Haruomi Hosono is the form of artist you retain rediscovering all through your life. It could start with Yellow Magic Orchestra, the pioneering synth-pop trio he fashioned with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi. Or it may begin along with his solo work, the place he’s traversed the whole lot from exotica to tape music to boisterous artwork pop. Dive into his credit, and his title pops up in every single place prior to now half-century of Japanese music. There’s the folks growth of the Nineteen Seventies, the place he performed within the groundbreaking rock band Completely satisfied Finish, but in addition on albums from Sachiko Kanenobu, Morio Agata, and Nobuyasu Okabayashi. He was there throughout metropolis pop’s rise, too, acting on basic albums by Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Ohnuki, and Minako Yoshida.
“I used to be listening to the whole lot,” Hosono tells me not less than a dozen occasions in our dialog. It looks like an understatement. In the course of the Eighties, Hosono appeared on cult classics of Japanese new-wave and digital music, together with LPs on Yen Information, the label he ran with Takahashi. Obsessive about arcade video games, he made the primary album absolutely impressed by their soundtracks; aptly, it’s titled Video Recreation Music. He additionally performs on the debut Pizzicato 5 album, forging a throughline from his love for lounge and easy-listening to the roots of Shibuya-kei. He made IDM within the Nineteen Nineties, glitch pop within the 2000s, and jumped on a dwell album with Ichiko Aoba in 2013. He’s made quite a few movie scores as properly, most well-known of which is for Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.
All through our dialog, Hosono periodically asks for time to consider what to say, as it’s not possible to call a single artist or album that might outline any interval of his life. Nonetheless, he persists, his face at all times jovial as he reminisces over Zoom. He’s stationed on the backside left nook of the body, which pulls consideration to the poster on his wall. It’s for the 1934 Laurel and Hardy comedy Them Thar Hills: a testomony to his love for the Western tradition of the time.
Don’t mistake his fondness for bygone eras as an unwillingness to develop, although. This summer season, he’ll carry out a uncommon live performance on the Southbank Centre in London. “What I’m making an attempt to do now,” he tells me, “is to see what I can do with younger individuals—people who find themselves 50 years youthful than me.” For Hosono, there’s at all times one thing new to be taught.
