In our last blog we gave you details of the next Crufts on the 17th of October, you know, the one with Copy Haho and Isosceles. I meant to give you a heads up about Crufts #3 on the 21st of November, our very special and exciting project.
Those of you who have lived in Glasgow for the last wee while might remember a Devo tribute act/Glasgow super group that did a show or two (and a wedding, I think) a couple of years back. They played at the ill-fated but very excellent Do The Do at the Art School's Vic Bar back when I was a snivelling wee youngling. The idea of doing a tribute act stuck with us. Persistent Findo stalkers may recall this interview with Diskant where we half-jokingly talked of doing a Yellow Magic Orchestra covers band. This idea has finally come to fruition.
So who the ruddy fuck are YMO?
"Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) are a Japanese electropop band formed in 1978, known for pioneering the electropop music genre.^[1] The principal members are Haruomi Hosono (bass), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums and vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards)"
Ryuichi Sakamoto? That name sounds familiar. That'll be because as a composer he's won pretty much every major award for writing film scores you can win. He's also doing an extensive European tour over the next couple of months.
My first memory of being conscious of YMO was in 2005, not long after I'd started playing with Greg and Gerard. We were driving back from The Substation in Rosyth and Gerard had Solid State Survivor on in the car. I hated it. (This is definitely the first song of theirs I ever heard. Couldn't really have asked for a better introduction.) It was such unbelievably sugary pop, absolutely laden with happy happy happy synths and cheesy disco rhythms. Melodically it was unusual to a Western ear, but despite it's immediacy the chord structures were immensely complicated. I thought it was a joke band, it was simply too much for me - think of an Irn Bru enema during your first ecstasy experience. Greg and Gerard didn't do me any favours, I'd moan about having to listen to them in the car or round at someone's house, but they took no heed (thankfully).
For me at this time "respectable electronic music" meant Drukqs or Ultravisitor; downbeat, super techy programming, icy, metallic synths and bursts of noise, not shiny bubblegum electropop. But the songs were getting stuck in my head, and I was at a point where I was just about starting to appreciate the purity of analogue sounds. Eventually I relented, the period of bitching making my about-face all the more humiliating, but it was worth it.
Letting YMO into your life can seem like a scary prospect, maybe for you it's just a little too much, but I emplore you to stick at it. The more I listen to them, the more I hear their influence on Findo's own sound.

Joining us on the night will be Graeme Ronald. Graeme has played with pretty much every decent band to have come out of Glasgow for most of the last decade (I hope saying that doesn't make him feel too old, seeing as he's not remotely). One of the bands Graeme played with were called Multiplies, itself a YMO reference.

This show will be THE most fun.

Please come.