![]() ![]() Along with “1000 Knives,” two other songs are credited to Sakamoto: The meta-referential vocoder jam “Music Plans” and a remix of another solo track, “Happy End,” which feels like a progenitor of the ambient techno that would emerge in the following decade from artists like Carl Craig or the Orb. His contributions to the final tracklist are nonetheless striking. Sakamoto was thus absent for much of the BGM sessions, leaving the bulk of the songwriting to Hosono and Takahashi. The working relationship between Hosono and Sakamoto had deteriorated to the point where the two men could barely stand to be in the studio at the same time. The glories of its use in the hip-hop and dance music of decades to come-relentless mechanical hi-hats, claps crisp enough to cut through any mix-are on full display on Takahashi’s “Camouflage” and Sakamoto’s searing, mechanical cover of his own “1000 Knives.”īut no amount of expensive gear could alleviate YMO’s interpersonal strain. The high price tag of the 808 upon its release in 1980 (almost $4,000 in 2021 dollars) made it prohibitively expensive for most, but not for YMO. Alongside Sakamoto’s debut, BGM was one of the first albums to feature the Roland TR-808 drum machine. These songs and their sounds are intrinsically tied to the machines used to craft them. (Over three decades later, Aphex Twin would pull the same move on Syro.) Before a listener slipped the vinyl out of its sleeve, they could look through the music’s discrete components in molecular detail: YMO accounted for every Moog, electronic drum, and effects processor, as if to suggest their own technical virtuosity as the standard against which future generations would compete. dollars and adjust for inflation, that’s a staggering $730,106.93-and that’s just for the gear. According to the itemized receipt printed on its back cover, BGM cost ¥51,250,000 to make. The enormous success of the 1979 Japan-only release of Solid State Survivor meant that YMO’s label, Alfa, was willing to shell out big bucks for the follow-up. Barakan had never worked as a lyricist before, but that didn’t matter much he was quickly hired by Sakamoto’s management in an admin role, one that covered all matters involving English, including songwriting. Seeking more control over their next endeavor, Hosono and Takahashi found a new lyrical collaborator on their bandmate’s solo album: The sole vocal track from Sakamoto’s 1980 record B-2 Unit, “Thatness and Thereness,” featured translation help from one Peter Barakan, an Englishman with a job in Japanese broadcasting. Though Hosono had stuck to Japanese-language lyrics in Happy End, YMO recorded in English with assistance from a translator. YMO was planned as an electronics band from the beginning because that was the sound we were all looking for…. But when Hosono spoke to the Los Angeles Times that year, he portended a shift to come: “We don’t see ourselves as a dance band. Takahashi agrees after some initial hesitation, Sakamoto does, too.īy the end of 1980, with three albums under their belts, YMO were indisputably the most successful pop band in Japan-big enough to tour the world and then come home to pack out the Budokan. He proposes the new band as a “stepping stone” to greater heights in each of their solo careers. ![]() That same year, Hosono asks Takahashi and Sakamoto if they want to start a new project together. The jazzy exotica masterwork Paraiso, credited to Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band, is released in 1978. This group includes a friend from college named Yukihiro Takahashi, as well as an up-and-coming arranger named Ryuichi Sakamoto. ![]() This is the story of YMO’s formation in the late 1970s, in brief: Hosono, already a musical force in Japan after leading the influential rock group Happy End, assembles a crew of session players for his next solo album. ![]()
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