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"I'm sick and tired of the same old chaos."

BGM, released in 1981 through Alfa Records in Japan and A&M Records internationally, is the fourth album by Japanese Synth-Pop supergroup Yellow Magic Orchestra. Recorded in only two months (at the request of bandleader Haruomi Hosono), the album steps away from the comedy approach of ×∞Multiplies in favor of furthering the more mechanical direction of Solid State Survivor. Taking influence from Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo album B-2 Unit, the album incorporates elements of both Krautrock and the emerging genre of electro music (which the B-2 Unit track "Riot in Lagos" had previously been the Trope Maker for). Fitting this, the album is the first to make use of the Roland TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines in the world; YMO had already been the first band to make use of the device, featuring it on their 1980 tour for a rendition of Sakamoto's 1978 solo piece "Thousand Knives". In addition, the album marks the band's shift from prior English lyricist Chris Mosdell to Peter Barakan, a British DJ residing in Japan who had previously worked with Sakamoto on B-2 Unit; Barakan would become the band's go-to lyricist both for YMO work and their solo material.

The album's recording sessions were marked by escalating Creative Differences between Sakamoto and Hosono, owed to their competitive working relationship and their increasingly divergent tastes in music clashing with one another. This came to a head during the making of "Cue", an homage to British New Romantic group Ultravox. Sakamoto, who disliked Ultravox, attempted to sabotage the song by going AWOL during recording, sitting out on most of the album's production as a result and turning in no new tracks apart from "Music Plans", an allegory for his frustrated mental state at the time (the other two Sakamoto-composed pieces were rearranged solo cuts). Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi shot back by simply putting together the album without Sakamoto. These creative clashes would eventually lead to a hiatus after their next album, Technodelic, before culminating in the band's breakup after the supporting tour for Service in 1984.

Like YMO's previous albums, BGM was another commercial success for the band, reaching No. 2 on the Oricon LP Chart. In the US, however, it didn't chart at all; ×∞Multiplies had already just barely made the Billboard 200, and the underperformance of both albums would lead to YMO's US label, A&M Records, dropping them and refusing to reissue their music. The band's backlog would only come back to American shores with Restless Records' international CD releases of the band's first remastering campaign in 1992; these too would undersell, leading to YMO never releasing their music Stateside again. Later reissues would be limited to Europe and Canada, where they held more sizable cult followings.

BGM was supported by two singles: "Cue" and "Mass".

Not to be confused with Background Music.

Tracklist

Face ⌊•
  1. "Ballet" (4:34)
  2. "Music Plans" (4:34)
  3. "Rap Phenomena" (4:33)
  4. "Happy End" (4:33)
  5. "1000 Knives"note  (5:24)

Face ⌊••

  1. "Cue" (4:33)
  2. "U•T" (4:34)
  3. "Camouflage" (4:34)
  4. "Mass" (4:32)
  5. "Loom" (5:21)

Do you think you can trope?:

