Technodon, released in 1993 through Eastworld Records in Japan and EMI in Europe, is the eighth and final album by Japanese Synth-Pop supergroup Yellow Magic Orchestra. Released a full decade after the band's previous album, Service, the record marked an unexpected reunion for the trio, who had functionally broken up in 1984 following longstanding Creative Differences. During the interim between then and this album, Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Yukihiro Takahashi had all returned to their solo careers.
In particular, Sakamoto gained international fame as a soundtrack composer, providing scores for films such as Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (which he also co-starred in), Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, and The Last Emperor (which he also had a prominent role in). Hosono and Takahashi similarly tried their hands at composing during this time. Hosono would provide music for Night on the Galactic Railroad & Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (albeit only providing the latter's theme song) and produce the Namco soundtrack compilation Video Game Music, the first chiptune album in the world. Takahashi meanwhile would establish a working relationship writing soundtracks for film director Nobuhiko Obayashi.
Eventually, the band decided to regroup for a brief reunion in 1992, testing the waters with YMO Versus The Human League, a collaborative EP with The Human League that featured the two synth-pop bands performing new versions of earlier YMO songs. The commercial success of this project would motivate the band to put together a full-on studio album for the first time in ten years. However, not wanting to sign another multi-album contract with Alfa Records, the band moved over to Takahashi's label, Eastworld Records. As the name "Yellow Magic Orchestra" was trademarked by Alfa, they billed themselves as "Not YMO," represented by "YMO" crossed out with a large X. Similarly to A&M Records' use of their Horizon imprint to release YMO's debut album, Eastworld's parent company, EMI, would release Technodon in Europe, where they still held a sizable cult following.
Having evolved considerably as artists over the years, the music that they'd put together for Technodon would be very far removed from their previous work as YMO, featuring far more minimal arrangements that focused on new developments in ambient techno with elements of World Music and House Music. The album's style would be additionally informed by an order from Toshiba EMI to not use any of the samplers that had characterized their work since Technodelic, influenced by a recent lawsuit against American rapper Biz Markie that declared unauthorized sampling a form of plagiarism. Despite this, Not YMO would manage to sneak in segments from their earlier material on the track "Chance".
Not expecting the reunion to be permanent, the band "spread out" once again at the end of the album's supporting tour, returning to their solo careers once more. Despite this, it didn't mark the end of their collaborations: in 2002, Takahashi and Hosono formed the duo Sketch Show, and the three of them would perform live throughout the 2000s, first under the name Human Audio Sponge, then HASYMO (Human Audio Sponge Yellow Magic Orchestra), before getting their original brand back in 2009. While the trio made no plans for a new YMO album, they still occasionally performed together until Takahashi's death in 2023, under the stipulation that they only be called Yellow Magic Orchestra if the full trio is present.
Technodon was supported by two singles: "Be a Superman" and "Pocketful of Rainbows".
Tracklist:
- "Be A Superman" (5:21)
- "Nanga Def?" (5:10)
- "Floating Away" (6:46)
- "Dolphinicity" (5:12)
- "Hi-Tech Hippies" (4:24)
- "I Tre Merli" (6:05)
- "Nostalgia" (4:48)
- "Silence Of Time" (5:41)
- "Waterford" (5:38)
- "OK" (4:29)
- "Chance" (4:57)
- "Pocketful Of Rainbows"note (5:00)
See the water between your tropes:
- Alternate Album Cover: European CDs and reissues omit the polarized effect on the album art's text.
- Anaphora: "Be A Superman" starts with one, spoken by William S. Burroughs. The lyrics sung by Yukihiro Takahashi all begin by "I don't wanna..." yet are interspersed by a female voice repeating the song's title.Be a man!
Be a human animal.
Be a superman!
Be a superman...
(...)
I don't wanna sleep now
I don't wanna wake up
I don't wanna work now
I dont wanna make love - Clumsy Copyright Censorship: When the band reunited, they learned that they couldn't actually call themselves Yellow Magic Orchestra due to the name being trademarked by their former label, Alfa Records. Consequently, they decided to bill themselves as... Not YMO. Represented by "YMO" crossed out by a large X.
