PARAISO

ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Released in 1978, PARAISO completes Haruomi Hosono’s celebrated tropical trilogy and stands at the exact moment when his fascination with exotica began to merge with the electronic ideas that would soon lead into Yellow Magic Orchestra. Issued under the name Haruomi Hosono & Yellow Magic Band, the album brings together players including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Shigeru Suzuki, Yukihiro Takahashi, Hiroshi Sato, and Taeko Ohnuki. “Tokyo Rush,” “Shimen Doka,” “Japanese Rhumba,” and the title track combine Okinawan melody, reggae, funk, Latin rhythm, old popular song, and imagined tropical music into a deliberately unstable mixture. Hosono called this broader approach “chunky music,” and PARAISO may be its clearest expression: styles are not blended smoothly so much as placed beside one another in playful collision. Synthesizers are still only one color among many, yet their presence points directly toward the technological direction Hosono would take next. What makes the album so important is that it refuses a simple East-versus-West logic. Instead, it turns geography, nostalgia, and studio technology into raw material for a fictional musical paradise.