Yukihiro Takahashi -- Drip Dry Eyes

Was happy to find Yukihiro Takahashi's (高橋幸宏) "Neuromantic" album in my mailbox today. Thank you, Amazon.jp, for that free shipping deal. This one has been loitering in my "to buy" list for way too long, so to celebrate the event I decided to write about one of the signature tracks from it. So, everyone knows that the guys from YMO had prolific careers outside of the group and still continue to produce music to this day. From the three of them, Takahashi's output has struck the chord with me the most because it has this nice balance between sophistication and emotional sweetness -- something that one of the Youtubers noted in the comments for this video. It just sways you by the hand on that imaginary marble floor. Can't get enough of those delicately textured drums and synths. It's a synthpop masterpiece, in my opinion. It also features a nice saxophone line, courtesy of Andy Mackay from Roxy Music.

"Neuromantic" was released in May 1981, between YMO's "BGM" and "Technodelic". Though a solo album, both Haruomi Hosono (細野晴臣) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一) have participated in the production and composed a couple of the tracks, and YMO's regular session musician Kenji Omura (大村憲司) also makes an appearance there including this track. This one reminds me a lot of "Ballet" from "BGM", which (surprise, surprise) also happens to be composed by Takahashi. It could also pass as a Roxy Music number thanks to that smooth melody and arrangement and, of course, Mackay's presence. The video above is simple, stunning and a little weird at times. Those guys (and a girl?) in tailcoats get me every time. Hey, I spot Hosono there.

As for that album title, it's a pun on the music genre New Romanticism (popular during the early-80's) as well the term "neurosis". According to the booklet of my edition of the album, it also inspired the title of William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer".