Haruomi Hosono

Haruomi Hosono at home just vibing pic.twitter.com/jCalV6NveH

— NTS Radio (@NTSlive) March 25, 2020

O.M.G. <3333

(it suuuuucks that in this day and age a thread bump like this made me think "oh no, plz no corona")

haha, what a prince

I love that clip so much, it's been pinging around the net for a while, when he does the taiso knee raises it cracks me up.

No end to my love for him. He's the embodiment of people who figured out how to live imo.

yesssss

he leads by example

Nice!

Amazing!

over the last 2 months I have listened to every single Haruomi Hosono album. his catalogue is all over the place and it's not all great but the dude really is on a completely different planet. he has this strange rhythmic sense that you can pick out right away.

any new finds from your listening spree?

frogbs, would totally be into a post about your perspective on HH's catalogue.

^^ Seconded!

it's good!

*reviews post*

it checks out! :D

obviously I got a lot of scattered thoughts about the man's work, I think he's fairly unique in the way he'll completely latch onto one style for 4-5 years and then just never do anything like it again. maybe Bowie did this, but his catalogue is way more linear than Hosono's is. I break it down like this:

The Early Stuff - including as a member of Apryl Fool (maybe not worth listening to) and Happy End (which definitely is). his first solo album is fine and I am pretty sure one of the only things to come out of Japan in the early 70's that sounded quite like that, but I never found it all that interesting.

The Exotica Period - starting with Tropical Dandy, with each record getting weirder and more electronic up to Paraiso. I think his unique brand of humor starts to show itself here. These records aren't exactly meant to be taken seriously but they're fascinating. Paraiso as I've probably said before is one of my favorite albums ever. Obviously it was a launching point for YMO.

Cochin Moon - there's nothing like this album out there anywhere, even in Hosono's own catalogue. but you can hear his trademark rhythms start to show themselves. sometimes people point to this as a pre-YMO album but none of YMO's stuff really sounds like this (maybe "Hepatitis" could've landed on the self-titled).

The YMO period - from '79 to '83 everything he touches is gold. not just the YMO stuff (including "Gradated Gray" which is my alltime favorite YMO track) but also his solo and collaborative material. only one solo album but he wrote a boatland of stuff for other artists. you almost have to consider those three Miharu Koshi albums Hosono works as well, his fingerprints are all over them. part of the first two Jun Togawa albums too. lots of stuff on those YEN records comps, including a bunch I've probably never heard. Yukihiro Takahashi was also just killin' it during this period.

Non-Standard - for a few years he started releasing hip-hop/electrofunk records, mostly under the "F.O.E. (Friends of Earth)" name. S-F-X is a pretty decent album (particularly "Body Snatchers", which is wild) and the FOE stuff is entertaining, if not particularly great. his cover of Dr. John's "Right Place, Wrong Time" shows his ability to transform any tune into a weird Hosono thing.

Monad - this stuff overlaps with the Non-Standard material, including about half of the S-F-X record. the 5 albums he did in 1985 (Mercurial Dance, Pacific View, Nokto De La Galaskia Fervojo, The Endless Talking, and Coincidental Music) all form a set to my ears. you can include that weird ass "Watering a Flower" tape in there as well. while not all of this is great he really did tap into something ethereal and otherworldly here. I don't know if anyone else was able to make their synthesizers sound as evocative and strange as he did in that period. Some of the music on Endless Talking is downright freaky. That said it's the Nokto De La Galaskia Fervojo soundtrack that's my favorite, "La Gojo" & "La travida malgojo de Giovanni" are two of the prettiest pieces of music I've ever heard in my life

Omni Sight Seeing - I see this 1989 album as sort of a capper to all his 80's stuff, something that attempts to fit everything he'd done in the last few years into a single studio album. It's really incredible, easily one of his very best...unfortunately it's kind of the last real great Hosono solo LP. When I went through his entire catalogue this one stuck out as being the only Hosono album was wasn't really based on a particular theme. Unless you consider astral projection a theme.

The Techno 90's - somewhat based off "Laugh-Gas" from Omni Sight Seeing, Hosono did a handful of electronica records in the 90s, sorta similar to his Monad period. he's using more modern equipment and basing a lot of his stuff off Detroit techno & The Orb, so as a result these records don't quite sound as unique. Medicine Comp & Good Sport are both pretty good, NDE I like but it's missing a layer of melody. There's also an album he did with Bill Laswell which I don't remember much about

Various 90's collabs - including Swing Slow & the criminally unknown Love, Peace, & Trance album, which actually does justice to the cosmic meditative New Age genre that was weirdly popular then. both those albums are better than his actual solo LPs from this time.

Reconnecting with old friends - you could also count Swing Slow here, plus the 2000 Tin Pan album (which is pretty cool, it's half a 'new album' by Tin Pan Alley, half fleshing out old demos). the big thing here is Sketch Show/HASYMO, a partial YMO reunion with Takahashi. I like both those albums. Loophole in particular is special, though I suspect Takahashi was responsible for most of it. That Flying Saucer 1947 album probably fits in here too. His solo career is kind of defunct by this point, it wasn't until 2010 that he recorded under his own name again.

The folk covers of very old pop songs phase - from 2011 until now, I guess. Never connected a whole lot with this stuff even though it's quite pleasant. That said, Vu Ja De is very much worth seeking out, particularly the odds n ends on disc 2. Apparently the Fukushima disaster made him too depressed to record new music, so I see this stuff as being therapeutic in a sense. Of course by this point he's earned the right to do whatever he wants.

