Technodelic

This is a special album. A truly Special album.

This Album Is A Masterpiece. Weird, dark, groovy, experimental, existential, one of the first albums to be made almost entirely from samples. This album truly sounds like no other, the mix of stiff electronics and organic sampling make this truly an experimental and psychedelic journey. To this day nothing sounds quite like this album and only a Very Small percentage have even played with the formula, let alone matched or surpassed it.

And at the same time there is an existential nightmare that exists in this album. It's So thematically rich. The use of industrial sounds combined with the original cover of the farmer and the lyrical ideas all combine for what is, in my opinion, a depiction/conceptualization of the working person, the working class, and average people. The everyday struggle of workers, laborers, etc.

The album starts with an odd but endearing lament about the quality of bread, the poor man's food. We're given a stripped back but surprisingly rich array of quirky sounds and melodies in classic YMO fashion. Catchy tunes in the oddest of electrical, or in this case sampled, sounds. The repeated reframes of "God it's so uglyyy" in reference to the bread are so amusing but also oddly relatable as YMO questions such a minor displeasure.

The following Neue Tanz (German for "New Dance") gives this pumping, but not exactly dance-y beat. It incorporates one of my favorite just sounds in music ever, this sample of intense rhythmic chanting, similar to that on YMO member Ryuichi's song NEO GEO. Again, the album while feeling minimalistic and avante -garde also feels dense and intense. There's this tension that persists through the song. The odd melody to the whole thing adds to make it feel almost ominous. The chants hint at the theme again, as it reminds me of the chants of a mass of workers but turned into song. It feels as if the "New Dance" that the song's title refers to could be the dance of work, labor replacing movement for the sake of movement.

"Stairs" is the next track and it continues the ominous feeling of the last song. But it cranks it up with this heavy piano sample and a blaring little synth bit. It almost sounds like a siren or like the sample off Mobb Deep's Shook Ones, Pt. II. The song even has an interstitial bit in the middle where the heavy piano is replaced by a an almost foggy sounding pretty piano. As if this is just memory of a prettier happier more beautiful time, only to be replaced with the dread that is now enveloping us. YMO sings cryptically about stairs, people going up and down them forever. This abstract imagery again leads to these feeling of existentialism with the idea of repetitiveness, constantly exerting to what end, to go where?

Next just might be my favorite moment on the record. With this whispery yell of "PA!" YMO breaks into gorgeous layers of of heavy base, glimmering synths, and samples of gamelan ensemble. The synths in this song keep developing and changing with these somber winding tones. The whole thing is genuinely transcendent. The lyrics are the most cryptic yet, with the repeated story of traveling to an old part of Korea and a woman not allowing YMO to take a picture. The song uses the colonial word for Seoul in the title and makes references to the lack luster state of the city and the presence of police. This implies the ideas of Korea under Japanese occupation of military dictatorship. Overall it feels it is trying to communicate this idea of military dominance and stifling in the city.

But Technodelic goes into more than just ambient industrial sampling. On Light in Darkness the album's sound ascends to space in a magical moment of synthpop. The song is so expansive. It feels you are gazing at the infinite swirling galaxies of the universe. You are flying past the pillars of creation. You are existing. This song may sound basic today but before the saturation of space-y synth-y songs like this on the internet there was YMO. The song highlights the feeling of existentialism as you are just a single person in the world, just a working person in a universe so beyond you.

This is heavily contrasted with the following Taiso ("gymnastics" or "calisthenics"). The songs sounds genuinely joyous and upbeat. It has bright piano, a bumping but messy beat, and lyrics that are right out of a workout video. It's giving instructions on how to follow this workout yoga-like routine. The song is essentially a form of parody of these overly upbeat workout videos which are favorites of middle aged working class people who have decided to try and at least improve their health so they may feel better. It feels almost like a reaction to confronting the existential force of the previous song. Maybe you can make yourself feel better if you just start exercising 30 minutes a day.

But that intense existentialism is not gone. "Graduated Grey" brings us back to this space-like soundscape, considering the vastness of it all. The faint blare of synth or sample in the back makes everything feel so far away. The beats feel so heavy and are at points added to with a sample that sounds like the human voice. An almost guttural thump of the throat as just another part of the depressing soundscape. While Light in Darkness felt purely electronic and synth-y this existential cut is more industrial like the other parts of the record. The two have began to fuse as the worker faces the repetitive mind-numbing existentialism of the industrial machine that they are a part of. The attitude of this song is shown through the hook sung, "Every minute, every second, I can feel it getting closer..." This seems like a direct reference to death as YMO mentions being back at the tunnel again. The graduated grey they refer to in the lyrics suggest the idea of our life as simple a variant combination of life and death (white and black). The darker the grey gets, the closer to death, or maybe the lighter, as we approach the end of the tunnel.

This confrontation of death leads to the next track, "Key." The dread of the previous songs has turned to full on panic. With a driving electronic beat and continued synth blares going in and out as well as a blooming synth adding the main melody. YMO begs for help, crying out that they are not okay, they feel bad, just bad for no real reason. They feel drained mentally and physically. And they want someone to give them at least a reason for this distress, but there is nothing to help them. An experience all too relatable. Along with this is a call and response of a garbled voice asking them questions about what seems like a mental exercise of visualization. They explore their mind, finding a key by a long wall which they may be able to use to open it. There is the suggestion that this searching of the inner psyche is leading to something, progress, but that new experience is scary.

We reach the first half of the records end with "Prologue." The fusion of industrial sounds and synths on "Graduated Grey" is now in full effect. The bare bones rattle sounds right out of some large industrial warehouse. Over top is a set of alien synths waving over the continuous rattles of the factory.

The rattle of "Prologue" transitions smoothly into the finale "Epilogue." The clatter is added to by a much larger, heavier sound. The slam of industrial machinery. The synths are more beautiful here then almost anywhere in YMO's discog. They are so somber and yet so pretty. They take all the existential, universe-facing dread of the record and put it here. Along with this is various other sounds like electrical buzzing. It truly feels that some sort of conclusion has been reached.

This combination of the space-y synths and industrial sounds shows the themes of the record. The idea that average every day work and labor are themselves the source of this existential dread. Every worker is an individual, with their individual struggles. They are poor, hungry, tired, and in search of personal fulfillment and meaning, even the slightest improvement in mood and health. They are facing death and whether life is even worth living if this is all there is. But here, in the factory they cease to even be alive. They are one collective, chanting in unison, climbing endless stairs for a purpose that does not even relate to them. In these cities of industrial labor, even military dominance, collapsing around them. They disappear, leaving only the sounds of machinery pounding away in a silent universe. It represents the simultaneous individuality and the commonality that we take on in a labor based society. The question of what all of this is really for in a universe so beyond us.

This album is the lament of the worker. The representation of all that is contained within us as people and all that is lost in the repetitive monotony of work. It is shows the experience we all go through living in a world that we cannot even comprehend the scale of. But we still attempt to find purpose. We attempt to make an impact, to leave some kind of mark behind. To make noise.