Yellow Magic Orchestra - s/t

Name: Yellow Magic Orchestra
Album: s/t
Year: 1979
Style: Chip Music, Electronic Pop, Techno
Similar Bands: Hot Butter, Chromolodeon, The Advantage, Ghostwriters, Bruce Haack, Cornelius, Kraftwerk
"One-Word" Review: Atari Disco
Based Out Of: Tokyo Japan
Label: Horizon, A&M, ALFA Records

 Cover, Record

Back, Record

Yellow Magic Orchestra (1979)

1. Computer Game "Theme from the Circus" 6:38
2. Firecracker 0:02
3. Simoon 6:28
4. Cosmic Surfin' 4:27
5. Computer Game "Theme From Invader" 1:00 /
6. Yellow Magic (Tong Poo) 6:20
7. La Femme Chinoise 6:05
8. Bridge Over Troubled Music 1:00
9. Mad Pierrot 4:22

Album Rating (1-10): 8.0

Members & Other Bands:

• Harry Hosono - Producer
• Kunihiko Murai - Executive Producer
• Tommy Li Puma - Supervisor
• Ryuichu Sakamoto - Keys, Electronics, Percussion, Orchestration, Happy End, others)
• Yukihiro Takahashi - Drums, Percussion, Electronics, Vox (Sadistic Mika Band, others)
• Haruomi Hosono - Bass, Electronics, Keys, Arrangements (Happy End, Yosui Inoue, Osamu Kitajima many  more)
• Hideki Matstake - Micro Computer Programmer (Isao Tomita, Akhihabara Electric Circus, Beat Musik, NML: No More Landmine, Oriental mechanic Band, Purple Project)
• Shunichi Hashimoto - Vox (Izumi Kobayashi)
• Masayoshi Takanaka - Electric Guitar (Bacco, Brush!?, Flied Egg, Sadistic Mika Band, Sadistics)
• Tomoko Nunoi - Sexy Vox
• Nori Yoshizawa - Engineer
• Atsushi Saito - Engineer
• Al Schmidt - Mixing
• Mike Reese - Mastering
• Shunsuke Miyazumi - Recording Coordinator
• Roland Young - Art Direction
• Amy Nagasawa - Design
• Chuck Beeson - Design
• Lou Beach - Cover Art
• Masayoshi Sukita - Back Cover

Unknown-ness: At the time of buying this record, i had not heard of them. The image looks like it is going to be Asian computer sci-fi: with the wires pouring out of the sunglasses-laden Geisha's head. From a PC standpoint, the name seems to be a little racist, amplified by the yellow highlighted suits on the back of the record. But what do I know?

Album Review: So YMO is one of the first bands to include the electronic noised from what sound like Atari games into modern music, which leans disco for the time. Today, it's referred to chip music: folks that include 8 bit sound into their compositions. Their pioneering expands beyond that into J-Pop, Electro-Pop, SynthWave and techno. Their name is apparently satire of Japan's obsession with Black magic in the late 70's. The idea was to fuse oriental exotica with modern electronics. A section of Simoon sounds a lot like Ween's Mexican instrumental Fiesta.

Stand Out Track: Computer Game "Theme from the Circus", Firecracker

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