Techno_Magi/2004.12.07/001588/

that one's gold too in any case. susan's "ah! soka" was new to me and it's now one of my favorite hosono productions.

actually, looks like hosono composed that one and takahashi did the arrangement/lyrics

oh yeah, that's the one. two discs, three discs, what's the difference?

^^^^ The sweet little Youtube video - posted on some YMO thread - of Hosono celebrating the release of his new album bu dancing jauntily around his home studio and miming the instruments.

what's the video? I tried to find it, but failed to do so.

you mean this?

http://www.jpopsuki.tv/video/Hosono-Haruomi---The-House-of-Blue-Lights/e5c94eec9b030db1488014af67bed740

that album seems interesting though the covers sound mostly straight, often done in very early (like, 40's or 50's) styles. kind of reverting to where his career began!

would be nice to see a guide on post-96 Hosono. he didn't do a whole lot of solo albums - mostly band stuff which I don't know much about.

whoa, left handed dream is str8 incredible

On Yuki's FB stream today.

昨夜偶然会った、生涯の友との写真UP！

http://i60.tinypic.com/dgjntu.jpg

可愛すぎる！

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2is0wrIpEsM

I want to explore the YMO-related world but it's just so big! I know Sakamoto's work with David Sylvian and his more famous soundtracks, I just downloaded Yukihiro Takahashi's "Neuromantic" and am listening to Haruomi Hosono's "Paradise View" on YouTube. Anyone care to recommend key albums or compilations?

what specifically do you like? otherwise I could easily list off two dozen key albums. you looking for more stuff in the YMO vein, or just their best albums in general? or solo albums outside the three members of the group?

YMO's st is essential:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy5XPdyhzfw

this year i have been really diving into this stuff. i really like Haruomi Hosono's Philharmony, it's a nice mix of experimental sounds and synth pop. there is so much to check out, so many side projects. Miharu Koji's Parallelisme (produced by HH) is also wonderful.

Miharu Koji Koshi

That one is excellent, as is Boy Soprano. Very strong Hosono vibes on that one.

Akiko Yano's Tadaima is another favorite of mine. I've come to see it as the Japanese Technopop version of A Wizard, A True Star

I did create a list on RYM that you may find useful:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/JAMOOL/yellow_magic_orchestra___solo_and_related_albums/

Froggie - I specifically like Japan and David Sylvan's catalog, including Sakamoto collaborations "Bamboo Houses", "Forbidden Colours" and "Heartbeat". I like Sakamoto's "The Last Emperor" soundtrack. I like Yukihiro Takahashi's "Stranger Things Have Happened" EP with Bill Nelson. And I like bits of YMO's "Naughty Boys", and that's pretty much all I've heard from that world. So what do you suggest next?

Thanks for your RYM list, I'll poke through that.

Well, if you don't have all the YMO albums, I'd say get those first. You can maybe skip Xoo Multiplies and Service since those both have a lot of comedy bits on them. Though it doesn't affect the former too much, since some of it is in English. Even still, they're weird. But yeah, all those discs are great. BGM and Technodelic are my favorites.

Sakamoto's "Left Handed Dream" would probably be up your alley. I believe it's got members of Japan and Adrian Belew on it. You can tell he's going for that sound. I think those guys also worked on some of Akiko Yano's albums, though the most Japan-heavy one (Ai ga Nakucha ne) ain't so good. Gohan ga Dekita yo is absolutely classic though.

The three Takahashi solo albums done while he was in YMO (Murdered by the Music, Neuromanic, and What? Me Worry?) are all pretty essential as well. Beyond that you have to pick and choose a bit. That first Beatniks album is pretty good. This track in particular is awesome and all YMO fans should hear it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y-Rvgtgfjk

The Artcontext pages - though they haven't been updated in years - are a concise treasure of YMO-and-related info:http://www.artcontext.com/artskool/jem/yen.html

The three Takahashi solo albums done while he was in YMO (Murdered by the Music, Neuromantic, and What? Me Worry?) are all pretty essential as well.

all three of these are new wave classics, imo. Neuromantic in particular (W?MW? just behind it) is definitely one to check out if you're into YMO

I mean, come on

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBFpX2e3thQ

first comment on that is awesome

http://www.djdmac.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/11202017_AY2.jpg

has anyone heard this? the cover has me very intrigued.

