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Review: Music On Vinyl are our new best friends. With a wide range of music being reissued as of late, Yello's 1987 One Second is just spoiling us. Never being fully acclaimed when it was originally released, this is one album which really spans the full circle in terms of artistic ideas sonic experimentations. While being tagged primarily as a pop work, it's really more of a lesson in synth manipulations and nutty beat-making. "The Rhythm Divine" has to be out top track but do check the whole thing, it's magnificent...

Review: The US' Music On Vinyl always provides the quality reissues, and best of all, they do it quietly, leaving the diggers and owners of the original copies still relatively chuffed with their treasures. As such, it's the Yellow Magic Orchestra that receives the reissue treatment this time, a Japanese electro-pop outfit formed in 1979, and which includes the great Haruomi Hosono on bass - producer of the timeless and mind-bending "Hosono House". Solid State Survivor was the band's second album, and although it was released before the start of the '80s, it already contains remnants of electronic dance music as we know it today. The glassy opener is called "Technopolis", for example, and the majestic synth twists of "Rydeen" are a pleasure to our ears even today. There are slower, more magical moments such as "Castalia", but the winner for us is probably "Insomnia", a great piece of drunken drum machine drums and wonky melodies. An absolute must, even for the non-Japanese heads.