Solid State Survivor is the second album by Japanese electronic music band Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in 1979. Later, Solid State Survivor was released in 1982 in the UK on LP and cassette, also in 1992 in the United States on CD, but many of the songs from this album were compiled for release in the US as the US pressing of ×∞Multiplies (1980), including the tracks "Behind the Mask", "Rydeen", "Day Tripper", and "Technopolis". Solid State Survivor is only one of a handful of YMO albums in which the track titles do not have a Japanese equivalent.
The album was an early example of synth-pop, a genre that the band helped pioneer alongside their earlier album Yellow Magic Orchestra (1978), and it also contributed to the development of techno. Solid State Survivor won the Best Album Award at the 22nd Japan Record Awards, and it sold two million records. In 2020, Jonathan McNamara of The Japan Times listed it as one of the 10 Japanese albums worthy of inclusion on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Additionally, the album has been referred to as "one of the godfathers of techno music," according to Matt Mitchell of Paste Magazine.
Rarely does an album make me physically grin, but this was such a fun and joyous listen I couldn’t help myself. The vibrant, plucky synths trace out such fun melodic lines, and the warm, soft pads invoke a perfect sense of nostalgia without making this LP sound dated. Not every track justifies its runtime, but the overall experience is still incredibly cohesive and fun. Feels like the 1001 has been lacking in Japanese and electronica contributions, so this was a stellar add to deftly address both deficits.
Solid State Survivor is an early synth-pop album by Yellow Magic Orchestra. One of the band members is electronic and Japanese pop/rock legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (Soundtrack of The Last Emperor and several other films). This album contains the classic "Behind the Mask" song. The music sometimes sound somewhat outdated now, but it's from 1978. So I won't complain. The beeps often remind me of a (16bit) video game in progress. Funny how the music sounds very Japanese in the melodies (like an soundtrack for a 1980/1990s cartoon series).
YMO definitely deserved a spot on the main list. Massively influential on everything from synthpop and techno to hip-hop and video game soundtracks. Pretty much every early Japanese video game composer was directly influenced by these dudes, so if you listen to this and think: "Hey this sounds like Mario", that's probably why.
Lots of fun. Loses some steam by the end, but that first three track run and "Behind the Mask" are unmatched.
All right, I guess. Some of this was very funky, which was appreciated, but a lot of it felt to me like pretty lightweight synth noodling and general bleep bloop. I do get that it's very early in this scene, and merits grace on that basis. Trailing nearly a decade after Kraftwerk though, of which I found it strongly reminiscent. I want to stress that I did not at all dislike this.
This is a quite a short and, sadly, forgettable little album. It’s sort of interesting what they’re doing and maybe if I had never heard anything from the eighties onward, I would be more impressed, but along with the context of modern music, this falls flat. It wasn’t offensive. It’s cute, which is not a word I believe I’ve ever used to describe an album. I’m glad to have listened, though I don’t think I’m the target audience. 3/5
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