Electronic music from over 30 years ago that will blow your socks off. A dear friend lent me this on vinyl when I was just getting started with techno in 1991. I thought it was good, yet funny & cheesy. I had never heard much from Japan, living in central Canada. We both liked the "bad" signing on Tong Poo, and snickered at the name.

Somehow it grew on me to an unbelievable extent and today I own nearly every YMO album. This first one is still my favorite. The melodies and intricate flourishes are timeless and addictive. The styles are all over the map, from Simoon that sounds like it's out of a Super Mario 3 cave level (probably the other way around!), to the eclectic Femme Chinoise with the wonderfully cheesy electric guitar chords.

Seriously, if you can't fathom it on the first listen, try it a few more times.

And, oh ya, I no longer find any of the singing bad! In fact, I love YMO vocals as they're so Japanese and distinctly different from typical American pop vocals.

Be sure to check out Atom Heart's Senor Coconut revamp of YMO's tunes in Yellow Fever. And the 90's remix CD Hi-Tech/No Crime is good too!

Needless to say the importance that had Yellow Magic Orchestra on the early international electronic scene since their first legendary album 'Yellow Magic Orchestra', a reference to an unimaginable amount of electronic producers since then.
The masterpiece long play made by the Japanese trio Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, electronics, percussion, vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, percussion), despite its ground-breaking (and out of the ordinary) perspective, was acclaimed not only in Japan, but on the International scene, and became very popular.
Yellow Magic Orchestra's milestone LP brought timeless classics such as the "Computer Games" noise clash milestone whose initial bleeps were sampled by 'Quadrophonia - Quadrophonia' (1990) and 'Sweet Excorcist - TestOne' (1990); 'Fire Cracker' was largely played by DJs such as The Wizard (A.K.A. Jeff Mills) on WJLB; another one was 'La Femme Chinoise' (that even became a soundtrack for TV Program), among many other innovative electronic compositions.
Definitely a quintessential album of innovative compositions on the history of Electronic Music.

The Japanese answer to Kraftwerk? The melding of traditional Japanese music with pop and electronics shines through like a star on Firecracker. One of Mantronix´s faves.