The Blindboy Podcast - Yellow Magic Orchestra

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Bonus episode. A special bonus episode where I speak about the influence of the band Yellow Magic Orchestra on the sound of Video game music. This particular episode is brought to you by Vodafone Broadband Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, and welcome to a bonus episode of the Blind Boy Podcast. Why is it a bonus episode? Because this episode is sponsored. I've been approached for sponsored episodes before, but it often means the people who are sponsoring it saying, this is what I want you to talk about, and I want you to talk about it like this. And then I'm like, well I wouldn't like to do that, then I'm not making a podcast that I enjoy,

so I tend not to do sponsored episodes, because I want to make sure whatever I'm doing, I enjoy making it, and ye enjoy listening to it, and it's something I'm passionate about, but this time, Vodafone came to me, and they said, look look here's the crack we want to

talk about our gigabit broadband right so Vodafone have this they have this broadband service that's ridiculously powerful it's like one gig one gigabyte speeds Vodafone gigabit broadband and I say to them well you know what i do online streaming i stream video games and audio on twitch and in order to do that i need incredibly powerful internet so how about i talk about that and then i speak about video games something related to video games and music and then Vodafone were like grand grand do your thing so that's why this is a sponsored episode because I'm gonna speak about about the history of video game music which is something I'm incredibly interested in and I have a little hot take and it's something i do want to chat about so before we get into that vodafone

is offering gigabit broadband right it's available to more people than ever before and what it is is it's broadband at one gigabyte speeds incredibly powerful broadband now if you're if you do online gaming right if you game online you understand you gotta have a strong connection and you have to have a connection that doesn't that won't quit out of nowhere because when it does then gaming which is an enjoyable fun relaxing activity then becomes a frustrating not enjoyable activity so if you're doing things like gaming Vodafone gigabit broadband go to Vodafone.ie forward slash broadband to find out about it and for me when I'm streaming if you watch me on Twitch so I'm on Twitch once a week on Thursday nights and what I do on Twitch is it's an art

project it's an ongoing hyper real art project that I do, at this stage more for my mental health than anything, it, it's, I get to be really creative for like two hours once a week, and it's massively cathartic for me, and it also gives me a feeling of connection, because when I'm doing Twitch, I'm also talking with people, so it feels like I'm at a little bit of a party for a small bit so it's quite a I started this, I started doing it as an art

project and now I realise it's quite important for my mental health, it really is, there's a lot of catharsis in what I do on Twitch but when I'm on Twitch I'm live streaming so I'm in my studio I'm playing the Xbox, I'm playing Red Dead Redemption.

Which is like. A virtual simulation of the American frontier. So I'm playing Red Dead Redemption. I've got a HD camera. Filming me. I've got a lot of audio equipment. Because what I do is. I make live music to the events of a video game.

And I'm chatting with people. So that's a huge amount of HD data that's being sent live over the internet and if that cuts on me at any point then forget about it the stream is over that's it the stream is done and it could take 10 minutes for me to get back into the stream and then I've lost everybody but most importantly the reason I need to have shit hot internet connections is I have to have confidence confidence in my internet quality so if I'm on Twitch playing a video game and then getting into creative flow so that I'm writing a song in the moment which is really exciting and incredible fun to be in that state of flow in order for me to enter that state of creative flow and to write a good song there can't be any fear present now if I'm for one second

worried that my internet is going to cut out then i can't create because now fear is present but i don't have to worry about that i don't have to worry about it because i've got incredibly reliable powerful broadband that does the trick so you know the crack you know the crack if you're doing online gaming streaming anything you need good broadband so check out photophone.ie forward slash broadband okay for one gigabyte speeds so i want to speak about video game music because now i've done several podcasts on the history of music and specifically the origins of different musical styles and genres I'm fascinated by, because music is symmetrical vibrations of air that make

you feel emotions, that's what music is it's a completely abstract type of art that you feel with your ears and that makes you feel emotions and I adore music and I'm fascinated with how culture, society, economics, how these things can influence symmetrical vibrations of air that make you feel emotions.

