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

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

god "Cue" makes me miss a certain friend of mine. we used to listen to this all the time and when we played poker and we needed a queen we'd always sing "give me a Q" in our wobbliest YT voice. it was a joke that obviously only the two of us found funny which confused everyone else at the table. he's still alive by the way he just got kind of weird and religious

yeah I'm listening again and I think it kind of tricks my brain into thinking the beat is in a different place in each loop in the same way those M.C. Escher paintings make you feel like every staircase goes upward

Give meeee a Q
I think I neaaaaaarly found you

btw something very brilliant about this album is how both sides begin with more or less "normal" pop songs after which the music begins to get weird in ways that are first subtle and then very obvious.

and maybe I'm imagining things but I think there are parallels between the two sides. A1 is "Ballet" which in the bridge features a French phrase that translates to:

"I am tired of the same old chaos/I am sick/There should be an exit in this cul-de-sac."

and of course B1 is "Cue" and you know what the bridge is there.

then A4 is what sounds like a Hosono track but is actually Sakamoto. which is balanced by B4 which sounds like a dramatic Sakamoto composition but is actually Hosono. the clue is the fact that the one on Side A is called "Happy End"

not to mention the fact that the track lengths are identical from one side to the other

Listening to "Cue" right now, oddly enough.