Ryuichi Sakamoto S/D

yeah I have a huge soft spot for 'forbidden colours', the original versions (vocal & instrumental) bookend the 'mr. lawrence' soundtrack perfectly. I like the later arrangement for piano too.

'sahara blue' is a record by hector zazou w/sakamoto contributing piano and I agree that it should be destroyed.

>>'sahara blue' is a record by hector zazou w/sakamoto contributing piano and I agree that it should be destroyed. <<

I believe that after hearing the finished product, David Sylvian actually attempted it's destruction on some level. He only succeeded in erasing the two tracks that he contributed lead vocals on. The rest presses on in infamy.

thanks for the link.

I found Left Handed Dream in a 99 cent bin at a record store that otherwise is pretty good at curating, couldn't believe it!

I was previously unfamiliar with YMO and Sakamoto's pop stuff (having known only soundtrack/electronic/Fennesz stuff), so you can imagine my surprise at first hearing this fantastically weird pop record. It's awesome!

Search: Tony Takitani OST

"Summer Nerves" is great vocodopop disco w/at least Takahashi on it if not also some Hosono. Not entirely dissimilar in feel from some of Takahashi's similarly awesome "Saravah!"

I just got "Chasm" from emusic and I'm blown away by it, was not expecting such electronica/noise from some of the tracks. It is really varied and very very well done.

'B-2 Unit' is a record that shuts everyone up, always getting rediscovered by people, year after year; it's fucking advanced. Still not much electronic music sounds like this clipped, demented, sharp, alien. A....

'Esperanto' -- every time I see a copy of this out of print record I buy a copy for a friend. Released in 1985, sounds like twenty years from now; early sampling record with largely self-recorded sources. All the sounds are organic or conventionally instrumental in nature, but they're juxtaposed in acoustically impossible ways; everything sounds simultaneously hyper-realistic, plausibly real, yet absolutely artificial, impossible and composed

Anyone else heard these? The descriptions make me want to want to head straight toward ebay.

I listened to Soundbytes tonight...pretty good stuff. The first song sounds great. I want to use it in a film.

So, uh, I found some Japanese music magazines in the trash the other morning, and one of 'em has an interview with Sakamoto & some photos. Anyone who reads Japanese interested?

'Chasm' sounds like he took careful notes on Fennesz' signal path and went out and bought all the same software -- parts are impressively glitched out for extended periods of time and I like a few of the tracks all right

His new ambient album with Christopher Willits 'Ocean Fire' is beautiful.

what about his soundtrack to silk? haven't seen the film, but i think pretty much everything he has done of late has been near flawless. cendre was one of my most listened to albums of last year.

STILL haven't heard a thousand knives though.

Summer Nerves !

Thousand Knives is my fav though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LI2mHRycJ4&feature=related

I don't have anything bad to say about Ryuichi Sakamoto apart from the fact that his catalogue is so deep that I'm always finding something that I don't already have. If anything is inessential, it's the multiple collections of already released stuff, and perhaps the one that collects the work he did for commercials. But I almost always still enjoy them.

Even though I know they're not necessarily his best, I still have a soft spot for Illustrated Musical Encyclopaedia, Neo Geo and Beauty - the lush pop he was doing back was something that helped to move me away from a diet of strictly commercial music.

Just picked up a newish double CD on Decca called Playing the Piano / Out of Noise...First CD is solo piano reinterpretations of some of his soundtrack and pop work, and it's really hitting the spot. The other one explores where noise and environment intersect, apparently with some of it recorded underwater and on top of glaciers in Greenland...and some of this is supposed to follow along from some of the work he's done with Alva Noto. Haven't listened through much of it yet but I'm hoping it'll also become a favourite like some of the work he's done with Carsten and Fennesz over the last few years.

There's a quote in the liner notes for this one about how typically as people get older their musical tastes tend to get narrower, but that he's finding his getting wider thanks to his exposure to this new generation of musician collaborators and compatriots...I like to think that I'm along for the ride of continual palette expansion too, but I have to admit that he's certainly helping me along in that regard.

i sold him a copy of bonjour tristesse

He's gone way too minimal and glitchy lately. The HASYMO single he was part of a few years is my last favorite thing by him. Those chords!

