''Solid State Survivor'' is the second album by Japanese

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

band Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in 1979. Later, ''Solid State Survivor'' was released in 1982 in the UK on LP and cassette, also in 1992 in the United States on CD, but many of the songs from this album were compiled for release in the US as the US pressing of '' ×∞Multiplies'' (1980), including the tracks " Behind the Mask", "Rydeen", "

Day Tripper "Day Tripper" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a double A-side single with "We Can Work It Out" in December 1965. The song was written primarily by John Lennon with some contributions from Paul McCartney and ...

", and "Technopolis". ''Solid State Survivor'' is only one of a handful of YMO albums in which the track titles do not have a Japanese equivalent. The album was an early example of

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s b ...

, a genre that the band helped pioneer alongside their earlier album '' Yellow Magic Orchestra'' (1978), and it also contributed to the development of

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

. ''Solid State Survivor'' won the Best Album Award at the 22nd Japan Record Awards, and it sold two million records. In 2020, Jonathan McNamara of ''

The Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'' listed it as one of the 10 Japanese albums worthy of inclusion on ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

'''s 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Additionally, the album has been referred to as "one of the godfathers of techno music," according to Matt Mitchell of ''

Paste Magazine ''Paste'' is an American monthly music and entertainment digital magazine, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with studios in Atlanta and Manhattan, and owned by Paste Media Group. The magazine began as a website in 1998. It ran as a print publi ...

''.

Background

The album is also known for " Behind the Mask", which YMO had first produced in 1978 for a

Seiko , commonly known as Seiko ( , ), is a Japanese maker of watches, clocks, electronic devices, and semiconductors. Founded in 1881 by Kintarō Hattori in Tokyo, Seiko introduced the world's first commercial quartz wristwatch in 1969. Seiko is ...

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The Atom, atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen Tetrahedral molecular geometry, tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tet ...

wristwatch A watch is a timepiece carried or worn by a person. It is designed to maintain a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is worn around the wrist, attached by a watch strap or another type of ...

commercial. YMO made use of synthesizers for the melodies and digital gated reverb for the

snare drum The snare drum (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often u ...

s. The song has had numerous

cover version In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song release ...

s produced by other artists, most notably

Michael Jackson Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and philanthropist. Dubbed the "King of Pop", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Michael Jackson, one of the most culturally significan ...

. Alongside

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. Over the course of his seven-decade career, he received List of awards and nominations re ...

, Jackson produced a slightly more

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...

version of the techno classic with additional lyrics, originally intended for his best-selling album '' Thriller'' (1982). Despite the approval of songwriter Sakamoto and lyricist Chris Mosdell, it was eventually removed from the ''Thriller'' album due to legal issues with Yellow Magic Orchestra's management. Nevertheless, various cover versions were later performed by Greg Phillinganes,

Eric Clapton Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English Rock music, rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s l ...

(with Phillinganes as part of his backing band), Orbital, and

The Human League The Human League are an English synth-pop band formed in Sheffield in 1977. Initially an experimental electronic music, electronic outfit, the group signed to Virgin Records in 1979 and later attained widespread commercial success with their t ...

, among others, before Jackson's cover version eventually appeared on his posthumous ''

Michael Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name), a given name * he He ..., a given name * Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael Given name * Michael (bishop elect)">Michael (surname)">he He ..., a given nam ...

'' album in 2010.

Music

According to Matt Mitchell of ''

'', "tapping into the album is like taking a time machine to a mecca of arenas built with dashing, gauzy, glamorous walls of relentlessly crystalline

noise Noise is sound, chiefly unwanted, unintentional, or harmful sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to mental or hearing faculties. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrat ...

." "Technopolis" is considered an "interesting contribution" to the development of

, specifically Detroit techno, as it used the term "techno" in its title, was a tribute to

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

as an electronic mecca, and foreshadowed concepts that

Juan Atkins Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962), also known as Model 500 and Infiniti, is an American record producer and DJ from Detroit, Michigan. ''Mixmag'' has described him as "the original pioneer of Detroit techno." He has been a member of the Belle ...

and Rick Davis would later have with Cybotron. A chiptune arrangement of the album's third track, "Rydeen", would later appear as the main theme of the 1982

Sega is a Japanese video game company and subsidiary of Sega Sammy Holdings headquartered in Tokyo. It produces several List of best-selling video game franchises, multi-million-selling game franchises for arcade game, arcades and video game cons ...

arcade game '' Super Locomotive''. The album's title song "Solid State Survivor" is a new wave synth rock song. The popular

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

series '' Dragon Ball Z'' later paid homage to the song and the album with the song "Solid State Scouter" as the theme song of the 1990 television special '' Dragon Ball Z: Bardock – The Father of Goku''. The album also features a cover of

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

song "

." This was YMO's most successful album in Japan. It was the best selling album on the

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that ...

LP chart for 1980, beating Chiharu Matsuyama's ' – Godiego's was the best seller in 1979. In 1980 the album won a in the 22nd Japan Record Awards. The album went on to sell two million records worldwide.

Track listing

Personnel

*Yellow Magic Orchestra – arrangements,

electronics Electronics is a scientific and engineering discipline that studies and applies the principles of physics to design, create, and operate devices that manipulate electrons and other Electric charge, electrically charged particles. It is a subfield ...

, remix, cover conception * Haruomi Hosono – bass guitar, synth bass, keyboards,

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''vo''ice and en''coder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder wa ...

, production *

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Music of Japan, Japanese musician, composer, keyboardist, record producer, singer and actor. He pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the Synthesizer, synth-based band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his ...

– keyboards, vocoder * Yukihiro Takahashi – vocals, drums, electronic drums, costume design Guest musicians * Hideki Matsutake – Microcomposer programming * Chris Mosdell – lyrics * Sandii – vocals on "Absolute Ego Dance" * Makoto Ayukawa – electric guitar on "Day Tripper" and "Solid State Survivor" Staff * Kunihiko Murai and Shōrō Kawazoe – executive producers *Norio Yoshizawa – recording engineer, remixing *Mitsuo Koike – recording engineer *Masako Hikasa and Akira Ikuta – recording coordinators *Lou Beach – logo type * Masayoshi Sukita – photography * Heikichi Harata –

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

*Bricks – costumes *Takehime, Fumiko Iura and Mayo Tsutsumi – stylists *Mikio Honda (Clip) – hair

Chart history

References