Microcompositions: Osamu Shoji, Claude Larson and more

[3×5]

There's a certain type of late 70s electronic music that I have always found especially impressive. YMO, Hideki Matsutake, Osamu Shoji, Claude Larson and Ryuichi Sakamoto all had this sound in the late 70s. It's the Roland Microcomposer that allowed them to create perfectly sequenced electronic music, with amazing sweeps and arpeggios.

For examples, you can listen to The Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto, or the first Yellow Magic Orchestra album. You can also hear it on parts of 'For you' (1978) by Prince. "In love" is a good example track.

For Library Music Examples, You can listen to "Night Flight" by Osamu Shoji (1979), "Communications" by Andy Clark (KPM, 1979), "High Tech" by Claude Larson (1981) or "Astromusic" by Marcello Giombini (1981). These albums all have a very 'little', tightly sequenced sound, with electronic drums. However, the percussion doesn't use drum machines, but rather Syn Drums (most likely the Pollard Syndrum Quad), run through the Microcomposer.

Specifically, I am looking for two Osamu Shoji albums:

• Welcome to the SF World (1978)
• Shambala (1980)

An in general, I'm looking for any records with that 'microcomposed' sound. Any recommendations?

[Mr]

Interesting topic! Thanks for the info - I'm a bit unsure as to what 'sound' I should be looking for, but I'll check out the examples and let you know if I stumble across anything. The Microcomposer (MC-8) was first introduced in 1977, which narrows it down a bit too.

Don't have any of those Shoji albums, sorry. Just for the record; neither of these, nor "Night Flight" are actually library LPs.

[3×5]

Thanks for the reply. I read a review once of Night Flight that described it as Library Music, so I assumed it must have been shopped around for production music back in the day.

Push Button by Rubba is almost certainly a Microcomposed Library album, even though the cover shows an EMS Synthi (a much earlier sequencer that was also pretty powerful).

Oh, and Ralph Dyck! I would kill to get some Ralph Dyck recordings. There are a number of short recordings and excerpts on this Microcomposer blog.

Discogs only credits Ralph Dyck with one Library release, two releases total.

[tezeta]

Thanks for this interesting topic/discussion, 3 x 5 and Mr.. Will definitely be checking out these microcomposed albums and the blog you've mentioned!

[e-lectron]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/711ncgka3ec197z/Osamu%20Shoji%20-%20Welcome%20To%20The%20SF%20World.zip?dl=0