Search GEM Collection if you can find it. It's a wonderful collection of synthy odds n' ends from the early to mid 80's that spans a variety of styles - from J Pop to Fairlight + beatbox exercises.

a few years ago

he is very attractive

he might win the women think he's the hottest category, true

http://images.peaceandflood.fr/images/916836RyuichiSakamoto.jpg

I've been listening the fuck out of Esperanto since r1o posted his thread on it the other day. I probably like it even more than 1000 Knives.

To anyone who didn't like Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia - seek out the Japanese version, called Ongaku Zukan; only about half the tracks from the original release wound up on the American version. This one includes "Replica" which is absolutely stunning and one of my favorite pieces of his.

B-2 Unit and Esperanto are indeed great albums, but they took me forever to really get into, especially the latter. Kind of minimal but very cool and revolutionary. Also seek the "Warhead" 12" and the "Forbidden Colours" single with the Bamboo tracks. Otherwise if you're in the market for more cool experimental electronic stuff, you can always check out Hosono's discography.

Search GEM Collection if you can find it. It's a wonderful collection of synthy odds n' ends from the early to mid 80's that spans a variety of styles - from J Pop to Fairlight + beatbox exercises.

― François de Roobabe (Capitaine Jay Vee), Friday, February 5, 2010 5:22 AM (1 year ago)

I can't find this anywhere — halp

also the alternate mix of "Happy End" that's on the Arrangement EP is the shit — should've been on BGM imo

Never heard the Arrangement EP; this is more Left Handed Dream stuff isn't it? Loved that album

Currently have an RS tune stuck in my head, but can't remember what it is!! The only line is "good morning, good evening, where are you?"

half the tracks are versions of LHD songs with added lyrics sung by Robin Scott (the "Pop Musik" guy). I don't really like them, but the second half are tracks that weren't on the album (with the different mix of "Happy End")

"good morning, good evening, where are you?"

this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ycccAwO7I

There's a nice update of that song on the Playing the Piano album - I'm pretty sure that's one of the tracks he played during his Toronto concert too.

I'll have to check it out then...that's one of his best albums, I always randomly get "Venezia" stuck in my head too

Recently got a few Akiko Yano albums; no thread about her here but so far her early albums (at least) seem to really be a treat...anyone heard of them??

I've heard "Ai Ga Nakucha Ne" (sp) — has all the YMO members contributing music iirc and a duet with David Sylvian. Her voice is nice, has kind of a young Kate Bush timbre

I like Japanese Girl and I have a great more recent album that I have no idea what it's called because it's nearly all in japanese.

Ah, her website is also in English, it's called 'Honto No Kimochi' and it's aces.

The album that is..

I've been listening to a lot of YMO over the last few years but hadn't really heard much of their solo works up until recently. I did own Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia for a while but just couldn't get into it. I gave B-2 Unit a listen and sadly that didn't click either. I did listen to a lot of Yukihiro Takahashi's albums and fell in love with the run he did from 80-83. I think I prefer his work as it's more similar to the more poppy moments of YMO, especially Naughty Boys which is one of my favourite albums of all time. I really loved Immigrants by the Sandii & The Sunsetz and Tutu by Miharu Koshi which were both produced by Haruomi Hosono. I tried one of his albums but it was a bit harder to get into. If anyone has any other suggestions of which albums I should try that would be greatly appreciated.

Have you heard Sadistic Mika Band?

Cochin Moon is probably Hosono's best, but I listen to Coincidental Music a lot xp

Kitchen - if you're looking for stuff that sounds like YMO, you're not really going to find it, except for those three Takahashi albums, which definitely sound like a YMO-side project, but in a good way. I'd be curious as to which Hosono album you got; he didn't do any solo stuff inside YMO besides Philharmony, which is a very neat album (though a little sparse) - he's definitely the kind of Eno-like artist who can do many many different styles and not look back. I guess I need to know what kind of stuff you're into before I can really say, but as I mentioned Sakamoto's Left Handed Dream is a tough one to go wrong with..

One thing you can do is to find the YEN record compilations; tons of great artists on those, and the YMO members were involved on nearly every release.

btw Paraiso is my favorite Hosono album - but if you like the non-standard/Monad period, please find the soundtrack he did for Nokto de la Galaskia Fervojo, it's seriously amazing in all the ways Hosono usually is. It's one of the coldest sounding albums I own.

Also, maybe check out Sakamoto's 1000 Knives record.

