I don't love the two followup records to 'Esperanto', 'Illustrated Musical Encyclopaedia' and 'Futurista', but they've still got odd moments, like 'Field Work' with Thomas Dolby they never came out in the States. I also like the 12' with Sylvian, and the 'Merry Christmas Mr. 'A 'Wongga' Dance Song' has Arto Lindsay's guitar, echoing mutant trumpets, Gamelan percussion and clipped percussive hits made from chanting school children, I guess that one's the hit. Hearing this record in 1985 was my first real encounter with Japanese culture. All the sounds are organic or conventionally instrumental in nature, but they're juxtaposed in acoustically impossible ways everything sounds simultaneously hyper-realistic, plausibly real, yet absolutely artificial, impossible and composed. Released in 1985, sounds like twenty years from now early sampling record with largely self-recorded sources. 'Esperanto' - every time I see a copy of this out of print record I buy a copy for a friend. Not much here, apart from the one fantastic instrumental 'The Garden of Poppies', could fit on 'B-2 Unit' easy. 'Left Handed Dream' was a collaboration with M's Robin Scott and Adrian Belew. American version omits the particularly brutal 'Participation Mystique' for a contemporary 12' club hit 'Warhead', which is also great. Still not much electronic music sounds like this clipped, demented, sharp, alien.

'B-2 Unit' is a record that shuts everyone up, always getting rediscovered by people, year after year it's fucking advanced. Good though, great cover of him loosely gripping a reading lamp while crouched in a bathtub. 'Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto' instrumental, but still sounding much like a jazzier YMO. I'm still not sure what to make of the fact that they were so huge at home with things like 'Snakeman Show Skit' on their albums.

Not for everyday, but it's well crafted, very catchy, very happy pop, with occasional bursts of humor so inexplicable and politically bizarre. Myself I like YMO, especially 'Solid State Survivor' and 'XOO Multiplies'. And his output is completely schitzoid basically there's the soundtrack stuff (occasionally nice), the mainstream glossed-out pop music stuff (almost always not to my taste), and then the occasional burst of absolute experiental chaos. Ok there's been two sparse YMO threads, but apart from this notable moment there's been no proper S/D.

Neo geo ryuichi sakamoto