nvm of course the full album is on youtube (bless youtube)

one of the greatest album covers of all time, of course

track 5, "Ike Yanagida" is excellent. a real favorite of mine. the rest is not quite so good. to be fair I think a lot of the songs were written when she was 19, before the songs on Japanese Girl. so it's sort of a "second album debut album" sort of thing. Tokimeki (the follow-up) is really good though, always felt that one was a bit underrated (to the extent that Akiko Yano albums get rated here at all)

Miharu Koshi's cover of Telex's "L'Amour Toujours" is perfect

i scored the first two Sadistic Mika Band LPs from ebay. really love this stuff, it's an eclectic mix of glam rock and prog and 70s funk. they were discovered by Roxy Music and produced by Roxy's Chris Thomas. it totally slipped my mind that Yukihiro Takahashi drummed for the band! there are some sick grooves (that massive beat that opens "Silver Child") and hyperactive 50s rock revivals ("Picnic Boogie", "Time Machine").

Akiko Yano's "Gohan Ga Deki Tayo" is a sprawling epic of nearly proggy awesomeness. It's a must listen and, if you see it around, buy on sight.

sorry -- Dekitayo.

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

Ok froggie, I gave Technodelic and BGM a spin and they're ace. Technodelic jumped out at me as a particularly cool and weird combination of Japan, Thomas Dolby and Kraftwerk. BGM is a shade less compelling but still full of interesting stuff. Will review the rest soon!

I ride for Sakamoto’s soundtrack to Wings of Honneamise, specifically the piano shit with all the big octave intervals etc

Oh huh turns out that’s the theme.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=83VoWltZdus

I’ve always sought out Sakamoto’s stuff. He’s profilic but very hit or miss, as has probably been noted. I should probably spend more time hunting down the better stuff from Hosono & Takahashi, but

It's hard to choose between the three but Hosono has such fascinatingly deep roots and he was doing brilliant shit like this in the mid-seventies.

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

Someone on the dedicated "BGM" thread made a comment that everything YMO and their members did between 1981 and 1983 is "pure gold". I made a quick list - damn they were prolific! Given that I'm really enjoying "BGM" and "Technodelic", which of these are recommended next?

Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎– Left Handed Dream (1981)
Yukihiro Takahashi ‎– Neuromantic (1981)
Riuichi Sakamoto & Danceries ‎– The End Of Asia (1982)
Tokiko Kato With Riuichi Sakamoto ‎– Miłości Wszystko Wybaczy (1982)
Haruomi Hosono ‎– Philharmony (1982)
Yukihiro Takahashi ‎– What, Me Worry? (1982)
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Naughty Boys (1983)
Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎– Coda (1983)
Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎– Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Danceries With Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎– Chanconette Tedesche (1983)
Yukihiro Takahashi ‎– Tomorrow's Just Another Day (1983)

takahashi was never as good as this era: i'm a huge fan of both neuromantic and what, me worry in particular. if i had to pick between a ymo album and neuromantic on a desert island, i would instantly grab neuromantic.

one reason for the high quality across the board is that they were all playing and contributing songs on each other's albums, even the solo ones.

Naughty Boys is basically a perfect pop album

of the rest, I'd say Left Handed Dream, Philharmony, and Neuromantic. those Sakamoto albums are all over the map though. the Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence OST is great but it may not be what you're expecting. it sounds like the Link to the Past soundtrack.

I still haven't heard Left Handed Dream! But Philharmony rules. "Luminescent-Hotaru" is maybe the best single song out of albums from the ones i've heard out of the list above.

er...sorry i mangled that, but you know what i mean. i am having a nice ymo & friends afternoon, thanks thread

in light of recent discush on the hosono thread i'd be interested in knowing how people feel about this 10 years on. i suspect that the scales will tip even further in hosono and takahashi's favour? for me it's unequivocally sakamoto, i can't even consider the question rationally tbh, his post-debussian harmonic sensibility appeals to me on such a deeply visceral level

also his capacity for "rigorous" (lol) experimentation outside the formal strictures of conventional pop music, especially in the latter part of his career, for me sets him apart from the other two (who i also love ofc but for different reasons)

this is probably kind of a boring convo actually now that i think about it haha