Love to hear those YEN comps.

listening to Ongaku Zukan on your rec btw, frogbs — thanks! I already loved this album so hearing the Japan-only tracks is like finding a secret level in a video game I've played 100 times

Yeah I had a feeling I would struggle to find stuff that sounded just like YMO. It was an amazing moment when I discovered all the Yukihiro albums, like I'd found another batch of lost YMO classics from that great period. I couldn't believe I'd never heard Drip Dry Eyes before. Tomorrow's Just Another Day is probably my favourite album of that run, the production is insane. They were all pretty easy to get on vinyl too unlike a lot of the albums from this scene.

Philharmony was the Hosono album I tried, it was nice enough but not really something I would listen to a lot. I am quite a big Eno fan but as you can probably guess it's the four vocal based albums from his 70's period that I love him for. If there's anymore of Hosono's albums that are slightly poppier or more song based I would give them a go.

I will give Left Handed Dream a listen, I love that artwork. Are those Yen compilations easy to track down?

Not heard anything by Sadistic Mika Band. I get the impression the stuff they all released in the 70's is quite different. I listened to the first Yukihiro album Savannah and I just didn't like it at all, it was almost easy listening Muzak.

It's kind of funny, Hosono had the same type of 'pop' phase but his was more exotica/tropical stuff. His albums with Happy End are really good. I understand if you didn't like Philharmony but can you at least admit that "Sports Man" and "LDK" are first-rate? ;)

A good reference is this:
http://technopop.info/

BTW I would be all for some kind of Japanese New Wave listening club similar to the Krautrock one. I mean that page above lists hundreds of albums and nearly half of them seem to have some link to YMO

corey - I was pretty surprised as well to find that the U.S. release cuts off half of the tracks, and also to realize that "Field Work" and "Steppin' Into Asia" didn't really fit with it at all. Sadly few outside of Japan seem to know about it. It sucks because "Replica" is my favorite RS track (at least, according to iTunes)

iTunes says my most-played RS track is "Dolphins"

BTW, just discovered that if you have access to the Japanese iTunes store, there are oodles of Playing the Piano Live concerts available from the past three years, including the ones he did on his swing through North America this past year. Just downloaded the Toronto show. They're only 1500 yen too, which makes them cheaper than most of the albums on the Japanese store!

I hate to be negative, but I really dislike the piano versions of his older songs — it makes me think of when someone orchestrates the music from the Final Fantasy games. Chintzy and artificial the originals sounds might be, they're a huge part of why I enjoy this music so much, and piano versions just turn them into elevator music imo.

Can see that, sure, but I actually like 'em a lot myself. Have really been enjoying a lot of other piano-based work like Olafur Arnalds and Max Richter etc, and so sometimes these versions really connect with me in a way that some of the 80s and 90s version don't. For example, the original "Amore" was a sophistopop high-gloss thing, but the piano version is quite moody. Not sure how much of this is just my love for the sound of the piano and how much of it is the rearrangement of the songs, though.

"Amore", yep, that's the track, thank you

Found this while perusing the information superhighway.

http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2008/01/vatokyo-mobile-musiclp1982uk.html

been distantly aware of this dude for a really long time and finally picked something up last week and i'm pretty into it! that Left Handed Dream one frogbs mentioned. excellent investment! ($0.49 x 25% employee discount iirc)

Playing the Piano is lovely

Just had a listen to Beauty again; yep, "Amore" is definitely a beautiful tune, but this album is really wonky as a whole - "Rose Music" just irritates me.

If you want to hear the difference between Sakamoto and Hosono, listen to both versions of the Okinawan folk song "Asatoya Yunta" (on the albums Beauty and Paraiso). Sakamoto's is very crisp, precise, and beautiful, while Hosono's is surreal and exotic, to the point where it sounds like the vocals were recorded backwards. I love both versions but Hosono's is really something special.

OoooOOOooooh this has "War Head" on it!! Really wish he wrote more songs like that!!!

yeah — it's like the loopiest songs from Multiplies with awesome synth sounds

http://nonukes2012.jp/en/

That is a lineup worthy of international attention

Also think it's going to be the first time sakamoto and otomo yoshihide have collaborated

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fm20120705a1.html#.T_u_dRB5lP4

I mean, was

And I guess I mean: I'm surprised to have only found out about a kraftwerk / ymo concert the week after it happens

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120717a1.html#.UASBKhB5mSM

ummm, can we please get a DVD of this guys?

