This is a thread for the man himself, HARUOMI HOSONO! The bassist for Yellow Magic Orchestra, and a brilliant solo artist in his own right.
Hosono started with a bunch of folk and exotica albums. Chill out with his early folky album Hosono House:
or go wild with:
Paraiso is the last of his “exotica trilogy” of albums from the 70’s and it is weird as all hell! Hosono absorbed the US’s exotica craze of the 50’s and 60’s, where imaginative white men dreamed of relaxing on the shores of far off lands… including Japan! Hosono digested all this stuff and regurgitated a new jumbled up, synthesizer-laden version of it from the perspective of a Japanese man in 1978.
Now this is the stuff that I really love, Hosono’s innovative electronic and synthpop albums.
Philharmony is my favorite Hosono album. It follows a structure quite similar to Brian Eno’s Another Green World: a few silly but beautiful pop songs are floating suspended in shorter ambient experimental pieces. The stupendous album cover is a perfect representation of the music; this is the sound of the wandering daydreams of a salaryman gazing out the window of the morning train to work.
Philharmony contains perhaps the catchiest song Hosono ever wrote, Sports Men:
My other favorite synthpop album of Hosono’s is Omni Sight Seeing:
This album is all over the place in style. It’s Hosono’s take on “world” music from more cultures than I can name. This album is a journey across the earth and deep into the ocean. It ends with my favorite Hosono song, which I quoted in the OP:
This song is so gorgeous. Never have peacock calls been used so well in pop music.
I’ve put myself on a major Hosono kick too. I’ve enjoyed Philharmony and Omni Sight Seeing for a while, but I’m only now really diving into the rest of his work.
I was spurred on by this upcoming vinyl reissue of a bunch of his best albums:
I preordered the Philharmony/Omni Sight Seeing/Paraiso bundle and I am pumped to actually own this stuff on a physical medium.
I listened to Philharmony first because it’s my favorite of these three. Light in the Attic actually remastered the album for this release and it sounds amazing! The samples come through so clearly. The mix is very dynamic. You can hear subtle ways Hosono messed around with volume which I’d never noticed before.
This interview is hilarious. The bolded text is the interviewer, and unbolded is Hosono. He was so totally taciturn, barely answered any of the questions.
Now I’m drinking a Hitachino Nest Ale and listening to Paraiso. I’ve only discovered this album recently, and I don’t fully understand it yet. I have a feeling that this is a drinking record.
The number one question of the week for me is whether there’s anything at all worthwhile in Omni Sight Seeing’s ten minute long acid house track I have to sit through to get to Pleocene.