I'm very interested in why certain music sounds a certain way and the culture and sociological conditions that make it that way so what makes video game music fascinating for me is the earliest video game music it it wasn't it wasn't intended to be made to be listened for its value if you get me i grew up in the 90s so i'm talking video game music that would have been on the nintendo or the sega megadrive super mario brothers streets of rage sonic the hedgehog mortal combat that type of stuff video game music was never intended for someone to literally enjoy the music to sit back and go i'm gonna listen to this tune that was never the case video game music was like a functional background music deliberately

repetitive it was there to to set a tone and a mood it was there to create emotions but ultimately traditionally video game music acts in service of playing the game it's to enhance the game experience it's decorative if you will it's wallpaper it's there in the background if you take it away your gaming experience is zero crack but you add it and it's enhanced but it's not intended as a media that you consume for its own value but like it or not an entire generation grew up playing super mario brothers or playing sonic the hedgehog or playing street fighter streets of rage playing these things for hours and hours and hours and with the music also playing and almost in a subliminal fashion this music is going to then imprint on your sense of aesthetics like when i was a little kid i'm playing mario or i'm playing

sonic the hedgehog and at the same time I'm listening to bands like Guns N' Roses or listening to hip-hop Ice-T but then I'm listening to this other music on video games not cognitively realizing it as music but it's obviously then going to influence my tastes of course it is because I'm a kid the music from Mario if I hear it now I instantly recognize every single melody is catchy so whether I like it or not video game music has shaped my musical aesthetics and it has done for an entire generation so what I want to focus on in this week's podcast, I want to trace the style and sound of early video game music to one band in particular. A Japanese band called Yellow Magic Orchestra from the 70s. that was highly experimental incredibly strange absolutely left of center unlike anything else other musicians were making at the time using instruments

that other musicians weren't using they were using cutting-edge synths and they made this incredibly strange weird music that shouldn't have really that was so experimental it shouldn't have really survived certain music is so weird and strange that it exists in that period and it doesn't really go on to become mainstream as such but yet when I listen to the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra from the late 70s which was this incredibly avant-garde strange music it doesn't sound strange at all I'm alienated from the strangeness of Yellow Magic Orchestra's music because to me it sounds completely familiar and the reason Yellow Magic Orchestra's music because to me it sounds completely familiar and the reason Yellow Magic Orchestra's music sounds familiar is because that's

directly what went on to influence video game music being made in Japan in the 80s and early 90s and I'll give you an example so you know what I'm talking about. I'm gonna play now a piece of music from the video game Sonic the Hedgehog 2, which came out in 1992. It's a classic video game. You've probably played it. It was completely ubiquitous. It's one of those games that

not only did people play when we were kids, people still play Sonic 2 now because it holds up as a video game, but it also has an incredibly unique and interesting soundtrack with a sound that you'll instantly associate with early 90s video games in particular fun Japanese video games. This song is it's the soundtrack for the Green Hill Zone level and it was composed by Masato Nakamura. So that's Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Video game music from 1992. Computer game music. Not intended to be listened to aesthetically, but it has its own, it's unique. And if you played Sonic when you were a kid, that would have brought back quite a bit of nostalgia. Now, now I'm going to play a track from 1978, long before video games, long before Sonic the Hedgehog.

A song from 1978 from the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra, which sounds quite similar. so that song is called Tongue Pooh by Yellow Magic Orchestra it's on their debut album from 1978, and you might be thinking, why are Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978 making Sonic the Hedgehog music 14 years before Sonic the Hedgehog, what's that about, and also, you know, why does the music sound so familiar, and it's like, they're not, that's, Sonic the Hedgehog sounds like Yellow Magic Orchestra video game music it originates in Japan the composers of early video game music were Japanese and they were listening to Yellow Magic Orchestra and that's why Sonic the Hedgehog sounds like that and that 1978 Yellow Magic Orchestra song

that's really revolutionary at the time nothing else sounds like that at the time because of its use of electronic instruments and its pacing and the happiness of it nothing else sounded like that it was out on its own and it was very revolutionary and it wasn't necessarily popular either not in the west for sure but yes when i

listened to it and when i play it for you now it doesn't sound weird because indirectly we've become accustomed to the sound of yellow magic orchestra not by hearing yellow magic orchestra because not a lot of people know them, but by hearing video game music. We've heard Yellow Magic Orchestra channeled through the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and numerous other games from our childhoods. So before I get into Yellow Magic Orchestra and why I think they're really, really important, and why I'd like to make ye Yellow Magic Orchestra fans, before I get into that, I'm going to speak a little bit about video game music. This isn't going to be an entire history of video game music podcast. So I'm going to try and make it as simple as possible

to describe, you know, what is early video game music. We'll say 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. So because music is so abstract, like music is symmetrical vibrations of air that make you feel emotions. That's what music is. It's very, very abstract. It's vibrating air.

