and last but certainly not least…
In addition to Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards) have made a lot of really interesting music and influenced whole movements of Japanese pop music.
One of my favorites is drummer Takahashi’s 1981 solo album, Neuromantic. Sci Fi synth pop at its eeriest, with Takahashi’s out-of-body vocals hovering over the whole like a slightly ugly angel on your shoulder.
Takahashi and Hosono reunited in the late 90’s to form the electronic duo SKETCH SHOW. Their minimalist glitchy pop blends robotic discipline with human emotion in a truly elegant way. The music is patient and mature, yet infused with their great sense of humor and absurdity. The blend of acoustic and electronic sounds influenced many artists such as Towa Tei, Cornelius, Takako Minekawa, and many others from the Shibuya Kei movement as well as western artists like Psapp, Tunng, and the Books.
This guy did an amazing job of cutting together different youtube clips to make new songs. Very very cool.
I saw this on everyone’s favorite circuit bending blog get lofi
This song is not great, but it sure is good. More in the satirical vein of “welfare mothers” or “piece of crap”.
But you gotta love Neil’s ability to let his ideas and opinions flow free, responding reflexively to the world around him, quickly and naturally.
I especially enjoy his air guitar during the solo.
Neil Young - Fork In The Road
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I’ve watched this entire half hour infomercial several times through. It is so damn amazing. Mr. T has hit a new career high point. I pity the fool who doesn’t find this hilarious.
My lovely wife Sarah got me this great gizmo for my birthday. It’s a pocket sized synth. It has 100 preset sounds (watch out for those techno shades) including thereminesque leads, deep sub bass, strange sound effects, drum samples and patterns.
Simply dial up the key and scale, and run your finger around the pad to produce shockingly great sounding arpeggios and melodies. It also can loop what you’re playing, so plug in your headphones and construct miniatures on the go.
I hooked it up to our stereo, and now our living room has become a tranced out techno club. The dogs are all waving glow sticks in the air, and baby Emmett just tossed me an invisible energy ball.
Here are a few quick samples, mostly recorded straight with little or no editing….
http://bacolicio.us/http://www.mobiusband.com
http://bacolicio.us/http://www.pitchforkmedia.com
http://bacolicio.us/http://www.google.com
and so on….
Technopop pioneers of Japan. Their quirky music embraced the extremely modern aesthetic of early ATARI. A strange amalgam of disco, techno, pop, japanese, and romantic music. Similar to Kraftwerk in robotic vibe and pop point of view (not to mention tasty vocoder), but where as Kraftwerk repeat minimal melodies until they shift appearance, YMO layer electronic and sonic filigree atop their grooves with typical overdone Japanese cheesiness.
By the way, their keyboard player is Ryūichi Sakamoto, who has collaborated with a number of western artists, including with David Byrne on the excellent soundtrack to “The Last Emperor”.
The videos are truly cutting edge for 80’s computer animation ala TRON. If I had my way, this is what the video for “Loving Sounds of Static” would have looked like.
The real song here, “Firecracker” doesn’t come in till almost 2 minutes. Then it zooms around like a Saturday night birthday party at the old roller skating rink.
Their 1981 album, “Technodelic” is my favorite due to its more restrained sound. Spare, spooky, and infectious; like a Japanese counter point to OMD’s “Dazzle Ships” or even a bit reminiscent of “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”. Check this album out.
I took a busted old tube screamer and rehoused it in this cigar box. I added a few pots and a photo-theremin. Now it produces a variety of distortin’, ring modulatin’, filterin’, tone-oscillatin’, and sound crunchin’. It also acts as a rich, squealing stand alone synth box. The photo theremin controls the pitch depending on the brightness of the light.
Here it is running over an SK-1:
And here it is emitting sound on its own (with some Fab Echo D-Lay and a little SK-1 background):