Solid State Survivor

Yes, I will take some Japanese disco flavored Kraftwerk. Thank you very much.

Vaguely retro cute, but too much like the soundtrack of Pong in the end. The Beatles cover was neither inspired nor a very good idea.

Rubbish, although the cover version is surprising enough and weird enough to scrape a second star - but only just

What a great suggestion! Had that 70s/80s electronic arcade music feel at times done really well. I loved it!

A timeless album, at least for me. A great sound and its influence on a band like Japan is immediate.

Yeah weird Japanese electronic music from the 70s? Yes. Yes please. An absolute bizarre cover of Day Tripper too. My personal rating: 5/5 My rating relative to the list: 5/5 Should this have been included on the original list? Yes.

Oh wow, man. I’m such a geek for synth-pop and anything even vaguely Kraftwerky and this album just blew my socks off. I’ve listened to it 3x since it made it to my list yesterday (doesn’t hurt that it’s only 30min long). And then I discover that Ryuichi Sakamoto was a part of this group and Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence is one of my favourite melancholy holiday songs and I’m just super happy. I love the surprises on this list some times.

Only the most joyous bloops and bleeps

Like Japanese Kraftwerk if they were fun

This was a charming little surprise of an album. I like the old-timey sound of the synthesizers.

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.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Technopolis, Rydeen

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 The music sometimes sound somewhat outdated now, but it's from 1978.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).

Good fun electro album, enjoyed this.

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.

Good, but I would've preferred their other 1979 album.

Loved it

Whoa, Japanese Kraftwerk! These guys are fun

Bra grejer det här. Har nog ägt skivan en gång i tiden. Nu har jag nog bara några låtar på min Spotifylista. Inte högsta betyg men ytterst nära. Cred till den som nominerade denna.

This starts out being enormously fun. Unfortunately I think it ends really badly. The daytripper cover is atrocious and the general feeling of the last half if the album is tedium. Fortunately, it's only a half hour or so in total. Makes me think they should maybe have stuck with an EP.

4.5

This one was super interesting...never had been on my radar before but very much ahead of it's time. Really fun. 4/5

