Haruomi Hosono

Playing in London next month:

http://33-33.co/mode/

23.06
HARUOMI HOSONO + ACETONE
BARBICAN CENTRE
LONDON

Money's tight so I've been trying to talk myself out of buying these reissues. I decided to listen to the four albums in the reissue campaign I wasn't as familiar with (Cochin Moon is buy-on-sight for me and has been for years, no way I'm passing up a reissue). I haven't listened to Omni, Philharmony, or Paraiso since I discovered and downloaded them a few years ago, and have never heard Hosono House at all.

Paraiso holds up great, as do the great songs on Omni Sight Seeing (which justify the purchase of the album imo). But not sure what I ever saw in Philharmony. It's by no means a bad record, and is in some places actually quite good (I like "Luminescent / Hotaru" and "Sports Men"), but a lot of this just floats right by me. There are also a few obnoxious ones I could live without ever hearing again ("Platonic"), and stuff like "Birthday Party" and "In Limbo" just remind me why I don't listen to The Residents. That said, I'm a sucker for this stuff, so I know deep down I will probably buy 'em all. LITA always does such a great job on packaging. I don't care a lick about Lee Hazlewood, but I was actually tempted by how nice those reissues looked in the shop.

Am I the only one who really likes Pacific? Wonder if that will ever get a reissue.

i love Pacific

Omni Sight Seeing is wonderful. Prob my favorite of this trio of albums. I can do with just a little bit of HH's Nino Rota homages, though. I hope someone will reissue "The Tale Of Genji" and "Naga" soon!

key track on Philharmony for me is "LDK". such a catchy tune, plus the synth solo is just wild

if you haven't heard it, there's a duo called Kimonos whose cover of "Sportsmen" is absolutely perfect

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

I'm hoping all the Monads get a reissue. I have literally worn my copies out from over playing / over use in dj sets. Also hoping these aren't only being granted a US license for reissue as pre-order is not available outside US.

Also hoping these aren't only being granted a US license for reissue as pre-order is not available outside US.

Oh fuck you're right and I hadn't spotted that - Paraioso, Philharmony and Omni Sight Seeing are all saying "Not Available to Customers Outside U.S." - ughhhhhh.....

Cochin Moon and Hosono House are though:

https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4192-cochin-moon-uk-eu-version
https://lightintheattic.net/releases/4191-hosono-house-shipping-for-uk-eu-residents

Lol pic.twitter.com/qMAZ0uQqOj

— Sam 🧢 (@fuiud) March 26, 2018

One of life’s little surprises

that would suck to have been soooo close to collaborating on a legendary album, and the reason you didn't was diarrhea, plain and simple

London this eve, so excited for this.

Fantastic! Enjoy and report back, please :)

TROPICAL DANDY WHEN

got mixed up and thought it was tomorrow. only twigged a couple hours ago thanks to an fb alert, or else I’d have travelled up to the barbican tomorrow instead. but yes, excited!

I realise Acetone must have their fans who are probably just as excited but idg the running order, it's like going to see Joni Mitchell supporting Built To Spill or something.

holyyyy shiiiit!!

way too excited after that to watch acetone, i only lasted one song

full report, please.

okay so five piece band including upright bass player, haruomi on acoustic guitar. start off pretty loungey, not really what I was truly hoping for but it was very charming and nice. then they started swinging with some ‘boogie-oogie-oogie’ and it all started to get quite rock’n’roll and you realised just how good his band was. was getting super into it by that stage, just a really nice vibe. lounge cover of ‘radioactivity’! a great rock’n’roll version of ‘sportsmen’! and then at the end, hosono asks for the house lights to be switched on and he calls for his friend takahashi to join him from the audience. and then they start playing a rock’n’roll ‘absolute ego dance’ (correct me if I’m wrong there maresnest). and then halfway through, ryuichi wanders on stage and seizes partial control of the keyboards. absolutely start banging through the song, screech to a halt, crowd go fucking batshit, then off the go, no encore or anything and everyone’s just rubbing their eyes wondering wtf just happened

they all look in great shape btw, yukihiro was looking particularly suave in a suit and v dapper hat

wow, just wow! thanks.

Photo here (not my account)

Midway through a bit of YMO the man himself Ryuichi Sakamoto walks on stage to goose the keyboardist, crowd explodes. pic.twitter.com/DKm70CKFba

— JAM (@JAMXCORE) June 23, 2018

and then at the end, hosono asks for the house lights to be switched on and he calls for his friend takahashi to join him from the audience. and then they start playing a rock’n’roll ‘absolute ego dance’

wtf!? no! that's amazing!

and then halfway through, ryuichi wanders on stage and seizes partial control of the keyboards. absolutely start banging through the song, screech to a halt, crowd go fucking batshit, then off the go, no encore or anything and everyone’s just rubbing their eyes wondering wtf just happened

wtf?!?! no!! that's amazing!!

that must have been a dream, holy shit

so thrilling! I’m still a gibbering wreck

poor quality clip here:

YMO再々再?生！！！！！！！！ in London #YMO #yellowmagicorchestra #細野晴臣 #坂本龍一 #高橋幸宏 #barbicancentre #london #hosonoharuomi #ryuichsakamoto #yukihirotakahashi pic.twitter.com/EJxBNkZl8X

— Andrei Tarkovsky (@TarkovskyJP_bot) June 23, 2018

Fuuuuck I’m jealous

Everything NickB said basically, plus we got Keigo Oyamada on guitar for the last song, gotta admit it took me a few seconds to realise it was Absolute Ego Dance, I thought it was Cosmic Surfing at first.