- Cover Version: "Pocketful Of Rainbows", originally recorded by Elvis Presley. Early in the album's conception, Haruomi Hosono wanted to include an Elvis cover, and Yukihiro Takahashi planned one of "Love Me Tender".
- Design Student's Orgasm: The initial Japanese CD release, designed by Stefan Sagmeister, made the lid of the jewel case into a polarized lens, with the messages in the liner notes being modified so that they could only be read when inserted directly under it (Sagmeister would become well known throughout the '90s for his unconventional means of integrating jewel cases into album art). The European CD release and later reissues simply show the text unmodified.
- Epic Rocking: "Floating Away" and "I Tre Merli" both surpass six minutes.
- Face on the Cover: The trio is vertically stretched out and barred by a circle bearing a cryptic sentence.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: "Nanga Def?" is written in wolof.
- Instrumentals: "Nostalgia" and "Waterford".
- Limited Lyrics Song:
- "Hi-Tech Hippies":Itty-bitty hippie tech
Teeny weeny floppy deck (repeated four times)
Tacky tech, architect
Listen to our therapeutic
Steady state, spaced-out
Dig the psycho-schematic
Boot-strapped, tranced out
Stick into the forehead
Hokey pokey baby
This is what it's all about - "Nanga Def?" only has three lines of lyrics repeated four times:Nanga def?
Mag niferek
Wow wow - "Silence of Time" contains four lines of lyrics: the song's title, "Quiet Explosion" (or "Quiet Erosion") and "Inside Me". They are repeated throughout the track.
- "Chance" only contains five words being repeated throughout the track: chance, mutation, mechanism, blind and amorphous.
- "Dolphinicty" only has two repeated lyrics: "Be good boy" and "Says he's being fed".
- "Hi-Tech Hippies":
- Location Song:
- "I Tre Merli" is named after an Italian restaurant that Sakamoto visited.
- "Waterford" could refer to a city in Ireland although there are other locations bearing that name.
- Lyrical Cold Open: "Be A Superman".
- New Sound Album: Minimalist ambient techno with elements of World Music and House Music. The shift in style was based on sounds that both Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto were exploring in their solo work at the time (particularly on Sakamoto's 1991 album Heartbeat, which mixes house music, acid jazz, and various other musical styles from around the world).
- One-Word Title: "Dolphinicity", "Nostalgia", "Waterford" and "Chance".
- Sampling:
- "Dolphincity" samples an audio extract of dolphin intelligence researcher John C. Lilly.
- "Chance" samples several YMO songs, notably the infinite scale of "Loom" and the first two notes of "Rydeen" during its last second. The choice to do this was born of out Ryuichi Sakamoto's discontent with the myriad of YMO remixes that Alfa Records released to cash in on the group's reunion; Sakamoto wanted to create a YMO remix of his own, but opted to instead create a new piece out of preexisting ones due to recent changes in music copyright law.
- Shout-Out:
- "Hi-Tech Hippies" is inspired by computer scientist Paco Nathan and his Interactive Brainwave Visual Analyzer, a software which allows brain waves to be used as inputs on a computer.
- "OK" features the lyrics "to know it is to love it", a possible reference to the Phil Spector-penned song "To Know Him Is to Love Him".
- Special Guest:
- American writer William S. Burroughs speaks the opening lyrics of "Be A Superman" (and the album as a whole). He can also be heard on "I Tre Merli".
- Cyberpunk writer William Gibson co-wrote "Floating Away". He also sings on it.
- Textless Album Cover: Played with. The text "SLIPPING INTO MADNESS IS GOOD FOR THE SAKE OF COMPARISON" is emblazoned on the cover, but on the original CD release it requires a polarized lens to be read, otherwise leaving it an indistinct mass of lines. The European release and later reissues across formats feature the text in an unprocessed, readable form.
- Translated Cover Version: "Pocketful of Rainbows" is sung in Japanese; an English version was also recorded as a bonus track.
