Customer Reviews

Solid State Survivor

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's incredible this was made in 79, this album sounds far ahead of that! I heard this CD from a friend who gave me no background on the group, and I had no idea when it was recorded, some sounded 70's some 80's and some like new things happening. It's still amazing this was made so long ago. The cover of the Beatles "Day Tripper" is worth the whole cd itself in my opinion, all jerky and cut up yet danceable (and hard to dance to at the same time) reminiscent of devo's satisfaction as well.

The last song, Solid State Survivor is my favorite. It's dark and super impactful/creepy like early Oingo Boingo or Danny Elfman (forbidden zonesque) yet has a sort of a cute space theme running alongside it. I could tell it had been arranged and rearranged quite a bit, super thought out.

Knowing next to nothing about the band and hearing this album as an introduction . . . makes me want to go out and buy the rest of their stuff. It's sort of like a video game soundtrack using analog synths and drum machines.

maybe it's because i grew up playing more nintendo than anyone should, but Solid State Survivor is one of the funnest albums i've ever had the pleasure of listening to. on this album ymo manage to seamlessly blend the organic(bass, drums, piano, and guitar)with some of the oddest synth sounds ever recorded. the vocals, when present, are either ran through a vocoder("technopolis" and "behind the mask") or sang in english care of a thick japanese accent("solid state survivor" and a wonderfully quirky cover of "day tripper"). the rhythms are mostly upbeat in a disco-y sort of way, with the exceptions being "castalia" and "insomnia"(the two darkest tracks...both with slow ronnettes type beats). this is a tough one to find, but if by chance you're led here to read this, take my advice and track a copy down. fans of kraftwerk(who realize that they're joking more than half of the time)will be delighted with this.

Check 'Rydeen' the third song of this album. You'll be blow out

Often compared to Kraftwerk, and rightly so, Yellow Magic Orchestra displays however a much lighter and funnier tone, but never leaving the futuristic and technologic frame. It's incredible how this album has influenced... videogame music! Yes, I can name at least four Sega Genesis tunes which are, um, carbon copies of Technopolis! But, anyway, that's a good thing... everything on Solid State Survivor sounds clean, well produced, is catchy and well, if you like both Kraftwerk and videogame music, and have a preference for synth sounds, I don't see why you shouldn't enjoy this album!

"Solid State Survivor" is one of those frustrating albums that deserves to be called "ahead of its time," but is hardly the best example of its particular genre. The AMG calls YMO--the unit of Yukihiro Takahashi, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Harumi Hosono and several second-level members, here on their second outing--a "trailblazing force behind the emergence of the Japanese techno-pop sound of the late '70s," and while "Solid State Survivor" breaks new ground, it's more than a little unsatisfying. Frankly, I think the album's reputation as a classic comes more from nostalgic hindsight and estimation of influence than it does from evaluation of the actual music contained therein.

As mentioned before, "Solid State Survivor" is the band's second album, and it finds them refining the YMO "concept" into a much tighter, less gimmicky sound. The arcade-game bleeps and bloops of "Yellow Magic Orchestra" are mostly gone. "Solid State Survivor"'s eight tracks are, for the most part, synth-driven, poppy numbers, and are mostly instrumental.

Note the "poppy" in the preceding paragraph, for while YMO may not be that well known to American audiences today, this was not always the case. They were *hugely* popular in Japan, and did in fact tour America. Their aspirations to international pop stardom worked, but can leave the music itself feeling more than a little orientalist and gimmicky.

And thus, on to the music itself. Some of the other reviewers here have mentioned that "Survivor" sounds an awful lot like video-game music. This is of course a slight inversion--more accurately, video-game music sounds like YMO--but is otherwise a fair charge. Yes, the band is about ten years ahead of its time; unfortunately, that plants us squarely in the era of the Sega Genesis, and more than one track sounds uncomfortably like the soundtrack to "Sonic the Hedgehog" ("Absolute Ego Dance" is particularly guilty in this regard).

Highlights, in my opinion, include the driving "Rydeen," and the oddly moody "Castalia" (the best track on the album, in my opinion, and the one that best presages best YMO's later development). I don't, however, particularly care for "Behind the Mask," which everyone and their mother seems to love; it's a bit of orientalist fluff that has an interesting riff, but doesn't really go anywhere. "Day Tripper" is fun in a let's-deconstruct-the-Beatles sort of way.

Verdict: "Solid State Survivor" isn't a bad record by any means, and there's a very good chance that little else on the planet sounded quite like it in 1979. Age hasn't been kind to it, however, and when you strip away the hyperbole, what you're left with is a handful of enjoyable but unremarkable happy-Kraftwerk technopop (emphasis on "pop") instrumentals. If you're a big technopop fan, go for it. Most others, however, are best off starting elsewhere.