I hate to be negative, but I really dislike the piano versions of his older songs — it makes me think of when someone orchestrates the music from the Final Fantasy games. Chintzy and artificial the originals sounds might be, they're a huge part of why I enjoy this music so much, and piano versions just turn them into elevator music imo.

I dunno if you were referring to 1996 but I'm listening to it now and it's absolutely gorgeous. I think the artificiality kind of takes me out of it a bit - not on stuff like Ongaku Zukan or Neo Geo, but maybe on the albums past that. I had no idea "Bibo no Aozora" had such a haunting melody because it's covered up with dusty trip-hop drums and bad vocals.

find if you can /04 and /05, two great sakamoto-covers-himself-mostly-on-piano records

'all star video: ryuichi sakamoto by nam june paik'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59MCqEjRFnI

oh my god

did anyone see this? http://eyelevel.si.edu/2013/04/nam-june-paik-musician-and-media-artist-stephen-vitiello-interviews-composer-ryuichi-sakamoto.html

a few years back I saw a film that I think was soundtracked by Sakamoto, very soft and minimal synth and piano music, with the visuals being mostly black with white rectangles fading in and out based on the piano notes. I think. Ring a bell for anyone?

wings of honneamise OST is really good man. esp "F A D E":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8nunklJx7o

Oof, sad news:

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/07/10/ryuichi-sakamoto-diagnosed-with-throat-cancer/

:-/

oof, how awful. all the best to him :(

Anyone who's a fan, if music that sounds like a combination of Naughty Boys and Ongaku Zukan appeals to you, search out the Works I - CM disc. It's basically a comp of all the commercial music Sakamoto composed between 1982 and 1984, a lot sounding like YMO outtakes, though most are instrumental. Akiko Yano is on a few fits. Nothing too adventurous but it's essentially Sakamoto's own version of Coincidental Music.

CM/TV is also excellent

yeah, those comps are great. "perky jean" is a favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55pAtVe-7VE

this gets stuck in my head a lot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiz1dEJ3l7M

YOU! YOU!

hahaha awesome

CM/TV is also excellent

yup I'm listening to it now; it's mostly the same tunes though isn't it?

whoa, there's a Penguin Cafe Orchestra cover on here (???)

Turns 63 today!!

he's a god.

I recently got Beauty based on the Allmusic review and "album pick" status. I'm now halfway through and holy crap, this is maybe one of the worst albums I've purchased in years.

Every time I see this thread bumped I fear I'm going to read that he's died.

xp "beauty" hasn't aged well it's true

i had the same thought, wish him well.

Oh God, me too, hope he's doing well.

According to the YMO Media Fan's FB page there's another mad exhibition of YMO's gear and artwork in Japan somewhere, lot's of geeky photo's of their equipment popping up.

I myself don't have the slightest problem with Beauty or any other music "aging" objectively (if that were possible). I have aged; I've found my tastes have expanded, taking in and not excluding anything I have seriously enjoyed before. I'm still enjoying Beauty as I did back in the day, and still find it one of his best realised albums.

on the cancer front, the latest news is he's beaten it.

there's a slew of MIDI/Alfa reissues of the early stuff (up to and including Esperanto) that's been released recently, nice 2-cd edition of Ongaku Zukan and other stuff. details here: http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/MDCL-5034

Oh wow, that's AWESOME!

really? i would be so happy! my internet is garbage right now so i actually can't check, but last i looked (~a month ago) his website still had the cancer notice posted...

Didn't realize he was sick :( Hope he legitimately has beaten it though.

I've been passovely looking out for copies of Esperanto ever since I saw the thread on it here. Apropos S/D, what else is good in that vein (i.e. more,mfor lack of a better word, "weird")?

Every time I see this thread bumped I fear I'm going to read that he's died.

no kidding, really glad to see he's doing better

Beauty is still decent to my ears, I still think "Amore" is one of the best songs he's ever done. If you don't like it definitely don't get any of the albums that followed it until 1996, cuz I do think he tailed off quite a bit afterwards.

Smoochy was 1996 and that's fantastic, or is that what you're saying, that the 1990-95 period is underwhelming, but then he rallied?

I too love Smoochy, and Heartbeat (1992) as well. I also think Chasm, his last 'glitch pop' album (2004) is grand. He mostly fell off my radar after that, mainly because that minimal ambient electronica is not my forte, but I'm meaning to check all that newer stuff too. There's nothing in his catalogue that's inherently bad - his output being so diversified, it's just a matter of what's up your alley at any given time.

xp yeah that's what I'm saying, don't remember much of Smoochy but that sort of lighter, more hip-hop driven pop he was doing never really did it for me. the album 1996 was pretty damn good though and cast a new light on a lot of those tunes.