So I'm going to use, I'll use a visual metaphor. It's easier to describe something visual than it is to describe something aural. So that Sonic the Hedgehog tune, or the music we would have heard on Super Mario Brothers, early 90s or late 80s stuff, right? It's fair to say that it's shit, right? And I mean that as respectfully as possible. The Sonic the Hedgehog music is a bit

shit and super mario brothers music is a bit shit in that the fidelity of it it doesn't sound like real music it doesn't sound like it's performed by humans it doesn't sound like a recording of an instrument it sounds a bit shit now just because something sounds a bit shit doesn't mean it's bad because it certainly isn't bad because it's very melodic and it's very pleasant to listen to but the recording it's shit quality and think of it like this if you have a good camera a good digital camera and you take a photograph of a lot of instruments you take a photograph of drums guitar and a keyboard with a good camera that photograph it's gonna look a lot like the drums guitar and keyboard that are there in real life a good camera is gonna take a good

photograph of that and you look at it and you'll go wow that looks almost like reality now let's say you have a shit camera like a camera phone from 2002 a really really bad camera phone and you take a photograph with the camera phone of the same musical instruments now when you look at the photograph it's going to be heavily pixelated it will kind of look like the instruments that you took the photograph of but not really because you've got these big heavy pixels these big blocks what you're dealing with is that there's less information in the image a high resolution digital camera can take a photograph of more information and then represent that information in a photograph

so it's more detailed whereas a shit camera doesn't have the sufficient memory to take that, to represent everything that's there so instead it pixelates it, it must get as much information across as it can

within very limited parameters so that's what a pixelated photograph is you're dealing with an economy of information video game music is the exact same Sonic the Hedgehog fucking Super Mario Brothers Sega Mega Drive and NES what you're hearing there

is the economy of information. That, back then, 8-bit technology, or 16-bit technology as it was known, the cartridge that you played Sonic the Hedgehog on, it had limited memory. And within that, it had to portray the visual elements of the fucking game, and then it had this tiny little segment

to represent the music so the musician who and back then the lads making the music they didn't even consider themselves musicians they consider themselves to be engineers but the people making the music were like i have to do a song here and the technology is very very limited so i can't have a guitar i can't have drums i can't have a piano but what i can have is a very pixelated version of this sound that kind of sounds like it and that's what they did and as a result aesthetically that's what video game music is when you hear that blippy bloppy video game sound it's the hour it's it's it's the aural equivalent of a heavily pixelated photograph so that's

all I'm gonna say about the video game music technology the limitations of that that's all I'm gonna say about it what I'm interested in is the aesthetic choices that were made in order to construct that music and those aesthetic musical choices with a limited palette were very heavily based on the music of yellow magic orchestra so who were yellow magic orchestra or ymo well they were a japanese band formed in 1977 and it was three three Japanese musicians and all three of them were kind of legends in their own right

already but had very specific and different backgrounds so I suppose the brainchild the person who would have started the band Haruomi Hosono who his rootsomi Hosono, who, his roots,

so Hosono, he was in psychedelic bands in the 60s, he was very experimental in what he was doing, so he brought the kind of experimental, boundary pushing vibe, Hosono as well is considered the originator of Japanese city pop which was a style of music in the 1980s in Japan and Hosono is seen as the pioneer of that. His sound went on to influence what Japanese city pop was. Then you had Yukihiro Takahashi who was more of a rocker takahashi had been in a band called the sadistic sadistic mika band who were a 70s japanese rock band who would have had a fair bit of success crossover success in america and in england they toured with Roxy Music and stuff. So you've got Hasono bringing this psychedelic experimentalism. Then you've got Takahashi, who's the drummer, bringing a rock and roll sensibility.

And a kind of a music industry experience. And then you have Ryoichi Sakamoto. And Ryoichi Sakamoto. And Ryoichi Sakamoto. Today. Even still. Ryoichi Sakamoto is one of the most important. Classical music composers around. He's probably my favourite classical music composer. Aside from his work with YMO.

