Thanks to their instrumental innovation, few bands have become as formative in the early evolution of electronic music as Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO).
Founded by Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto y Yukihiro takahashi en Japan during 1978, the band established itself with a sound pop exotic and crisp that was unusual and ahead of its time, even within the heart of the electronic music de Europa that was blowing up the scene back then.
His pop revolutionary and boldly experimental, created with reforming instruments and tools like the Moog III-C, Korg PS-3100, Polymoog, ARP Odyssey, Oberheim Eight Voice, Minimoog, Korg VC-10 Vocoder and Roland MC-8 Micro Composer to control synthesizers, he traversed genres and invented others, from the acidhouse and funk until art pop and the sound we heard in the first video games.
In the early 1970s, before coming together as a musical group, Haruomi Hosono I was part of the band Happy ending, which became the cornerstone of rock music in the country. Ryuichi Sakamoto, on the other hand, studied musical composition at the Graduate School of the University of the Arts de Tokyo, becoming a musician deeply versed in contemporary and electronic music, while Yukihiro Takahashi, the third member, was part of Sadistic Mika Band, that was also heard in England.
But by January 1980, with disco plummeting in the United States, the Japanese trio debuted at the Billboard Hot Soul with his song Computer game, with a strong dance tune electro-funk through synthesizers, with which they competed with other heavyweights of R&B, as shown below.
The sound was a success, in his country it laid the foundations of what was finally known in Japan like youechnopop, and although they were the first Japanese band, and the second Japanese act overall, after the solo singer Kyu sakamoto, in having chart-topping hits, their rise in Western markets was non-existent, a fact that was largely due to differences in musical styles, a strong language barrier, and the high costs of promoting and marketing an artist in foreign western markets with no guarantee of return on investment.
But despite the initial doubts and obstacles, coupled with the rise of the video game universe in the US and Asia, in a few months, A&M Records with Yellow Magic Orchestra established the sound that is considered the ancestor of the movement synth-pop which would dominate popular music later in the decade.
After their first album, the group released six more studio albums before breaking up in 1984, while they were still immensely popular in the United States. Japan.
Since then and often, each member has had parallel solo careers and have even gotten together to record a new album in 1993, Technodon, which was released under the modified name AND MO, Yellow Magic Orchestra, because its previous seal had the original name.
Also to perform at various festivals and charity concerts in the 2000s, including the event Kyoto Live Earth in 2007 and the World Happiness Festival de Japan in 2009. His music has also continued with the soundtrack of various performances by anime and videogames.