Yellow Magic Orchestra is an electronic music group from Tokyo, Japan, formed in 1978. The group’s line-up consists of Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. It is associated with art pop, bitpop, city pop, electro-disco, electronic and electropop, and is widely identified with the early development of synth-pop.

Yellow Magic Orchestra begins as a studio project conceived by Hosono, with Takahashi and Sakamoto brought in as session musicians. The project is intended to combine orientalist exotica, including a version of Martin Denny’s Firecracker, with modern electronic sound. Its first album gains a strong response and the project develops into a touring band with a long-term identity for the three musicians.

The group uses synthesizers, samplers and digital and computer recording technology as these tools become available, and its work reaches an audience well beyond Japan. It becomes highly influential in popular music and is regularly cited as an electronic pioneer. Its recordings are also widely remixed and sampled by later artists.

Yellow Magic Orchestra releases music through Alfa, EASTWORLD and commmons. The band also works with European synth and new romantic artists, including David Sylvian of Japan, and the single Bamboo Houses pairs Sylvian and Sakamoto.

The group stops working together in 1984, with the three members returning to solo careers. It later issues the reunion album Technodon in 1993. In the early 2000s, Hosono and Takahashi reunite as Sketch Show, and when Sakamoto joins them for concerts they use the name Human Audio Sponge (HAS). In 2007 the group performs Rydeen at Live Earth in Kyoto, and later that year releases two singles under the name HASYMO: an updated version of Rydeen and Rescue.