Ryoichi Sakamoto. Like the piano. The piano that you hear in the background of my podcast. That you hear playing right there. Like that, I made that, but that's me trying to sound like Ryoichi Sakamoto's piano. He makes the most beautiful piano pieces you've ever heard. And he mixes Western music with traditional Japanese music. But Ryoichi Sakamoto was also one of the founding members of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the late 70s and he was he was like the nerdy one. He was studying classical

music in college and studying classical music and traditional Japanese music and Japanese classical music and classical music all around the world really. So what you have there is three completely different people with different backgrounds coming together to form this band that's highly experimental. Now, again, if you go and listen to Yellow Magic Orchestra from the late 70s or their 80s stuff, it's hard to listen to it and go, wow, this is groundbreaking and avant-garde

because it was so influential it doesn't sound groundbreaking and avant-garde now because it influenced music so much but at the time it was what made yellow magic orchestra special is firstly they were pioneering in electronic music now i've done podcasts on the history of house music i've done a podcast on a lad called patrick crowley from san francisco who was making electronic music you had giorgio marauder in italy so electronic music by 1977 like it was it was still very much niche and still viewed as novelty and still definitely not taken seriously and by by electronic i mean instead of a real drum kit someone's using a

an electronic drum machine or instead of using a keyboard someone's using a synthesizer to synthesize different sounds this was happening in the 70s but it hadn't gone fully mainstream yet but in germany you've got Kraftwerk you've got Gary Newman in the UK here's the thing a lot of electronic music no 90% of electronic music lads in the 70s if you take Georgia Marauder who's birthing Italo Disco or you take craft work with their electronic music or gary newman the music tended to be cold rub and robotic and deliberately so now that was important because cold robotic electronic music is what went on to turn into house music and techno especially like the 4-4 beat of a drum machine or arpeggiated stuff so electronic music was deliberately not human

craftworks music doesn't sound human it's supposed to sound like androids made it same with gary newman georgia marauder stuff was a bit more fun but still Georgia Marauder's music like if you listen to I Feel Love by Donna Summer which was produced by Georgia Marauder and how he uses an arpeggiated synth in there the music it deliberately wants to sound like a machine it doesn't want to sound human

it wants to sound like a machine and that's where electronic music was heading To sound like a machine. It doesn't want to sound human. It wants to sound like a machine. And that's where electronic music was heading. But what makes YMO. Yellow Magic Orchestra. Different in the 70s. Is they didn't want their electronic music. To sound like robots. They weren't afraid.

For their synthesizers. And their drum machines. To sound human. In a a way they had a more mature view of the tools that they were using craftwork were being like we are machines and we're playing machines and the music sounds mechanic same with marauder and same with gary newman but with ymo they're going this is a synthesizer this is a drum machine these are just new instruments that's all they are and I'm going to try and play this synthesizer with the same humanity touch and feeling that I would afford a piano or a guitar

and who says that this electronic music has to be robotic and cold who says you can't just dance to it and vibe to it like any other type of music and they had quite a mature attitude towards these brand new electronic instruments and what's important to know too with with yellow magic orchestra they're a japanese band drum machines and synthesizers most of that shit comes from Japan like I did an entire podcast on the 808 drum machine which is an iconic famous drum machine one of the most ubiquitous drum machines in all of music

invented by Ikutaro Kakahashi who started off as a clockmaker in Japan but Yellow Magic Orchestra were the first ever band to use an 808 drum machine they used it two years before anyone else because they had access to new technology

and new drum machines before other people did because they were in Japan this shit was being released and you have to remember it's hard now because of the internet but back in the 70s and 80s shit was coming out in japan first like if if a new synth was being developed a new synthesizer or a new drum machine or a new video game like the nintendo i grew up playing the nintendo video game system the nes which came to in like Ireland and the UK in 1989 this came out in Japan in 1984 in Japan they were playing Nintendo's fucking six years before I was like

so technology came out there first so Yellow Magic Orchestra were embracing as many synthesizers and drum machines as they came out as they were available and they didn't romanticize them european and american artists were romanticizing and fetishizing electronic instruments and treating the instruments as robots they were saying this drum machine is a robot this synthesizer is a robot so it must sound like a robot and ymo weren't going there they were going no it's an instrument i'm gonna play it and make the best sound that i can get out of it and make it sound i'm gonna i'm gonna play this in service to the music rather than having it as strictly robotic and i'm not shitting on anyone who was

making robotic electronic music that's where fucking dance comes from that's where techno comes from i fucking love craftwork i love georgia marauder i love gary newman i'm just saying why am i doing something different they were humanizing the music and what this did is it makes yellow magic orchestra's music sound way ahead of its time like i would have first heard yellow magic orchestra around maybe 2003 because how i used to learn about music is when wikipedia came about in 2001 I used to start reading about music on Wikipedia. And through Wikipedia, I read about bands I'd never have heard of before or I'd have had no reason to hear about them. And I found Yellow Magic Orchestra on Wikipedia. And they would have had a tiny article at the time.