Love these guys. Definitely should have been on the original list

This mostly instrumental Japanese record is very objectively reaching some absolutely ridiculous levels of kitsch-fueled flavors and I... simply LOVE it. Or at least, I love its highlights, present on a good half of the album's tracklist (and to be perfectly honest, I really like the rest as well). So why? Why have I fallen in love with "Rydeen", "Absolute Ego Dance", "Behind The Mask" and "Technopolis"? (in that very specific order of preference for my absolute faves) Well, for starters, and as driven to far darker strands of music as I can be, I guess I can only be a sucker for a tag that would approximate "Kraftwerk goes disco, thinks out of the box to lace the whole thing with the most extravagant sounds ever, and then pulls off the whole thing at a restless pace for the catchiest numbers". It sure is a long tag, but I don't know how I could sum up the music on this crazy record more succinctly. And when I say "driven" up there, I really mean it! That rhythm section is totally insane, and it's one asset among many others in the Japanese band's artistry! Secondly, I'm not a video game player, but it seems to me that the album is prophetic when it comes to the soundtracks of that medium -- at least for the most colourful examples of video game soundtracks you can find out there. Yeah, I know, *Solid State Survivor* is NOT a video game soundtrack. Yet it seems so obvious that tons of later Japanese video game composers had listened to Yellow Magic Orchestra. And this is what makes those best cuts in this album sound so fresh and modern somehow, in spite of their very obvious roots in the late seventies / early eighties. Finally, the melodic leitmotivs mercilessly driving "Rydeen" and "Absolute Ego Dance" forward are *extremely rich* harmonically speaking. I might be wrong about this, but I think minor chords actually play a part that's as important as the one of major chords to bring that peculiar intensity to the synth riffs gracing those songs. Those minor chords are even more central for the moodier cuts "Castalia" and "Insomnia" -- the first one closer to the original sound of Kraftwerk than the rest, and the second exploring some interesting turf that's as extravagant-sounding as the album's highlights and yet also more unsettling somehow. Here is why I consider the music to be so rich and so dynamic, beyond the surface layers of glossy kitsch striking you on first listens. Browsing through the rest of Yellow Magic Orchestra's later discography, it looks like the extra levels of cheese sometimes found there are definitely NOT right up my alley. But some other LPs, like *BMG*, sound promising, from what I managed to listen to from their tracklist, that is -- I couldn't find the time to spin each and every early LP, you see. And for *Solid State Survivor* at least, the charm fully operates, thanks to the very strong skills of Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocoder), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals, costume design) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocoder) as composers and performers. Even the bonkers cover of the Beatles' "Day Tripper" works for me (in an admittedly very tongue-in-cheek fashion). I only wish the title-track capper ending the proceedings had been a little more solid so that the record fully sticks the landing, but that's quite a minor complaint. Rest in peace, Ryuchi Sakamoto. I'm not very familiar with the rest of your body of work beyond your famous later soundtrack work for the films Furyo and The Last Emperor (the latter in tandem with David Byrne, of all people!)... But even if I don't know much about your career, it's obvious you were an immensely talented man, and I hope I can dig out the rest of the gems you left behind as years go by. And a thousand thanks to the user who suggested this! Bruce Springsteen is more than a notch above Billy Joel in my book, but if we could argue all day when it comes to personal music tastes, your short reviews are always a pleasure to read and they often make tons of sense to explain said tastes. Don't know if you're gonna read those words of mine one day (it looks like you stop exploring the users list almost immediately), but I want to read more on-point takes from you. Consider this an encouragement for you to become a "solid state survivor" of this generator. 😉 4/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 9/10 for more general purposes (5/5 for the musicianship and production values + 4/5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 107 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 116 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 250 ---- Yo Émile ! Je me suis effectivement demandé pourquoi ton weekend mettait tellement de temps à venir, ha ha (j'avais déjà lu ta première réponse sous le Titus Andronicus, et je viens de lire la deuxième) Pour ma propre réponse, je vais pas faire comme d'habitude, je vais te laisser plein de petits messages séparés, à la suite de celui-ci, une review après l'autre. Il s'avère que j'ai un petit plus de temps en ce moment pour arriver à tenir ce rythme (je t'expliquerai pourquoi plus tard). Message 1/4 (c'est prévisionnel, il est possible que je t'en laisse plus). As-tu écouté l'album au dessus, de Yellow Magic Orchestra ? Petite révélation pour moi. Je sais que tu as une certaine appétence pour tout ce qui vient de l'empire du soleil levant, et là, c'est festival !!! Normalement, j'aime pas trop les trucs happy et kitschouilles, en grosses gammes majeures apparentes. Mais les sommets de ce disque sont incroyables pour moi. Comme je le disais pour Flying Beagle, tout est une station de charte harmonique pour mes oreilles. Et ces harmonies-là sont magnifiques pour elles. Maintenant, je suis curieux de savoir ce que tu penses de ce *Solid State Survivor* C'est cool que tu puisses assister au triomphe d'Angine De Poitrine de retour de leur tournée triomphale post buzz stratosphérique à Montréal of all places. C'est hyper gentil de me proposer un couchage dans ton sous-sol pour y assister. On va pas se mentir, ni mon budget ni mes plans immédiats me le permettent, ha ha! Mais je retiens la "bonne adresse" chez les cousins ! 😉 La suite au prochain épisode ! Et si au moment de lire ce premier message, tu n'as pas encore été à ce concert montréalais des deux zigotos à masques, à maquillage à pois, à polyrythmies, et à écarts micro-tonaux, ben enjoy !

A very proper choice for the list. Music is funky and a little out there but still dancey and accessible. Big fan! 8/10

Good

Not normally something I would listen to, but I dug it. 3 stars.

Different from what I expected

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.

Electronic, synth-pop. Ni fu ni fa.

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

I wouldn't have pegged Solid State Survivor as being nearly 50 years old, that's pretty cool, and it's a quirky little album that mostly sounds like video game soundtracks, except again this would've predated almost all of them so perhaps they were pretty influential. It gets a bit tiresome here and there but it's only half an hour, I liked Absolute Ego Dance most, all of my foibles seem to have some mitigations so it's probably slap bang in the middle of the scale and I'll decide whether that rounds up or down later.

Electronic, synth-pop. Ni fu ni fa.

Música electrónica de finales de los 70 con bases muy comerciales, un tanto simplistas y sin mucha complicación. Tiene un aire un tanto "viejuno", aunque puede llegar a resultar agradable de escuchar. Tranquilo, para lograr un buen ambiente.

The artwork could be from an album released today. On the whole the album wasn’t for me but I did recognise a sample used by the Welsh rap band “Goldie Lookin Chain”, which was nice (“Behind The Mask” was sampled on “Your Mother’s Got A Penis”, if you’re interested)