"BGM" by the Yellow Magic Orchestra is the greatest electronic pop album ever.

I'd like to think that W David Marx would be a good candidate, his book 'Ametora' is fascinating and his music blog writings were always pretty great.

http://neojaponisme.com/category/music-3/

Japanese pop's ambivalent relationship to the West post-WWII, which seems pretty obviously key to what YMO was

Can you elaborate on this point?

Maybe calling it "key" or speaking of "the West" here is imprecise, but something of the sort was certainly part of the group's conceptual foundation. Calling themselves Yellow Magic Orchestra ironically incorporates Western racism into the name of the group. They do giddily ironic covers of "oriental" easy listening exotica on synthesizers. Their techno-futurism conjures Japan's newfound position as a producer of premier appliances and automobiles such that the country is admired but feared and loathed as a source of economic threat and potential decline in US hegemony. Some of this is gestured at pretty clearly in the English-language skits on X∞Multiplies. Mind you, I don't perceive this theme so much after that point — someone who knows the history/Japanese would be better equipped to address the question. I'd like to read that book too!

here's one cool thing I just discovered - you know that bit on "Ballet" where the French woman (same one from "La Femme Chinoise"??) has that speaking bit? well, apparently this is what she's saying:

Je suis fatiguée du même vieux chaos
J'en suis malade
Il devrait y avoir une sortie à ce cul-de-sac

which is the same as the bridge from "Cue"

I’m sick and tired of the same old chaos
there must be a way out of this cul-de-sac.

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/yellow-magic-orchestra-bgm/

pretty nice write up, hope this encourages a few more people to check it out

Enjoyed that, interesting to see that the writer quotes from a Peter Barakan interview I did a few years back, kinda emblematic of the paucity of information on the group in English, frustrating given their stature, collectively and otherwise.

I never knew Sakamoto sat out for a big part of the album’s writing process!

Happy 40th!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1373528906315278&set=gm.4276693085709147

Listened to YMO a lot last week and I think "Technodelic" is my favourite. "BGM" second. I'm not really a big fan of the first two albums, tbh.

I kinda feel that a lot of the first two records comes alive in a concert setting.

their first one is my least listened ymo I think. I listened to SSS about a trillion times while playing Super Nintendo (in college, as a burnout)

I've been on a YMO kick recently (again) and was thinking about how I'd rank their albums. I think it would be something like this.

Naughty Boys
Solid State Survivor
BGM
Service (this jumped up my list recently, especially as I discovered the European version on vinyl which doesn't feature the skits)
Technodelic
Yellow Magic Orchestra
Multiplies

I still haven't heard the reunion album.

My latest discovery is how great the Naughty Boys instrumentals are. Such joyful music.

I really like "Multiples"!

Oh I do really like it too. They're a rare band where I kind of love all the albums I've heard by them. That's just the one I play the least.

currently:

BGM
Technodelic
Solid State Survivor
Naughty Boys
Service
S/T

but any of those top 4 have been my favorite at some point

x00Multiplies is a hard one to rank. depends on which version. the american version has an unstoppable tracklist and is fun to listen to, but also has repeats from other releases

I'd probably rank 'em like this:

BGM
Naughty Boys
Technodelic
s/t
Solid State Survivor
Service
Xoo Multiplies
Technodon

I know BGM is my favorite - I happen to agree with the thread title, but #2-5 are pretty interchangeable, they're all more or less perfect albums in my book

I'm probably underrating Service - I also recently discovered the Euro version which has got me listening to it again. it's not as fun as Naughty Boys but the songs are remarkably sophisticated, particularly given that it was kind of a cash in to begin with.

Xoo Multiplies is a lot of fun (particularly the first side) - I feel kind of weird laughing at it (basically all the humor stems off Western perceptions of Japanese people, right?) but it's so bizarre and idiosyncratic that I can't help it. That said it's not really much of an album, it's basically just got 4 songs on it

Technodon is okay, but as the members themselves admitted they were all in sorta different places musically at that point so it's no secret why it didn't quite work out. It's got a handful of good tracks on it though. I think the two albums done under the Sketch Show name do the band a lot more justice but Sakamoto wasn't on those so I guess they don't count.

of course it's also neat that there are a bunch of solo albums released concurrently which generally feature all the YMO members anyway, and generally tend to be excellent - Hosono's Paraiso & Cochin Moon are amazing proto-YMO albums, Takahashi's Murdered by the Music is a great companion to Xoo Multiplies (but with a lot more actual songs, naturally), Sakamoto's Thousand Knives & B-2 Unit + Hosono's Philharmony are all fascinating experimental electronic LPs, Takahashi's Neuromantic & What, Me Worry? both feature very good technopop songwriting, and of course the album he did as The Beatniks with Keiichi Suzuki is mesmerizing and surprisingly weird, and then there's Hideki Matsutake's Logic....basically whatever facets of YMO you like, there are albums expanding on it

Yeah, I completely agree that the "extended universe" of YMO is a totally integral part of the discography - I think in part because YMO were less of a "band" (in the trad/romanticised sense) and more of a project that went through multiple evolutions anyway. I certainly don't think any of the members would have considered the continual cross-collaboration on non-YMO projects as being secondary or peripheral. When you look at their astoundingly productive 1981 alone (with BGM, Technodelic, Hidariude No Yume AND Neuromantic), I think all those albums are clearly part of the same body of work.

I tend to listen to the S/T and SSS the least - obviously they're chock-full of classics, but the exotica-pastiche-meets-Kraftwerk concept is pretty rigid and a good deal less interesting to me than when they're following their noses to the cutting edge a little more with BGM and Technodelic.