And someone on Wikipedia would have written the hugely influential Japanese electronic band, Yellow Magic Orchestra. I would have went who the fuck are they I've never heard of them and then what I had to do in order to hear Yellow Magic Orchestra because this is the dinosaur years of the internet lads I couldn't just go into YouTube or Spotify because it didn't exist and type in Yellow Magic Orchestra and expect to hear the music nor could i go on to google even type yellow magic orchestra and then hope to hear the music what i had to do was one of two things if i could afford it i had to go to amazon and see if somebody was selling a cd of yellow magic orchestra amazon or ebay or what I did is I pirated it. I would have went to like LimeWare and illegally downloaded

some of Yellow Magic Orchestra's music just to see who are this band, who are this Japanese band that were really influential, what do they sound like? So in 2003, I'd have gone to LimeWare, downloaded a few of their tracks and may have had to wait a week

or possibly three weeks to hear one song. I'm not joking. three had gone to limeware downloaded a few of their tracks and may have had to wait a week or possibly three weeks to hear one song i'm not joking because we forget what the internet was like firstly i didn't have broadband we were using you had to it was phone internet it was phone internet which you could only have for about a half an hour a day or my dad would kick my head in so that's the first problem you've got a half an hour a day to download a bit of a track at terrible terrible speeds and then secondly yellow magic orchestra in 2003 are quite a niche band so if they are on limeware i'm depending on other people to have those songs so i can download them and not a lot of people have the songs so i might have had to wait three weeks to download one fucking song.

And that's no exaggeration. This was the fucking Wild West. Now the thing is, if you remember using these illegal downloading sites for music, sometimes you couldn't trust the MP3s that they were giving you. So if you were to download an Emininem song we'll say you weren't getting an eminem song it was some rapper who was pretending to be eminem so that you'd hear their music so when i first downloaded yellow magic orchestra's 1977 album i didn't believe that it was real the fidelity was too it was too far ahead of its time i and my first thing was

that this can't be real because it sounds firstly too much like video game music so it sounds too much like sonic and i thought whoever made this album made it now and they're influenced by video game music and also i thought they were influenced by Daft Punk, and I refused to believe that this shit was from fucking 1977, but it was the stone age of the internet, so I had no real way to find out. So it was only when the internet kind of developed a bit more around 2009 that I was able to really verify, holy shit, this music actually is from the 70s. And the main track that threw me a curveball was a song called technopolis from 1979 by ymo and i just i didn't believe it i was like no this just sounds like

daft punk this this sounds like something daft punk would release in 2001 and i refuse to believe that this is from the 70s because you have to remember too I did have access to like Kraftwerk and Gary Newman because these bands were a bit more well known and you know something like Georgia Marauder with Donna Summer this stuff was a bit more mainstream so I had a vision in my head of what electronic music sounded like from that period and YMO didn't sound like that because it was too advanced. It was decades ahead. So here's an example of

this is Technopolis and I heard it and I'm like nah this isn't some cunt made this now and they're influenced by Daft Punk and Fair Play to them because it's class. So that's technop, technopolis by ymo from 1979, and it's just fucking banging, it's fucking banging,

and it has no business belonging in the 70s, because it's too far ahead of its time, and you know, I think, why did i think that that was you know daft punk influenced because it sounds like daft punk have an album called discovery i think it's their best album 2001 it's one of my favorite albums of all time and that song ymo song sounds like it could fit on that album and the reason being is Daft Punk have said about that album a lot of the sounds they were trying to recreate with Discovery was the sounds of cartoons from their childhood and Daft Punk are French and a lot of early 80s French cartoons were made in Japan and the music that was made for these cartoons was being made

by Japanese musicians and they were influenced by Yellow Magic Orchestra so that's why and now I'm sure fucking Daft Punk know who Yellow Magic Orchestra are as well of course obviously because Daft Punk are absolute nerds but Daft Punk explicitly saying we wanted it to sound like cartoons from our childhood that's because Japanese composers were making French cartoons and they were influenced by Yellow Magic Orchestra and and again it's it's interesting that the Yellow Magic Orchestra sound is so ubiquitous and so familiar but it because of functional music like music that's background music in anime cartoons or music that's background music for video games and one thing too that like that track is undeniably banging and the music of yMO is absolutely banging. The recording is fantastic.

