Technodelic | ||||
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Studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra | ||||
Released | November 21, 1981 | |||
Recorded | March 21 – October 13, 1981 | |||
Studio | Alfa Studio "A", Shibaura, Minato, Tokyo | |||
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Length | 43:29 | |||
Label | Alfa | |||
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Yellow Magic Orchestra chronology | ||||
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Singles from Technodelic | ||||
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Alternative cover | ||||
The first press (1981)
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AllMusic |
Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in 1981. The album is notable for its experimental and heavy use of digital samplers which were not commonly used until the mid-to-late 1980s, resulting in a more minimalist sound compared to their previous work.
It is considered the first released album to feature mostly samples and loops, influencing the heavy use of sampling and looping in popular music. Yellow Magic Orchestra's approach to sampling music was a precursor to the contemporary approach of constructing music by cutting fragments of sounds and looping them using computer technology.
Most of the sampling was made with an , a custom-built digital sampler developed by Toshiba-EMI engineer Kenji Murata. The LMD-649 was the first PCM digital sampler, capable of playing and recording PCM samples with a 12-bit audio depth and 50 kHz sampling rate, stored in 128 KB of dynamic RAM memory. It also had sampling drum machine capabilities. Notable samples used include Indonesian kecak chanting (Neue Tanz), gamelan and short looped vocals ("paa", "fuku", "chiki") for percussion in "Seoul Music," and the final two tracks feature factory noises. The LMD-649 was later used by other Japanese synthpop artists in the early 1980s, including YMO-associated acts such as and Logic System in 1982.