Vinyl/CD Review: Neue Tanz – Yellow Magic Orchestra

Pioneering Japanese electronic act Yellow Magic Orchestra turns 40 this year, and Sony Music Japan is celebrating with a massive re-issue campaign set to kick off in full next month. In the meantime, they’ve also put out this new compilation, curated by superstar Japanese DJ Towa Tei, designed to focus on YMO’s more eclectic and minimal output.

A lot of effort obviously went into this release. In addition to getting Towa Tei’s name on it, the album also features art by well-known artist Tomoo Gokita, and the tracks were newly remastered by ex-Denki Groove member Yoshinori Sunahara. Anyone into Japanese electronic music who already wasn’t interested in picking this up will no doubt see their names and be tempted even more to pick it up.

And they probably shouldn’t.

I have no idea who this album is even for. It proclaimed focus is on YMO’s more esoteric and avant-garde productions. That’s cool, but that means its not a good starter for anyone looking to get into the group for the first time. Hell, I dig tracks like “The Madmen,” “Ballet” and the title track. They’re great. YMO’s work with samplers and loops was really innovative at the time. But they’re not my goto tracks for getting anyone into the group. Those are always going to be numbers like “Rydeen,” “Behind The Mask,” and “Tong Poo,” emminently catchy tunes filled to the brim with hooks for miles.

It’s not for beginners, that’s fine. But is it for more die-hard fans? I don’t see how. While a few of the tracks on here are a little hard-to-find, everything here has been released before in some form or another. The rarest YMO number on here is probably “Hirake Kokoro – Jiseiki” (開け心 -磁性紀-) but even that’s available on the UC YMO collection, which is pretty easy to find these days. And I imagine and devoted YMO fanatic probably has that release already, or Techno Bible, the four-CD box set where that song appeared first.

Interestingly, the album also features a few solo tracks by YMO members. The LP edition includes “Riot In Lagos” by Ryuichi Sakamoto as well as Yukihiro Takahashi’s “Glass.” The CD version, which features four more tracks than (the more expensive) LP also includes the Haruomi Hosono number “Sports Men.” The Sakamoto song is from B-2 Unit, “Glass” is from Takahashi’s album Neuromantic, and “Sports Men” is culled from Hosono’s Philharmony. Of those, I think that only Neuromantic is out-of-print (which is a crime, by the way). So these aren’t exactly rare or hidden gems either. And again, any devoted fan interested in tracks like those will no doubt have the original albums from which they came, so why buy them again?

But what of the remaster? I don’t know. It’s fine, I guess. I suppose I should be an authority here, since I have every YMO album on CD and LP multiple times, but I really can’t tell that much of a difference. The new remasters sound a little louder. Maybe they’re brickwalled a bit. I don’t know. Again, they sound fine. They don’t sound bad enough for me to raise a stink about, and they certainly aren’t good enough for me to think I’m hearing the songs for the first time again.

As I said before, the double LP version costs more and features less songs. No download code is provided to make up for that either. The records themselves sound great, no surface noise to speak of, clear sound, but everything around them is just “meh.” No gatefold art, not even liner notes, all the track information is printed on the record sleeves. Included with the CD is a booklet, but it’s just the lyrics and nothing more. Both the CD and LP have stickers of the album art, but that’s all the bells and whistles you’re gonna get.

This album is not getting a release outside of Japan, so I imagine that importing it would be costly. Don’t do that. You don’t need this album. I don’t care how big of a YMO fan you are, it is one of the most inessential and pointless compilations I’ve ever seen. If you’re a YMO fanatic like me, you can re-create this album’s tracklist using your iTunes library and you won’t be missing out. And if you’re a newcomer or casual fan to the group, there are far better compilations out there for you to explore the band further. Hey, I even wrote an entire guide to those (as well as every other YMO and YMO-tangential release).

All the songs on here are good, this is good music! It’s just not a good way to buy it. It feels like a cash-grab to take advantage of completionists with more dollars than sense.

Now if you’ll excuse me I need to file both the CD and LP copies I bought.