The fidelity still stands up today. It's just class music. But it's also distinctly Japanese. They frequently use scales and melodies. Are from traditional Japanese music. Rather than sticking strictly. To the western scale of music. The Japanese scale. Tends to.

It tends to locate around the black keys. On a keyboard. You'll find that with a lot of Japanese melodies. That they're played almost exclusively. On the black keys. But I also have a kind of a hot take and a theory around why we'll say yellow magic orchestra were incorporating japanese melodies into their music which again in the 70s in the 70s that's kind of career suicide bands wanted

to sound american you know for a japanese band to decide that we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna incorporate elements of all sounds all styles including Japanese was very very brave because it meant you're not gonna then make it in Japan or make it in the US or in the UK the US or in the UK because Japanese sounds had been turned into novelty as such. It wasn't, it wasn't taken seriously as like music. It was, it would have been heard instead as, oh, that's Japanese music or that's quote unquote Oriquote oriental music and I discovered something very recently which kind of was the inspiration for why I wanted to do this podcast about one of YMO's songs and I think this song is their most important song their most influential song and the song is called firecracker forward slash video games and it's from 1978 right so firstly the fucking song is

called video games and what they are doing in 1978 is this video game music didn't really exist in 1978 you had so in japan at the time pac-man was fucking huge. Pac-Man and Space Invaders were massive. Like, I'm talking insanely massive. They had entire buildings full of Space Invaders. By 1977-78, entire buildings full of just Space Invaders machines where people were playing Space Invaders all day long. Space Invaders was so big in japan in the late 70s that there was a there was like a a fear at the time that the bank of japan would have to triple the output of 100

yen coins because so many people were playing the video game space invaders in arcades space invaders didn't really have music. It had sounds. Music and melody wasn't really a thing in arcade games in the 70s. But Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978 decided, which is again revolutionary, we're going to release a song called Computer Games

and we're going to sample some computer game sounds and mix this in with our fucking electronic music but also the song was called firecracker and this is the it's probably the most popular ymo song it's definitely the most important song this is the song that the band formed because of this song. So all three musicians had been performing and doing solo albums and working on each other's albums, but YMO formed around this song, Computer Games, forward slash Firecracker. And also with this song, the lead melody is very clearly Japanese.

It's a Japanese-type melody. So that song is Video Games' Firecracker, Yellow Magic Orchestra, 1978. Probably their most well-known song. That song was a little bit of a... I don't know what you call it, a breakthrough hit. They performed that song on the American TV show Soul Train in 1980, On the American TV show Soul Train. In 1980.

Which Soul Train was. An American music show. That primarily played African American artists. For an African American audience. And Yellow Magic Orchestra were on it. In 1980. And as a result of that performance. Yellow Magic Orchestra ended up being quite influential on hip-hop music. They were

sampled in quite a lot of early hip-hop songs by the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and they stayed in hip-hop culture like Mariah Carey's song Loverboy 2002. The demo version of that song, if you hear the demo version, it was a sample of Firecracker video games by YMO. But here's what interests me. What interests me about that song is, number one, YMO themselves have said that that is the song that formed the band. Number two, it's the deliberate use of a Japanese sounding melody within the song and why I find that interesting because I've

been listening to that song for years and in my head I've always just I always just assumed okay they're a band from Japan and they're doing this disco type music very experimental and why wouldn't they include melodies that are Japanese if they were an Irish band like horse lips horse lips are an Irish rock band from the 70s he used to play rock but they would also incorporate melodies that belong in Irish music into their rock music creating a fusion of Western rock and Irish traditional music and that's what horse lips did so ymo can be viewed kind of similarly in that they were incorporating melodies that belong to

traditional music from their culture and their country but the interesting thing with that song video games slash firecracker number one like not even speaking about the revolutionary nature of it it's sampling fucking video games in the 70s okay laying the foundations for further video game music but very recently i heard a song while i was in a youtube hall and i heard the same melody that ymo used and it took me aback have a listen and and that there that's a song from 1959 which is also called firecracker. So Yellow Magic Orchestra's song, Video Games slash Firecracker, is a cover version of that song from 1959 called Firecracker.

