Scarcity Part 1: Yellow Magic Orchestra Live In London

Sometimes I stay awake at night worrying about the important stuff in life, things like: do the Japanese have heritage acts? I’ll sleep easily tonight; they do!

Exhibit A: The Sadistic Mika Band. In the mid-70s they moulded an obsession with Roxy Music, David Bowie and shopping on the King’s Road into a delightful output of songs that often included “boogie” in the title. They went through seven variations before calling it a day. But a quick search on YouTube shows them back at it in 2003 and again in 2006. Is this relevant to my story? It is for their drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. He was – is – also a member of…

Exhibit B: Yellow Magic Orchestra. Yes, Yukihiro drums in two heritage acts, plus he’s a solo artist – that’s one better than Phil Collins! YMO don’t have song titles with “boogie” in them; their most obvious influence is Deutsche knob twiddlers Kraftwerk. Except for one album. By 1983 it was plain that being arty and singing in English wasn’t going to make them a major act, so they did a cool album of cheeky J-pop and cleaned up. They called it ‘Bad Boys’. Then film directors knocked on poster boy Ryuichi Sakamoto’s door and a few high-profile film soundtracks later YMO was just an entry in their musical resumes. But after twenty years to temper their mutual dislike they played at Live Earth and again last year. Did they complete their ascendancy to heritage godocracy? Check the global library that is YouTube and, yes they did; they made a Kirin Beer commercial.



Just look at this photo. Do this look like a heritage act to you?


Of course it does! Three grumpy old men having to stand next to each other for publicity.

They’re not topping up the pension fund by actually touring though. Asked by Massive Attack to play at the Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall, they’re managing one other gig in Spain. That’s it for Europe.

The three of them spanned the stage, standing behind small instrument arrays. Behind them were three supplementary musicians working laptops, downing them to play heavily treated guitar and mandolin, and flugelhorn. They didn’t talk. To each other or the audience. Black clothes and silver hair, black synths and silver MacBooks….it looked cool.

In a situation like this, there’s always the possibility that the evening will be a wallow in nostalgia. Not here. The songs were from all over the back catalogue, run through a blender of what’s tickling their current artistic itch. Basically, they’re into static and pre-Cambrian sounding electronic music sounds, layering them into and over the music. At times it clashed and at times it flowed, at times you wanted them to stop (now!) and at times it sounded very special. Where some of the music pieces originally were quite repetitious, now the rich texture of sound often progressed in micro-variations that made me think someone has Terry Riley’s ‘Rainbow In Curved Air’ in Most-Played on the i-Pod.


Playing “Riot In Lagos” in 2007

Each of the trio had moments of musical bravura, but for me the starlight of the night was Yukihiro. Halfway through he moved from his electronics to a drum kit, proving to be a snapping funk drummer. But on one of the dancier numbers, besides the bootylicious beat, throughout the song he kept moving the snare beat around so that by song’s end he’d put a pattern on every beat in the bar. Phil Collins would be jealous.


Check out Yukihiro’s chops on this cultural collision: YMO on ‘Soul Train’ in 1980 doing a unique interpretation of “Tighten Up”.