! :)

i still haven't given omni sight seeing a listen. at this point i'm kind of saving it for a rainy day because i expect i'll like it quite a bit.

the Swing Slow album is great. it's a little uneven but has a few great songs.

Cochin Moon is my favorite, though. i've been listening to quite a bit of earlier Kraftwerk in the wake of Florian's death, and there are a lot of similarities between Cochin Moon and Kraftwerk's early 70s music, especially on Hepatitis and Hum Ghar Sajan. there's a lovely warm playfulness that pulses through all of it, i love it

at the risk of sounding like a total snob I have the vinyl reissue (which is actually fairly cheap, considering) - that plus some big tower speakers and a little grass is the way to hear it

you mean for cochin moon? yeah, i'm keeping my eyes peeled for a reasonably priced copy to show up sometime, but in the meantime it sounds good on headphones and spotify, plus 420 forever obviously.

https://lightintheattic.net/artists/2475-haruomi-hosono

LP is now $18. which is very cheap for Hosono. I haven't been able to get anything else for under $40, outside of Hosono House which I'm not too interested in. there's a very cool 'making of' story in the sleeve.

whoa nice, thanks for the head's up! i will probably pick up Cochin Moon right now then. and yeah, hosono house is also down to $18 but it's not one of my faves

speaking as a techno loving degenerate the medicine comp is my favorite release of his. I don’t think the straighter beats and structures necessarily make it less unique, it’s still very much Hosono. it hits a propulsive hypnotic vibe that resonates with me a bit more than the rest of his catalog, much of which I also really enjoy (NDE is similarly propulsive and also amazing but does indeed focus more squarely on drums)

just finished listening to the LITA reissue, which arrived at my door this morning. :)

i love the interview they included! i'll excerpt a few parts of it here in a bit

ooh, I have Cochin Moon coming in the mail. excited.

https://www.nts.live/shows/haruomi-hosono

https://i.imgur.com/7Rq7TOz.gif

Living the dream.

Google Translate of a recent tweet:

6 solo works by Haruomi Hosono will be released on November 3rd on the record day!
"Vu Ja De" first analog release, "omni Sight Seeing" "MEDICINE COMPILATION" domestic first analog release Sparkles
The cassette book "Hana ni Sui" released in 1984 is a cassette, and "HoSoNoVa" and "Heavenly Music" are analog re-releases. Multiple musical notes
6 works will be released in the US Flag of United States

looks like I'll be dropping some cash on Nov 3

wait... is that this 1984 cassette? https://www.discogs.com/細野晴臣-花に水/release/7890029

phbbbt

https://www.discogs.com/細野晴臣-花に水/release/7890029

gah whatever. Watering A Flower, I mean. The shopping background music.

Hana = Flower so I assume it's got to be?

if it's a vinyl issue it's gonna sell like nuts, it's got just the right kind of online fame

yeah it'll probably sell out in 5 minutes or something. and then pop up on ebay and discogs on the same day for more $. sigh.

my trigger finger is ready

!!!!

can confirm sui means water

aaaaaaaaahh!!!!

apparently the Watering a Flower reissue is cassette only, kind of disappointing since I don't have a tape player but I guess that's its natural format

fully plan on getting Omni Sight Seeing & Medicine Comp at least. OSS has been a holy grail for a while, I missed the LTiA preorder and they sold out in like a day, now copies are ~$200 on discogs and eBay. fuck that. dunno about the others, Old Man Harry doing covers of WW2-era songs is not super appealing to me but I'll probably get Vu Ja De at least

I missed the LTiA preorder and they sold out in like a day, now copies are ~$200 on discogs and eBay

i accidentally ordered 2 and was kicking myself for ages so that makes up for it a bit.

its official...LTiA are handling Omni Sight Seeing and Medicine Comp

https://lightintheattic.net/releases/7091-omni-sight-seeing

They are pricey but LTiA stuff is very high quality & I am positive these will only go up in value. unless the vinyl market crashes, but we all know that's not going to happen ha ha ha

$100 for 2 LPs, jfc

honestly -- UUUGH

i get it. i'm happy for the people who can hear the difference. for the rest of us, fuck man

love OSS but $50, yeah no way

My CD copy sounds fine

It’s just like...don’t they want people to listen to and buy these Hosono records? Why are they doing this?

All I’m trying to do is give other people money to listen to their music, I don’t understand why they make that so difficult

CD copies are about that expensive too

and tbf Medicine Comp is a double

but yeah LTiA's pricing structure irritates me, a lot of new LPs are $20-22 but the stuff I want will randomly be way more. Cochin Moon was $22 but Paraiso was $45, idk why since the quality on both are similar. the YMO reissues (the 2x45 RPM ones with the pixelated covers) are $90 a pop. maybe this has something to do with the remastering...Paraiso does sound different from my MP3 copy in some noticeable ways, while CM sounds amazing to begin with

I believe LiTA is handling US distribution but these are produced and manufactured in Japan. A new single LP in Japan is priced at ¥3,700 or approximately ~$35 USD. So $50 for a new Japanese import LP, considering shipping, export costs, handling, etc. is not particularly exploitative.

$60 for Medecine Comp on 2 x vinyl will translate to around $100 to get it to the UK. :(

Probably much cheaper to buy direct from Japan.

xp

that makes sense, but it makes me wonder how did managed to keep costs under $25 for Cochin Moon, the recent Yoshimura Green reissue, and other similar Japanese reissues

it's fine, i'm just bummed because i'm a big fan of all this stuff, i want to hear it and support the effort, and i can't even though i'm a grown assed half-man with a job