But then I look into it more and the artist isn't a Japanese artist. It's a lad called Martin Denny, who's American. And then I look into it more going, all right, is it an a lad called Martin Denny who's American and then I look into it more going alright is it an American lad doing like a traditional Japanese song or something and it's like no

he just made it up so the composer of that track Martin Denny who's an American he was an American lounge jazz artist who invented a genre of music called Exotica who's an American, he was an American lounge jazz artist who invented a genre of music called exotica. Now exotica is a weird type of music.

It's not real. Exotica is white American people creating music that they think is the music of locations that they perceive to be exotic and that maybe they would like to go on holidays in alright so it's Hawaiian music, Polynesian

music, Caribbean this whole musical genre came about in the 1950s and it would have been real easy listenings and it would have been real easy listening lounge stuff it would have been what what middle-class suburban white people in america in the 40s and 50s would play in the background when they're hosting a party it wasn't really for people who enjoyed music it was for people who played music for the sake of it it the equivalent of like whatever they play on the radio today it's it's not for fans of music or appreciators of music it's for people

who just simply want music in the background so exotica music it borrowed from the traditional music of all these different cultures and then melded it into this thing that didn't really exist. This weird American fantasy. It's associated with tiki culture. I've done an entire podcast on tiki culture before. Basically America went to war with Japan in World War II. And America. American troops spent a lot of time in the pacific ocean and the pacific islands the the area between

the west coast of america and japan places like polynesia micronesia and tiki culture was this cultural phenomenon in america from about the mid-1940s up until the 60s where um kind of people who'd been soldiers in world war ii americans who'd spent time on pacific islands when they got back to america they used to relax by drinking drinks that reminded them of like polynesia or listening to music that sounded a little bit Hawaiian or if you look at a tiki glass, if you get a tiki cocktail in a bar now like a Mai Tai or a Zombie and you see the glass that they give you,

it's like a carved wooden thing and that looks like the traditional carved artwork of Polynesia. Similarly, grass skirts, drinking drinks out of coconuts, flower lanyards, Hawaiian-style music, tiki torches. All of these things,

none of them are really authentic to the culture of Polynesia. They're like weird little American memories. They're hyper-real simulacra. They're weird little American memories that They're hyper real simulacra. They're weird little American memories. That are replayed. As something that's. Not at all authentic.

And is viewed through. This American lens. So it's this really weird. American memory. Of the Pacific. That's created as this. False culture. Purely for Americans. To kind of other. memory of the Pacific that's created as this false culture purely for Americans to kind

of other the Pacific Islands but it's not based on anything authentic it's based on a memory and Exotica music was the soundtrack to that scene and Martin Denny was the biggest Exotica artist

so he made all this music that kind of sounded Hawaiian. Or kind of sounded Caribbean. Or kind of sounded Japanese. If you get me. None of it is authentic. None of it is rooted in any kind of respect. It's just, it's an othering. And that song I played you by Martin Denny

firecracker that why I'm all covered that song is it's kind of racist now you're you might be wondering how could a fucking song be racist blind boy how could a song that doesn't even have words be racist well here's the thing like if you listen to the song firecracker by martin denny from 1959 which is in the exotica genre it's it's not japanese music it's not chinese music it's what can only be described as oriental which is a colonial term invented by the british and and when something is oriental it has nothing to do with like the area of asia is fucking huge with loads of different cultures and billions of people with all these separate different cultures but when it was colonized by britain they just said that's the Orient

it's this huge area and we don't give a fuck about any of the cultural differences between the people because to us they all look the exact same so that's the Orient we don't want to bother ourselves with any with the humanity of the different people that are there

fuck that and the thing with Martin Denny's song it's it's it's it's it's oriental music it's him just going i'm gonna write a song that sounds a bit like over there i mean it'd be like if if if an english or american artist released like an irish sounding song and it's just diddly idleidle-idle-doo diddly-doodle-doo I'm going off to Galway diddly-doodle-doo gonna have a lot of children diddly-doodle-doo gonna plant a bomb over in London diddly-dide-loo diddly-doodle-doo drinking loads of Guinness diddly-dide-loo like that and you'd be listening to it going what the fuck is this what's this shit so as a result there are elements in it