The music was very much in the vein of the last two HH records, fifties rock n' roll, rockabilly feel, with his versions of Sports Men and Radioactivity, a great band indeed, young guys.

I think Light In The Attic saying in the blurb to the concert that he was going to be playing music from throughout his career was somewhat disingenuous, but it was great to see the man and of course, the last song was lush. Watching Yuki walk down the Barbican steps right towards me was a real giddy moment.

Yesterday I saw a pic taken from Instagram of the three of them allegedly in a London restaurant (Sakamoto played here a few days ago with Alvo Noto) so I was hoping that something was gonna go down.

One last thing, my mate's friend that we bumped into works in a record shop, he told us Oyamamda dropped in there and bought loads of Madness 7 inches :)

that's amazing!

finding it hsrd to comprehend how acetone managed to follow on from that!

Hosono: https://i.imgur.com/ydBgTfA.jpg

Couldn't believe it when he asked the house lights to come up, and Takahashi and Cornelius stood up from the audience and starting coming down the steps towards the stage.

That rockabilly / boogie-woogie version of Sportsmen really worked. Not sure if there any of clips on it online. The Kraftwerk cover too.

As others have said, it felt too soon for Acetone to be starting after just a 15 minute break or so. Everyone was very excited after that ending to Hosono. Only about 30 - 40% of the crowd came back in for Acetone unfortunately, and some more left after a song or too. The band commented on how quiet it was on stage. Their performance was great, it's a pity the running order meant the place was less than half full.

Hosono band was:

Haruomi Hosono (vocals, guitar)
Ren Takada (guitar, mandolin, banjo)
Wataru Iga (bass)
Daichi Ito (drums)
Takuji Nomura (keyboards, piano, accordian)

where I was sitting there were quite a few japanese people, including families with kids, and a lot of them didn’t stick around for acetone.

trying to remember some of the things that harry said: ‘I used to make techno music, but now...’ *launches into another boogie-woogie number*; the Kraftwerk cover was introduced by some words about 3/11, 2011, which was of course the date of the tohoku earthquake and tsunami

am immensely lucky to be seeing him again in Brighton tonight btw. headlining this time, but another ymo get together would be way too much to hope for

Maybe he'll bust out some older numbers given that he has a bigger window to play in.

from the running times it looks like he's on for two hours, so i guess it depends on how bad he needs to boogie-woogie-oogie

wow this is amazing!!

Just noticed Takahashi is in Brighton! Did you get a replay of Saturday Nick?

yes, takahashi was in the audience again last night but sadly he didn't join hosono on stage this time round. set was a similar mix of lounge/brazilian/jump blues/boogie woogie type stuff, think i enjoyed it even more this time round though - was nice to see that music being played in a much more intimate setting, i think it suited the scale of the music better. also it was a really lovely warm night by the seaside, made me think of how some of the older songs would have originally been taken round the world by boat, from one noisy port to another. hosono seemed to be enjoying himself despite some minor crackily guitar issues, was joking around saying stuff like 'i'm old... i'm boring...' *crowd make sounds of gentle protestation* '...leave me alone'. 'radio activity' cover was really great, done slowly with this eerie, creeping sense of unease, which got ratcheted up to slint-esque levels of tension towards the end. encore was a version of 'tokio rush' featuring two girls on vocals that apparently he'd only just met earlier that day - they did an amazing job but all the same it was no 'absolute ego dance'. a great night though!

here's the setlist btw:

From aya_bebop on Instagram pic.twitter.com/skgGVMjkDN

— callie magic orchestra (@konchugun) June 26, 2018

Amazing! Tokyo Rush too!

It's been really curious having these legendary old gentlemen, whom I admire so much, in our relative airspace for a few days, to me at least, they seem to exist in another plane the rest of the time. Seeing things like Takahashi wandering around London and Brighton via FB has been lovely.

indeed, a thrill to briefly exchange respiratory gases with them!

that 'house of blue lights' was fire btw, that's the one where the band took solos - a few bars of brilliant splashy fireworks from the drummer, the bass player forced to go deep when hosono pulled up a chair and sat and watched him work. good excuse to revisit this clip:

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

I love that clip, talk about someone who has figured out how to live.

kinda love how Keigo Oyamada has been palling around with these guys for over a decade now. that's one cool thing about Japan, it's such a small country geographically so all these people kinda know each other. I recognize some of those names upthread as having played with YT in a different group.

I've heard that there are some plans for YMO's 40th anniversary year, including perhaps a HH documentary. apparently some of the concertgoers were being interviewed outside the venue. couldn't buy that fast enough.

The Barbican gig was being filmed, very discreetly but there were notices saying so.

Happy 71st Birthday!

Lookit!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QtNpj_n82o

Haha that's even shonkier than I remember it

Not sure which is the best thread to post this on as there's a few YMO ones to choose from. Anyway, I just listened to Parallelisme by Miharu Koshi for the first time and I am blown away. One of the best albums I've heard with a connection to the YMO family. My heart is breaking checking the prices for it on Discogs.

From time to time copies of the Dutch version surface at a less painful price. It's an incredible album; some of the synth sounds still sound like they come from the future. IMO, one of thee greatest techno pop albums of all time. "Tutu" is eternal too.

I'll keep an eye out for it. I bought Tutu a long time ago and really enjoyed it, but weirdly I never listened to any of her other albums until a few days ago.