Chasm was one of the first I'd heard from him and I thought it was awesome - it was his first new album since I'd gotten into him and I kinda figured he'd be doing albums like it for a long time, just long amalgams of his entire career like that. I'm not much a fan of the recent collabs he's done with people like Fennesz and Alva Noto, putting harsh distortion over minimal piano bits isn't interesting in the slightest to me. Still wanna hear his newer solo piano stuff.

I've been passovely looking out for copies of Esperanto ever since I saw the thread on it here. Apropos S/D, what else is good in that vein (i.e. more,mfor lack of a better word, "weird")?

― ed.b, Friday, April 3, 2015 6:44 AM (2 hours ago)

b-2 unit is his other really weird one, more like early 80s post punk/industrial bricolage electro -- sounds v advanced for the time

ongaku zukan is probably my most played album by him but it is more in a melodic art pop vein but still quite experimental in parts.

futurista has a couple tracks that sound like esperanto but suspect you will hate some of the pop songs (w/ the vocalist from the peech boys)

the "field work" single's b-side "exhibition" is still the strangest music he's ever done -- and one of the best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLm5hvuhtWA

the entire piece is 15 mins

Search: Thousand Knives (!!), B2 Unit (!!), Tokyo Joe, Adventures of Chatran OST, CBL (!!), Disappearance, Cinemage, CM / TV (!! seriously astonishing collection of TV spots and the like), Comica, Derrida OST, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence OST (!!), Ongaku Zukan, Playing the Piano (extended Japanese version has some worthwhile additions), Smoochy OST, Shining Boy & Little Randy OST (!!), Silk OST (!!), Soundbytes comp (!!), Soundtracks live comp (!!), High Heels OST, UTAU instrumentals disc, Wuthering Heights OST, Year Book 2005-2014, /04 (!!), /05 (!!), 1996 (!! w/ bonus tracks why not)
Consider: Chasm (lot of dreck, but some unbelievable stuff on there), BTTB, Casa, A Day in New York, The End Of Asia, Esperanto, Heartbeat (lotta shit, some greatness), Image Sketch, Little Buddha OST, Century of Reform (some dumb arrangement choices but the "Rhodes Version" tracks are top tier new age/ambient), Futurista, Neo Geo, Out Of Noise, Three, Harakiri OST, all of his late period collaborations with western ambient people
Destroy: Bricolages (mostly boring remixes by other artists), Femme Fatale OST, Summer Nerves, fuckawful Sweet Revenge album (though title track is gold), UTAU, トニー滝谷

and more, but fuck it

Can anybody help? The music on this vid at 5:15 onwards, I think it is really well known, is it a Sakamoto piece? Killing me...

https://youtu.be/-XVIFadHzZ8?t=5m14s

nope, not so well known. seems to be a version of material from Ryuichi's (completely gorgeous) Shining Boy & Little Randy OST. Ryuichi rearranges and re-titles themes all the time in his soundtracks, so without relistening through the whole thing i can't say for sure that this version isn't on the soundtrack itself, but knowing him and the circumstances it's probably one of his self-covers. nobody does a better job of consistently reimagining their own material...

skimming the soundtrack now it sounds like this uses bits and pieces throughout the whole thing, most of which isn't on youtube, but here's the full-blown theme itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Cj3Sy1nf1s

if you dig it, you'd profit well from tracking down as much of his soundtrack work and self-cover albums as you can. it's astonishing how much gutting pentatonic beauty he keeps on deck

after some more itunes spelunking, the version on the /05 live piano album is closer to what you hear in your video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geDUXEoOCwE

Thanks so much! I have /05, I quickly zipped through /04 and Playing The Piano but couldn't find it, what a lovely track.

nice! the Shining Boy OST, if you don't have it, has some really nice variations on the theme, less over-the-top than the one in that youtube

I will check it out, I'm def in the mood for some melancholic Sakamoto piano.

http://www.factmag.com/2016/02/03/ryuichi-sakamoto-alva-noto-interview/

New album announced -- sole details in email:

20170428

2XLP + CD + DIGITAL

A little more at his site:

http://www.sitesakamoto.com/

geez, what is it??

dude's been incredibly busy with soundtracks and collabs these last 10 years, but as far as actual studio material would this be the first since Out of Noise in 2009?

hard to believe Chasm was 13 years ago. that seemed like such a career-rejuvenating album at the time, like his entire resume on one disc. looking around now it appears the collabs were a bit more famous.

what I mean to say is, if it's anything other than solo piano or glitch-ambient I'll get excited

It's his 65th birthday today!

