Song Of The Day 6/29/2012: Haruomi Hosono - "Madam Consul General Of Madras"

The Yellow Magic Orchestra is one of those things I just missed out on. I liked a lot of Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo stuff, but I never got around to YMO. Feel free to fill me in. Today's the first time I ever heard of Haruomi "Harry" Hosono. I've spent virtually the entire night looking up his stuff on YouTube and in that time I've taken mental vacations to about six or seven different locales. It's impossible to summarize all the stuff he's done. Well, it's possible, it would just be a long sub-genre. Whatever the word is for ambient psychedelic rock exotica Hoagy Carmichael video game music, that's the one. It may be "folk."

This is the last song on his 1978 album Cochin Moon, right before he formed YMO with Sakamoto, who's also somewhere on this record. The album is the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie that never got made. That's not my judgment -- it was the actual concept of the album. I wish I'd started earlier.