Yellow Magic Orchestra Yellow Magic Orchestra (abbreviated to YMO) was a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals, occasional keyboards) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, ...

's first

live album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track or cassette), or digital. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th centur ...

, released on February 21, 1980. It was their second number-one album in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, setting a record of 250,000 copies sold within two weeks of release. It was recorded during three dates of the group's first tour of Europe and the US. The group toured as a six-piece, but guitarist

Kazumi Watanabe is a Japanese guitarist. Other guitarists such as Luke Takamura and Sugizo have cited him as an influence. Career Watanabe learned guitar at the age of 12 from Sadanori Nakamure at the Yamaha Music School in Tokyo. He released his first album ...

was mixed-out and replaced with more keyboards due to contractual matters between record labels. Un-dubbed recordings from this tour were later released on the album ''

Faker Holic ''Faker Holic: YMO World Tour Live'' is a live album by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The material on this live album was recorded during various concerts in 1979, and was released as a double CD in 1991. Several songs appeared on the 1980 live album ' ...

''. Most of

Yukihiro Takahashi was a Japanese musician, singer, record producer, fashion designer, and actor, who was best known internationally as the drummer, lead vocalist, & 2nd keyboardist of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, as the former drummer of the Sadistic Mika Band, ...

's vocals were also replaced with those re-recorded afterward in studio. These were not restored on ''Faker Holic''. The first half of the album was recorded live at The Venue in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. "Cosmic Surfin'" was recorded at The Greek Theatre in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

while the second side was recorded at The Bottom Line in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

by John Venable using the 2nd Generation Record Plant Remote Truck.

Track listing

Personnel

Yellow Magic Orchestra –

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orchestr ...

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

mixing engineer A mixing engineer (or simply mix engineer) is responsible for combining ("mixing") different sonic elements of an auditory piece into a complete rendition (also known as "final mix" or "mixdown"), whether in music, film, or any other content of a ...

producers Producer(s), The Producer(s), or co-producer(s) may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *Producer, a stakeholder of economic production * Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes t ...

Haruomi Hosono , sometimes credited as Harry Hosono, is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is considered to be one of the most influential musicians in Japanese pop music history, credited with shaping the sound of Japanese pop f ...

–

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

synth bass Keyboard bass (shortened to keybass and sometimes referred as a synth bass) is the use of a smaller, low-pitched keyboard with fewer notes than a regular keyboard or pedal keyboard to substitute for the deep notes of a bass guitar or double bass ...

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Music of Japan, Japanese musician, composer, keyboardist, record producer, singer and actor. He pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the Synthesizer, synth-based band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his ...

– keyboards,

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

drum machine A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A d ...

–

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

electronic drums Electronic drums are a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sound ...

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

Hideki Matsutake Hideki Matsutake (born August 12, 1951 in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese composer, arranger, and computer programmer. He is known for his pioneering work in electronic music and particularly music programming, as the assist ...

–

modular synthesizer Modular synthesizers are synthesizers composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, ...

s, sequencers,

programming Program (American English; also Commonwealth English in terms of computer programming and related activities) or programme (Commonwealth English in all other meanings), programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program m ...

Guest musicians *

Akiko Yano is a Japanese pop and jazz musician and singer born in Tokyo and raised in Aomori and later began her singing career in the mid-1970s. She has been called "one of the major musical talents of the Japanese popular music world", and her vocals an ...

– keyboards,

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...

*Tomoko Nunoi (uncredited) – French narration/sexy voice (sampled) on "La femme chinoise" Staff * Kunihiko Murai and Shōrō Kawazoe – executive producers *Norio Yoshizawa –

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

and mixing engineer *Mitsuo Koike – recording engineer * Masayoshi Sukita –

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

* Heikichi Harata (WXY, Inc.) – artwork *Lou Beach (uncredited) – logo type

Charts

References

{{Authority control 1980 live albums 1980 in Japanese music Albums recorded at the Bottom Line Yellow Magic Orchestra albums Alfa Records live albums Albums recorded at Nakano Sun Plaza

Track listing

Personnel

Charts

See also

References