Yellow Magic Orchestra: Hi Tech/No Crime

Now I bought this CD when Tim and I went down to London to meet a guy from Hewlett Packard. It was late 1994, and this guy was spearheading a nebulous information superhighway partnership initiative called "Smart Isles" (that's 'smart' as in 'clever', 'isles' as in 'British'). He was on the lookout for "compelling content" that would engage users on the superhighway, and thought the NCPM might have the keys to some of this content. We were hoping he had the keys to a truckload of hi-tech money to sponsor the NCPM exhibits. He strung us along for a few months, as the timetable for launching Smart Isles kept being put back, and then stopped replying to emails or returning calls. I don't think the launch ever happened.

Anyway, after the meeting Tim took me to scour the second-hand CD shops. I can't remember if this was among his favourite Berwick Street haunts — it probably was. I picked up this CD thinking I could do with a bit more dancey electronica in my collection, and asked Tim what he thought. "No, you don't want that. You can't trust the remixes, and you'd be better off sticking to original Yellow Magic Orchestra, which isn't very good anyway." Stung by his dismissiveness, I decided to buy it just to show that I was my own man. I think he was right, though.

You can play this while you work and be confident that it won't distract you. It's too pleasant to be distracting. I quite like La Femme Chinoise (remixed by LFO), though it reminds me of another track I listened to last month with a spoken French female vocal, The Book is on the Table from Pere Ubu's Terminal Tower. La Femme Chinoise suffers from the comparison as the sample on the Ubu track is so much more hypnotic and sinister. The dub sound that the Orb have given to Tong Poo [sic] is my other favourite on this album.

I wonder if Tim knew when he dismissed it that the album was mostly mixed at the FON Studios in Sheffield, and that it was directed by, among others, his sometime board member and friend David Taylor?

MusicBrainz entry for this album