that are kind of traditional Japanese melody kind of but then if you listen to the the instruments the instruments are then Chinese and then he's called it firecracker because Chinese celebration and fireworks the song is musically musically that song is like and and he might have been well-intentioned I don't know but musically that song is the equivalent of him doing an impression of someone he considers to be quote-unquote oriental okay if he was to do the accent or dress up as or whatever of what he considers to be the orient that's what that song is musically and then to someone who is chinese or korean or japanese they would listen to it and go what the fuck is this? like if you're Irish and you see an American film and the people have ridiculously

bad Irish accents that multiplied by a thousand so the song is it's colonial and it's racist because it's like here's a song that sounds like those people over there alright Martin is this traditional Chinese music

or is it Japanese music or is there Korean music in there or Vietnamese I don't know there's fireworks it's oriental and that's what that's his entire genre of exotica

it's the same with Polynesian music it's like you know fucking slidey guitars and grass skirts that Hawaiian shit and then it's like oh what about Caribbean music have you been listening to any traditional Calypso music or anything nah nah just you know that fucking steel drum shit

it's like that that's his entire genre it's these really lazy impressions of entire cultures and traditional music and then labeling and then packaging it for a kind of a white touristy american market who don't want to who don't want to think of these places as anything other than holiday destinations if you get me but then you mix in the horrendous history between america and japan in particular and it becomes a lot more dodgy because you know that's a song from 1959 during world war ii in the west coast of america particular when America went to war with Japan

America literally just rounded up a bunch of people who were of Japanese ancestry and put them in internment camps like straight up and these people could be like but I was born in America my dad was born in America

and America's like give a fuck give a shit get into an internment camp and America did that this horrendously while fighting the Nazis while fighting the Nazis for for having concentration camps the Americans got a bunch of you know Japanese immigrants and American people of Japanese ancestry and fucked them into camps. So what that does... So why then have you got Yellow Magic Orchestra covering this track as their first song? And as...

Like, it now makes the Yellow Magic Orchestra version really, really subversive. Like, Haruomi Hasano, that was his second time covering that song because he covered it as a solo artist in the mid 70s and haruomi hasono also he was very his solo work used to draw upon exotica a lot he used to draw upon the exotica genre a lot and then you've got rioichi sakamoto who is classically trained studying music not only studying like western classical music but rioichi sakamoto in college doing his master's degree specialized in two

things electronic music and ethnomusicology like he specialized in uh indian music african music japanese music particularly okinawan music like this is an expert in his field on the academic study of different different musical traditions around the world, which means, understanding, and listening to the music, of other cultures, with respect, are you telling me, that those two lads, didn't know what they were doing there,

they're reclaiming, something that to them, is, clearly fucking ridiculous, like why cover, why do a cover version, the yank who has made this utterly ridiculous quote-unquote oriental sounding song why cover that and for me the obvious answer has to be it's it's it's reclaiming it reclaiming something that's dumb and offensive and then flipping it flipping it on its head by making it really really fucking good and danceable and getting this piece of music that's kind of tired and lazy and innovating

and bringing electronics into it and being the first ever song to sample fucking video games you know, taking something stale and going let's have a bunch of fucking crack here and take this stale thing and be so revolutionary with it

that we actually make it brilliant and isn't that hilarious and a it brilliant and isn't that hilarious and a bit empowering and that's that's my hot take on it that's my hot take you know that's that's how that's how i view it and viewing it like that gives me a much more a different appreciation of that song because previously i'm appreciating it because look at all this electronic innovation look at how good it is as a piece of music isn't it classed

that they used video games but now it may possibly be subversive so that's my little my little tribute to Yellow Magic Orchestra who I think you should definitely listen to they're fucking fantastic and to go back to where i started on video game music the reason video game music sounds the way it does

is because of the influence of yellow magic orchestra who were absolutely massive in Japan. Huge. But not so huge outside of Japan. But massively influential. On hip hop and on electronic music in general. So I had no ocarina pause this episode. Because I didn't need one. There was no ocarina pause. Because there's no adverts in this episode. Because this episode was brought to you by Vodafone Broadband.

If you would like broadband that is incredibly powerful, incredibly fast, that won't let you down. You want 1 gigabyte speeds. Vodafone Gigabit. Vodafone.ie forward slash broadband if you want to check it out Thank you. Thank you.