(Picture credit © JJ Hall)
Last Sunday night I went on a pilgrimage. I went to sit in the presence of three musicians who had a profound impact on my blossoming musical taste as a teenager. That these men from the other side of the world haven't performed in this country together for nearly thirty years only served to make this a momentous and precious occasion. It was at the Meltdown festival at London's South Bank Centre, this year being curated by Massive Attack who had invited Yellow Magic Orchestra to perform on English soil for the first time since 1980. Actually, I have no idea of the behind-the-scenes politics that caused the gig to take place; I see YMO are also playing a gig in Spain on 19 June so it's likely that Massive Attack weren't responsible for initiating the event and certainly not uniquely for this festival. Indeed, prior to this, the three members of YMO have played together occasionally under the moniker of Human Audio Sponge, although the Live Earth concert in Kyoto last summer and the release of a new version of one of their classic tracks, Rydeen, all under the YMO name, seemed to indicate a coagulation of the trio who never officially split up but simply "spread out".
I came across Yellow Magic Orchestra around the same time as Kraftwerk. Fascinated by synthesizers after a pre-adolescent foray into the guitar-driven riffs of punk and metal, the explosion of "techno pop" at the start of the Eighties gave me plenty of artists to discover. The German electro pioneers had just released their bleepy and quirky single Pocket Calculator and I later managed to see them live on their Computer World tour. Around that time A&M released the Yellow Magic Orchestra single Computer Game (Theme from the Invaders)/Firecracker which, being a kid who loved video arcade games, hooked me in with its Space Invaders noises and oriental synth melodies. In the years that followed I scoured record stores for their elusive albums, usually imports from Japan. And not just YMO group albums; as individual artists, Sakamoto, Takahashi and Hosono released solo material, produced and collaborated with other artists in both the West and the East, leaving their distinct signature on many recordings. I tracked down as much of it as I could and loved every second. There's something about the scarcity of hard-to-find records that can make them even more emotionally poignant.
So bringing all my sentimental attachment to their prolific work no doubt coloured my expectations for the concert on Sunday. I've read a few reviewers who found the whole thing a bit dour and disappointing. As a devotee, however, it was just simple joy, even relief, at actually seeing these revered artists performing in front of me. And fittingly, they weren't just reprising old classics, but had remixed and reinvented their material to reflect their current musical approaches. Under the name Sketch Show, Takahashi and Hosono have in recent years been exploring the whole glitchy microsampling sound, all the while maintaining the hallmarks of their own unmistakable songwriting. Sakamoto too, both in collaboration with other artists and in his own recent electronic material (separate from his classical and jazz influenced recordings), has veered towards a similar sound. I have read some accusing them of jumping on a stylistic bandwagon, adopting a trend in electronic music that has been evolved by a younger generation of musicians. I think such criticisms are misplaced. As trailblazers in electronic music, YMO often co-opted the latest technology (usually from the Japanese manufacturers who no doubt courted their approval) to craft their distinctive sound. It seems to me someone like Sakamoto was responsible for creative sonic innovation with samplers long before most of the mainstream caught up years later. For example, his 15-minute track Exhibition, on the flip side of his 1985 single Field Work, sounds uncannily prescient of the fragile, glassy, broken soundscapes of many laptop glitch musicians nearly two decades later.
Sunday's set list was a good mixture of YMO tracks together with non-canonical material. So we heard new glitchier arrangements of YMO classics like You've Got To Help Yourself (though to my mind a peculiar choice for an opener), Ongaku (Shoko Ise's linear graphics were a simple perfect accompaniment), Rydeen (which was essentially the 79/07 version of last year), and as a final encore Cue (a similar downbeat version of which appeared on the Wild Sketch Show recording, though this time with a return to the solid beat of the original). There was a good few Sakamoto tracks, notably a suitably kicking, updated version of the 1980 electro classic Riot in Lagos, and the sampled pacifist sentiments of War & Peace - even the instrumental Tibetan Dance was set to visuals that included the text of a homily by the Dalai Lama. Sketch Show material such as Supreme Secret and Wonderful to Me were stripped of some of their sonic edginess and came over as more of straight-forward funky pop tunes, whereas tracks like Turn Turn and Chronograph retained the skitty sample textures of the original versions.
I can map the enduring influence of Yellow Magic Orchestra on my own taste in electronic music: rhythmic invention, richly textured symphonic chords, melodic hooks and above all ideas, ideas, ideas. The combined creativity of Sakamoto, Takahashi and Hosono had all of these in large measure. They also opened a door for me into Japanese music and culture and for all this I owe them a debt of gratitude. Sakamoto played several concerts in this country over the last couple of decades: each one I managed to miss. But I was glad to finally be able to enjoy the live artistry of all of YMO. Being there was the least I could to do to honour them for their lasting musical influence on my life.
Postscript: I wasn't expecting there to be a support act, but to my surprise Australian band Pivot took the stage, three young guys dressed in crisp dark grey shirts looking a bit like a 21st century OMD, apart from the drummer's mad shock of hair. I really enjoy listening to the performance of an unknown live act without bringing any presuppositions, and being won over with each successive track. To begin, I thought they were yet another average hybrid of modern laptop breakbeatery and Eighties New Wave synth chunkiness. But as each track evolved and morphed into compelling, insistent rhythms and riffs, I began to see there were more and more layers to their sound. In the midst of their set the guy who had been previously drumming moved away from the kit to behind the synth, and a track of beautiful chord washes and plaintive melodies quite simply knocked me for six with its beauty. In the brief vocal intro to one track they mentioned their upcoming August release on Warp Records called O Soundtrack My Heart. That title is just perfect. If I have heard any artist lately whose blend of broken effect-laden loops, pulsating sub notes and soaring resonant synths expresses the sort of music that pleases my heart then, on the basis of their performance, it is Pivot. I've since grabbed their debut (non-Warp) release, Make Me Love You, off iTunes and although the material feels quite a bit different from the newer tracks, it's a nice slice of quality electronic music.
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