And you can see it in the way in which we use tools. But most of us still have an animistic sense. "Japan used to be an animistic society before Shinto imperialism was established. "I think that's a Japanese thing," says Sakamoto.
In their hands, the synthesiser was a cuddly, slightly whimsical instrument. In the early 1970s, Hosono led an exotica band called Happy End, which explored country and western and Hawaiian music Takahashi played in a glam rock outfit called the Sadistic Mika Band, who'd toured the UK with Roxy Music (and even appeared on the Old Grey Whistle Test and Pebble Mill at One, where they were interviewed by a baffled Jan Leeming), while Sakamoto was a classically trained session musician.įurthermore, while their peers in Düsseldorf and Detroit were using synthesiser technology to create a bleak, dystopian vision of the future - a world of faceless robots and brutal post-industrial landscapes - the YMO saw technology as something joyous and liberating. However, unlike their peers in Sheffield or Basildon, these weren't untutored, one-fingered soloists, but experienced musicians. They have long been heralded as godfathers of techno, part of a pioneering wave of musicians who brought synthesiser technology into the charts.
#Perfino surname origin mod#
The three YMO members - grey-haired and astonishingly dapper - are sitting in the bar of their Pimlico hotel, and all of them seem to conform to stereotype: Hosono (61) is the amusingly grumpy, de facto band leader Takahashi (56) is the rakish design student, wearing an immaculately tailored mod suit and a pork-pie hat while Sakamoto (56) is the handsome, floppy-fringed intellectual, wearing sharp, modernist, designer threads. It's a few days before their historic reunion show at the Royal Festival Hall - their first UK date since 1980 - where they have been asked to play by Meltdown curators Massive Attack. "They looked like Greek or Roman philosophers," says Sakamoto. "You had these very serious-looking men with beards and long hair, having a symposium about our music while we were playing." "In Italy, the audience would start arguing during our concert," says Hosono. In Europe, however, the audience response was often rather more cerebral. "They would literally chase us down the street and rip our clothes to shreds." "We were very big," sighs Sakamoto, "that's why I hated it. Meanwhile, in Japan, they were bigger than the Beatles. Over the next three decades, their influence cropped up in odd areas: producer Todd Rundgren had a YMO album on the wall of his studio for inspiration Eric Clapton's unlikely cover version of YMO's Behind the Mask was a huge international hit while the arcade-game bleeps and oriental scales in their music went on to influence 21st-century electronica acts such as Dizzee Rascal and Kieran Hebden, who weren't even born when YMO were formed. Their singles Firecracker and Tighten Up were both big R&B hits in the US, while Computer Games became a top 20 UK hit, earning them the adoration of synth pop acts such as Ultravox, John Foxx, Gary Numan and Duran Duran.
Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, who sampled their music, was only half-joking when he said that Yellow Magic Orchestra invented hip-hop. Suddenly, it was the Oriental guys who were being asked to make the dance music, which defied every stereotype!"īetween 19, they went on to confound stereotypes. There were no white or Asian faces there. "It was quite intimidating," says keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto. "They were breakdancing and bodypopping," says the band's drummer and lead singer, Yukihiro Takahashi. "We performed our song Computer Games, and everyone went mad." "It was the turn of the crazy Japanese guys," laughs Haruomi "Harry" Hosono, YMO's bassist. Then veteran host Don Cornelius introduces three rather nerdy Japanese men called YMO - or Yellow Magic Orchestra. The crowd is dancing to the soul hits of the day - Stevie Wonder's Master Blaster, Kool & the Gang's Celebration, Donna Summer's The Wanderer - and singing along with the ballad Ooh Baby by Tower of Power crooner Lenny Williams. America's premier black music show, Soul Train, is being filmed in Hollywood.