Yellow Fever!
Label: Essay
Length: LP
Rated: NONE
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Yellow Fever!
In the late ’70s, music nearly had a postmodern heart attack when Yellow Magic Orchestra emerged from Tokyo with a blend of electronic futurism, mindless pop, disco bump and lush exotica that either sounded completely ridiculous or completely revolutionary. Their appearance on Soul Train had to have been one of Don Cornelius’ most confused moments, but that’s not to say that YMO was willfully obscure; they simply didn’t see why pop music needed to be predictable. Now, nearly 30 years later, German/Chilean producer Señor Coconut ups the heart attack factor with Yellow Fever, a disc of his versions of YMO songs. Thus, we have a German guy living in Chile recasting songs by a defunct Japanese pop group who were originally as informed by German electronic music as they were by schlocky ’50s exotica â?¦ and oh yeah, he does it with the assistance of a Copacabana-ready big band featuring a Venezuelan singer, as well as various well-known electro superstars (both German and Japanese) and all three original members of YMO (one of whom, Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a known aficionado of bossa nova). What’s pleasantly surprising about this melange is that Señor Coconut again manages to use the big-band style he so loves without sounding like Richard Cheese. Instead, it’s more like the album all those second-rate shibuya-kei acts wish they could have made. Which means it sounds an awful lot like Yellow Magic Orchestra.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2006.