The Sketch Show / CHASM period culminates in the London/Gijon gigs in 2008 that sees a lot of HASYMO, Sketch Show, solo material and a couple of YMO tunes performed under the umbrella of... Yellow Magic Orchestra. So in a sense it's the same as how they've always gone about things.

Agreed and I think you could also add two Akiko Yano albums in there, Gohan Ga Dekitayo & Tadaiama. even though the songwriting is mostly hers I think the sound is very influenced by what YMO was doing at the time. of course she was sort of an honorary member of the group at the time.

Hidariude No Yume always felt separate from everything else somehow, I always thought of that album as Sakamoto trying to break free of YMO and start his own solo art-pop career with a bunch of high-profile collaborators. A bunch of well known musicians were trying to incorporate "worldly" influences into their work around then - Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, everything Adrian Belew touched - that album seems to fit more into that scene than anything YMO. And I think at this point Sakamoto felt like he was kind of done with YMO anyway.

"Venezia", from Hidariude no Yume, is one of my very favorite YMO universe songs, and the whole album is brilliant

the little bass fill at about 1:13 in is just perfect

lol the very mention of Venice in any context sticks that song in my head for an entire week

it irritates me that the recent 2xLP reissue used the extra space for instrumentals (the album's mostly instrumental anyway! who needs that??) instead of throwing on all the stuff from The Arrangement. as you probably know "War Head" is the most brilliant thing but it just remains this weird B-side

i was trying to make a chronological YMO-universe spotify playlist recently. I gave up out of laziness and also all the things that were grayed out. but i remember that the Arrangement was one of the biggest new-to-me discoveries out of the whole exercise

still true

i will bump this thread every month until it no longer is

at that point, i will let you know that you were correct before and keep bumping it

i'm not sure it's the #1 of all-time at the moment, but it's close enough, and i will elevate my love if and when i need to

why don't you tell me what #1 is then

I don't mean that in an aggressive way

lol

i'm not sure, it's not like there's one that immediately jumps out to me as an obvious candidate. but even among ymo and alumni there are a lot of contenders

i guess one obvious contender (one that would beat ymo in most non-ilm polls, and probably here too) is kraftwerk. i have trouble ever relegating computer world to anything but top 3 status

you know one thing I never realized was how much YT's concurrent solo albums reflected pretty much exactly where YMO was at

Murdered by the Music = Xoo Multiplies
Neuromantic & Exitentialism = BGM
What, Me Worry = Service

not just the same style, but some of the same synths & rhythms. I think some of the exact drum patterns on BGM show up on Neuromantic

maybe big science, on some days. does bjork's post or homogenic count as electronic pop?

xp and neuromantic is still my #1 contender for my fav over BGM! it's so fucking good

good question. i will listen to them again and get back to you

i mean, they gotta

i'm sure there's lots of stuff from the least 25 years that contends but you have to let that stuff marinate for generations

right I suppose the definition of "electronic pop" changes along with the technology itself. nobody was really making YMO/Kraftwerk style music when Bjork was doing her thing. that sound has come back somewhat recently but mostly as stuff like Perfume which is in a different spirit. the new Kate NV too, I was thinking that album would deserve a mention in a discussion like this but obviously you don't wanna limit yourself to just stuff like that. if Bjork counts I'd argue that something like Underworld or Denki Groove counts too and suddenly I'm off making dumb mental lists. that said BGM still comes out on top

https://reverb.com/news/the-gear-of-yellow-magic-orchestra

my favourite ymo album has always been naughty boys, the moment where they fully embrace making pop music

i may have been hyperbolic in my praise but this is still all-time for me, all killer no filler

absolutely classic

Rap Phenomena is kind of unbelievable isn't it? It sounds like a parody of electro hip-hop, but it was released in 1981. Before Flash, Run DMC, Planet Rock, or any of that. It was just like, Sugarhill and Kurtis Blow back then. It's like it's making fun of something which doesn't exist yet. Also the lyrics are fucking wild. I know people think it's a weak spot on this album but I kinda love it!

i've heard it called parody before but it's never struck me as such. it's a fantastic track, not weak at all.

as probably everyone who gets really into ymo feels, it's just utterly unbelievable that both bgm and technodelic came out in the same year. and they're so different, too.

just learned ryuichi has stage 4 cancer. my chest feels tight. i'm not ready to lose him.

even crazier considering that Yukihiro Takahashi also did Neuromantic (his best solo LP!) and the Beatniks first album with Keiichi Suzuki (also incredibly good!) the same year!! Sakamoto also released Left-Handed Dream that year, which feels like a totally separate thing from YMO. Hosono was incredibly proactive as a songwriter & producer in '81 as well. just a crazy amount of creativity in a short period, can't think of anything else that compares besides, I dunno, The Beatles

even crazier considering that Yukihiro Takahashi also did Neuromantic (his best solo LP!)

indeed, just bonkers. i know i've said it a million times, but i will never pass up the opportunity to say that Neuromantic is also, possibly, the greatest YMO-related release of them all. so good

i'm sorry to hear about sakamoto. I've been listening to his recent music a lot recently, particularly his "Playing the Piano 12122020" release, which is what it sounds like. I remember when that came out, several months into the pandemic, how bleak the world felt, and what a quiet gift that his music was. It still resonates with me, the melancholy of that time is still there (in the world, in his music).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRwNKAGp2eY

wow, that's the last YMO song I thought I'd see a cover of. looks like they have a bunch of YMO covers, in fact it seems to be all they do :)

been thinking a lot about this and the thread title is still accurate

RELEASE THE YMO BIO

listen to the Music Plans beat for a minute, like just focus on nothing but that. it's wild. I wonder if all those loops are out of sync because somehow it sounds like it never repeats.

tbh, i hear the drum loop. but *puts on shades* i play the drums so. definitely an odd one in that the snare/claps are on the 1 of each measure rather than the usual 2 and 4