Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Yellow Magic Orchestra -- Chaos Panic(ケイオス・パニック)

 

In a nutshell, Yellow Magic Orchestra began by filtering its wonderful technopop through genres such as surf rock, exotica and even 1940s adventure soundtracks during its early years in the late 1970s before they decided to take a turn into something harder on the techno part. But then with their May 1983 7th album "Uwaki na Bokura"(浮気なぼくら...Naughty Boys), for Haruomi Hosono(細野晴臣), Ryuichi Sakamoto(坂本龍一)and Yukihiro Takahashi(高橋幸宏), perhaps the pendulum swung again into something that emphasized the pop side. Maybe the biggest example of that was the track and single "Kimi ni Mune Kyun"(君に、胸キュン).

One interesting thing is that "Uwaki na Bokura" had a sequel of sorts in the form of an instrumental remix album "Uwaki na Bokura (Instrumental)" that was released later in the year in July. There is one track that has caught my ear, "Chaos Panic". Composed by Hosono, it's a song that is so sweet that I think it could have been made for a kids' variety show, despite the title. Those cascades of synthesizers and emulators could be imitating the children jumping for joy all about in the water park.

However, the first time that I heard this was through the vocalized version which made up the B-side to the single "Kimi ni Mune Kyun". Peter Barakan and Hosono provided the mix of English and Japanese lyrics for singer Takahashi, and it sounds like half of those musical machines were excised to make room for the vocals. Listening to this version, I couldn't help but get some of those Howard Jones vibes for the entire song whereas the late musician and singer Hiroshi Sato(佐藤博) himself sounded like Jones. Apparently, according to the title for the above video, Takahashi's vocal version has yet to be placed on any original album.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.