Yellow Magic Orchestra

Did You Know?

• The band's name was originally 'Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band' as a satire of America's idyllic perception of Pacific and Hawaiian music.
• Their song 'Behind the Mask' was first produced in 1978 for a Seiko quartz wristwatch commercial before becoming an international hit.
• Michael Jackson intended to include a revised version of 'Behind the Mask' on his album Thriller, but it was removed due to legal issues with YMO's management.
• In 1980, YMO's albums Solid State Survivor and X∞Multiplies held the top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks, a feat no other Japanese band has achieved.
• The single 'Computer Game' sold 400,000 copies in the United States and reached No. 17 in the UK Chart.

History

Before Yellow Magic Orchestra came together, Ryuichi Sakamoto was already deep into electronic music experiments at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, which he joined in 1970, working with synthesizers like the Buchla, Moog, and ARP. Haruomi Hosono, who would lead the group, had been using an Ace Tone rhythm machine since the early 1970s. After his band Happy End split in 1972, Hosono contributed to several early electronic rock albums, including Yōsui Inoue’s folk pop rock record Kōri no Sekai from 1973 and Osamu Kitajima’s progressive psychedelic rock album Benzaiten from 1974. Both used synthesizers, electric guitars, and electric bass, with the latter also featuring electronic drums and rhythm machines. Around the same time, Hideki Matsutake—later called the band’s fourth member—worked as an assistant to the internationally known electronic musician Isao Tomita. Many of the techniques and methods Tomita and Matsutake developed in the early 1970s would later show up in Yellow Magic Orchestra’s work.

Sakamoto first played with Hosono as part of his live band in 1976. In 1977, after the Sadistic Mika Band broke up, Yukihiro Takahashi asked Sakamoto to produce his debut solo recording. Hosono then invited both Sakamoto and Takahashi to work on his album Paraiso, which included electronic songs made with various gear. The group was called Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band as a satirical take on America’s idealized view of Pacific and Hawaiian music. They started recording Paraiso in late 1977, and it came out in 1978. The three musicians also worked together on the 1978 album Pacific, which featured an early version of the track Cosmic Surfin.

In early 1978, Hosono and Sakamoto teamed up with Matsutake for Hosono’s experimental electro-exotica fusion album Cochin Moon, which blended electronic music with Indian sounds, including an early synth raga song called Hum Ghar Sajan. That same year, Sakamoto released his own solo album, The Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, where he explored a similar mix of electronic and traditional Japanese music. Hosono played on the song Thousand Knives. The album was also notable for its early use of the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer music sequencer, with Matsutake handling the music programming.

Musical style and development

While other electronic musicians in Düsseldorf and later Detroit were crafting cold, dystopian soundscapes with synthesizers, Yellow Magic Orchestra took a different path, making electronic music feel joyful and freeing. Ryuichi Sakamoto said the group was fed up with Japanese artists copying Western and American styles, so they set out to create something distinctly Japanese. Sakamoto first encountered Kraftwerk in the mid-1970s and shared their music with his bandmates. They admired Kraftwerk’s highly structured, formal sound but had no interest in mimicking its German character. Sakamoto called Kraftwerk’s work theoretical, focused, simple, minimal, and strong. In response, YMO built a less minimal electronic pop, using synthesizer lines in more varied ways, adding fun and breezy textures, and putting melody front and center—a clear contrast to Kraftwerk’s stiff robot pop.

YMO pulled from a much broader set of influences than Kraftwerk ever did. These included Japanese electronic music from Isao Tomita, traditional Japanese music, experimental Chinese music from the Cultural Revolution era, Indian music by Ravi Shankar and Bollywood, arcade game samples, American rap, exotica, Caribbean ska, Giorgio Moroder’s disco, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, classical music, animal sounds, and noise. Sakamoto believed there should be no boundary between music and noise. Their sampling technique anticipated the modern method of cutting up sound fragments and looping them with computers. Their 1978 track “Computer Game / Firecracker” sampled Martin Denny’s 1959 exotica melody “Firecracker” alongside sounds from the arcade games Space Invaders and Circus. The Vinyl District magazine noted that YMO’s 1981 album Technodelic was the first to rely mostly on samples and loops. Critics have also remarked on how quickly the band’s sound evolved. SF Weekly observed that YMO moved from zany exotica-disco spoofs and simple bleeps and blips in the 1970s to refined, sensuous musique concrète on their 1983 albums Naughty Boys and Service.

Legacy

Yellow Magic Orchestra have been called the original cyberpunks, with their earliest output labeled proto-techno. By the 1990s, they were often recognized as pioneers of ambient house music. They made popular a live performance style that avoided human movement, relying instead on electronics like rhythm boxes and samplers. Their influence reached the New Romantic movement, shaping British acts such as Duran Duran and Japan. Japan’s drummer Steve Jansen was influenced by YMO drummer Takahashi, while lead singer David Sylvian was influenced by Ryuichi Sakamoto, who later worked with Sylvian. The 1983 track “Kimi ni Mune Kyun” has been covered multiple times, including by The Human League in 1993 (as “YMO Versus The Human League”) and by Asako Toki in 2006. In 2009, a cover of that song served as the ending theme for the anime Maria Holic, performed by the voice actresses of its main characters. In 2015, the anime Sound! Euphonium featured the YMO song “Rydeen” played by a high school orchestra in its fifth episode. Dragon Ball Z paid tribute with “Solid State Scouter” as the theme for the 1990 TV special Bardock – The Father of Goku. The band is also referenced in the Cartoon Network series Infinity Train. On HMV Japan’s list of the top 100 Japanese musicians of all time, YMO ranked second, behind only the pop-rock group Southern All Stars, who are largely unknown outside Japan. In 2006, Senor Coconut released the tribute album Yellow Fever! YMO were pioneers of synthpop, a genre that arose in the early 1980s. In 1993, Johnny Black of Hi-Fi News called them the most adventurous and influential electro-techno-dance technicians the world has produced, arguing that without them and Kraftwerk, today’s music would still sound like yesterday’s. In 2001, Jason Ankeny of the Allmusic Guide to Electronica described YMO as a seminal influence on contemporary electronic music, hugely popular at home and abroad, and placed them second only to Kraftwerk as innovators of today’s electronic culture.

Members

Haruomi Hosono played bass, keyboards, and vocals. Yukihiro Takahashi handled lead vocals, drums, percussion, and occasional keyboards. Ryuichi Sakamoto played keyboards, synthesizers, and vocals. Hideki Matsutake contributed synthesizers, sound programming, and sequencers from 1978 to 1982. Kazumi Watanabe played guitar on early tours, though his guitar tracks were completely muted on the live album Public Pressure due to label disputes. Akiko Yano played keyboards and provided backing vocals from 1979 to 1980, acting as an interpreter for foreign media.