  • Bilingual Bonus: The Japanese title for "Loom", "来たるべきもの", translates roughly as "what should come."
  • Call-Back: "Cue" references the French lyrics of "Ballet" by translating them into English:
    I'm sick and tired of the same old chaos
    Must be a way to get out of this cul-de-sac
  • Despair Event Horizon: The French lyrics of "Ballet" who later get translated in English on "Cue":
    I'm sick and tired of the same old chaos
    Must be a way to get out of this cul-de-sac
  • Double-Meaning Title: While the album's title ostensibly stands for "Background Music", it was also promoted as "Beautiful Grotesque Music".
  • Externally Validated Prophecy: The chorus of "Rap Phenomena" talks about rap becoming a worldwide event. There were already Hip-Hop acts such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and The Sugarhill Gang existing prior to BGM, but the genre had a bigger commercial breakthrough later in the '80s thanks to groups such as Run–D.M.C.. One year after this album's release, "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa came out and popularized the TR-808 (Bambaataa also half-jokingly credited YMO with inventing Hip-Hop).
  • Gratuitous French: "Ballet" has French lyrics spoken by Tomoko Nunoï, a secretary of Alfa Records (YMO's label at the time) who happened to be the only person around who was able to speak French. She can also be heard on the track "La Femme Chinoise" from Yellow Magic Orchestra.
  • Gratuitous Russian: Peter Barakan speaks Russian at the end of "Mass".
  • Heartbeat Soundtrack: Played with. The "heartbeat" in question is the sound of a faucet dripping in "Loom", the rate of which was determined by taking the band members' pulses and calculating the average.
  • Heavy Meta: "Rap Phenomena", a Hip-Hop song about rapping.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The initial LP release designates each side as "Face ⌊•" and "Face ⌊••"; the naming scheme would carry over to Technodelic later that year.
  • In Name Only: Averted and inverted with the track "U•T" which stands for "Ultra Terrestrial". The band initially thought about calling it "E•T", but changed the title. Hosono went on to consider the retitle better, citing the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982.
  • Instrumentals: "Happy End", "1000 Knives" and "Loom".
  • In the Style of: "Mass" is an audible nod to Kraftwerk, who were often described as YMO's German counterpart.
  • Longest Song Goes Last: Not on the album's entire tracklist, but rather on each side of the album. They also happen to be just over 5:20, while all the other tracks hover around the 4:30 mark.
  • Lyrical Dissonance: "Rap Phenomena" is a confident techno-rap song about... unified field theory.
  • Multilingual Song: "Camouflage" is mostly written in English, but features a lengthy, distorted outro spoken in Japanese.
  • Musical Pastiche: "Cue" was written as a nod to the Ultravox B-side "Passionate Reply" (included on the single release of "Vienna").
  • New Sound Album: Avant-Garde Music with prominent electro influences.
  • The Not-Remix: Early CD releases (including the 1992 Restless CD, which to this day is still the only US CD release of the album) featured a slightly altered mix on the track "Happy End", in which the metallic sound that appears in the second half of the song comes in cold rather than gradually fading in. The original LP mix of the song would not appear on CD until the 1999 remasters of the band's back-catalog, and since then it has been standard across formats.
  • Out-of-Genre Experience: Unlike other YMO songs, "Rap Phenomena" is a Hip-Hop piece, performed by Haruomi Hosono, that pays tribute to the band's popularity among artists in the genre.
  • Piss-Take Rap: "Rap Phenomena", with mind screwy lyrics about unified field theory.
  • Rearrange the Song:
    • "Music Plans" has much louder, harder-hitting synths on Winter Live (as well as featuring a solo).
    • "1000 Knives" was previously the Title Track to Ryuichi Sakamoto's debut album (where it was called "Thousand Knives"); reportedly, Haruomi Hosono asked Sakamoto to come up with a song like "Thousand Knives", and Sakamoto responded by simply redoing the original track.
    • "Happy End" is a rearranged version of a Sakamoto solo piece, the original version of which wouldn't see release until after the YMO rendition (as a B-side to Sakamoto's non-album single "Front Line").
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: The Japanese-language dialogue in "U•T" is simply the band members discussing the very song they're playing, including a brief musing on what "U•T" means. In the end, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto decide that they don't want to hear the song.
  • Shockingly Expensive Bill: The back cover includes a lengthy receipt tallying 138 different pieces of equipment that the band purchased, amounting to a total cost of ¥51,250,000.
  • Shout-Out:
    • "Ballet" is a tribute to Polish art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka; the album was released just three days after the one-year anniversary of her death.
    • "Happy End" is named after Haruomi Hosono's former folk rock band.
    • The first two minutes of "Loom" are built around an infinite scale note, which holds for an additional 18 seconds before vanishing, nodding to YMO engineer Hideki Matsutake's "The Infinite Space Octave", produced back in 1978 and previously imitated on Hosono's solo album Cochin Moon. The "fourth member" of YMO was called back by Hosono and reproduced the Shepard Tone-like sound again for BGM.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Ryuichi Sakamoto is credited on the album as "Riuichi Sakamoto," an alternate Romanization of his name that briefly saw use in the early '80s before being supplanted by the "Ryuichi" spelling with the release of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.
  • Spoken Word in Music: The French lyrics of "Ballet", a Japanese spoken conversation on "U•T", the outro of "Camouflage", and the English and Russian monologue on "Mass".
  • Step Up to the Microphone: Lyricist Peter Barakan provides vocals on "Mass".
  • Trrrilling Rrrs: The choruses of "Rap Phenomena" feature Haruomi Hosono prominently rolling the R in every instance of "rap."
  • Two Lines, No Waiting: "Rap Phenomena" is about rapping as a growing phenomenon but also about unified field theory.
  • Word Salad Lyrics: Compared to Chris Mosdell, Peter Barakan's lyrical style is much more abstract, making use of surreal and otherwise figurative imagery. "Music Plans" in particular utilizes a stream-of-consciousness lyrical style that enhances the more bizarre elements.

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