‘Hosono House’: the album that launched a lo-fi revolution
A fiercely intrepid curiosity has guided Haruomi Hosono’s voluminous body of work. Around his seminal output with Japanese electropop pioneers Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi had, since the late 1960s, immersed himself in acid rock, folk, tropical jazz, and dabbled in video game chiptune numbers. Along with fellow YMO member, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi stands as one of Japan’s greatest musical exports, winning international acclaim for his unique take on Western genres.
Releasing his first solo record following spells in Apryl Fool and Happy End, Haruomi corraled his Caramel Mama backing band to cut 1973’s Hosono House, a debut LP born from his love of The Band’s Music from Big Pink and James Taylor’s One Man Dog. “I was just influenced by new music from places like the UK and the US and was groping my way through it, so I didn’t have a strong sense of certainty,” Haruomi told Uncut earlier this year.
He added: “In the 1970s, foreign countries felt far away, and I lived in a peaceful island nation. I was deeply immersed in movements like hippie culture and psychedelia and influenced by that music, and I practised ‘Back to the Country’ by leaving Tokyo.”
Long praised for its homespun, lo-fi sound, Hosono House was recorded entirely in Haruomi’s Sayama residence northwest of Tokyo. Boasting a 16-track mixing console in his living room, each instrument was captured during afternoon sessions in his 144-square-foot bedroom unprocessed from the small space’s amplifiers, lending the record its unique sonic character.
Applying his “sightseeing” ethos to Hosono House—the practice of consuming art like a ‘tourist’ without prejudice or preconceptions and translating work via one’s background or idiosyncrasies—the Japanese lens with which Haruomi viewed his affection for Americana, as well as Latin calypso, shines throughout. However, despite being a cult hit in his home country, his debut solo effort, as well as his wider back-catalogue outside YMO, was never issued in the USA.
Haruomi would continue his odyssey in the “sightseeing” interpretation of Western pop with Tropical Dandy—its cover featuring a nod to his grandfather Masabumi Hosono, who was the only Japanese survivor of the RMS Titanic disaster—and Bon Voyage co, featuring explorations of jazz fusion and New Orleans-style exotica before Paraiso‘s Hawaiin synth flavours would lead the way to YMO.
Long enjoyed by lo-fi enthusiasts lucky enough to nab an import, anyone in the know grew to love Hosono House‘s warm and cosy folk-rock stylings. Over 50 years after its release, Stones Throw label gathered the likes of Sam Gendel, John Carroll Kirby, Cornelius and Mac DeMarco to issue the Hosono House Revisited tribute album, complete with English translations of the original Japanese sung lyrics.
“Hosono and his music have been one of the only unwavering influences since I started putting out records—it’s hard to quantify how much his music means to me,” DeMarco confessed to Uncut, having covered the album’s ‘Boku Wa Chotto’ track. “The song has this bittersweetness to it that I gravitate towards, maybe a bit of hopefulness too,” he admits gently.