More piano + glitch?

http://pitchfork.com/news/71081-ryuichi-sakamoto-announces-new-album-async/

The beauty of "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" makes me tear up to this day.

anyone hear the new one yet?

have just been alerted to the presence of Year Book 2005-2014, a compilation of commissioned work that thus far has gone unreleased. his other commercial music comps have been great so I would guess this one is as well.

Got the new one, and currently on a second listen.

In short, it's fab. Yes, it's ambient/glitch (which may disappoint a few upthread) but with a much less austere tonal palette than the collaboration records (where he was basically adding piano ornaments to other people's dronescapes, not that there's anything wrong with that). It's low key but colourful - lurrrrvely Prophet 5 chords on Zure, for example. And the odd melodic flourish that'll make you well up a bit in places too.

Will see how it plays out over subsequent listens, but I'm loving it so far. What with the Revenant soundtrack being his best OST in years, his post-illness return to work on such stellar form is an inspiring thing to behold.

Is there a track with David Sylvian on the new one?..,

new album is pretty amazing

^
i really like the combination of introspective, lyrical piano pieces with sound art tracks on async.

Great album

yup

he's in NYC next weekend for a film retro of his scores

https://quadcinema.com/program/forbidden-colours-ryuichi-sakamoto-at-the-movies/

The Revenant too recent for a retrospective?

could be

also an arthouse venue

true

while aysnc just breezed by like a cool autumn day on the first few listens, I've recently returned to it and found it to be a stunner. I thought his previous solo album Out of Noise was kind of boring but I really like the "14 flavors of ambient" thing going on here, not to mention how the title/theme "async" manifests itself in several ways. I wish it was a bit more melodic but only because the actual melodies on here are absolutely gorgeous. I like the plinky plonky stuff. Reminds me a bit of The Ship by Eno, not in any thematic way but rather how the openness and sense of space lets you hear the compositions in a number of ways.

also it occurred to me that this is sort of a spiritual successor to B-2 Unit and Esperanto in some ways

Doco & a concert film coming our way soon, which likely means US/UK audience have already had a chance to see them - any good?

Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA
Ryuichi Sakamoto: async Live at the Park Avenue Armory

doc is playing in NY, haven't seen it yet

There was a one-off showing in DC that I missed. Read that it shows his interest in director Tarkovsky

Last fall a friend told me a story about Ryuichi Sakamoto, the renowned musician and composer who lives in the West Village. Mr. Sakamoto, it seems, so likes a particular Japanese restaurant in Murray Hill, and visits it so often, that he finally had to be straight with the chef: He could not bear the music it played for its patrons.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/dining/restaurant-music-playlists-ryuichi-sakamoto.html

Tony Rayns in sight and sound said:

Moderately interesting but deeply unsatisfying, this not-very-intimate portrait of the musician Sakamoto Ryuichi covers a lot of ground without revealing or even suggesting anything surprising to anyone who has followed Sakamoto’s career...

His private life was evidently off-limits: there’s no mention of either of his marriages, or of his reportedly on-going relationship with his manager, with whom he has two children. As far as the film is concerned, Sakamoto lives and works alone...

Television’s appetite for films like this one is so voracious that most pass by more or less unexamined; criticism of the form of such ‘arts docs’ remains stuck at a fairly primitive level...

Schible’s film is far from the worst offender among recent arts docs, {but while} Its picture of Sakamoto recovering from cancer and getting his musical juices flowing again is mildly diverting, its impact is minimal and its methods are desultory.

actually, I can paste the whole review from a pdf, if you want, but that's pretty much it.

fwiw, Rayns had much more interesting things to say about Schrader's First Reformed in the same issue. He didn't like that either.

amazing detail in that restaurant music piece:

It was also not very loud, and here we arrive at an issue that may concern older customers more than younger ones. Mr. Sakamoto objects to loud restaurant music, and often uses a decibel meter on his phone to measure the volume of the sound around him.

would love to eat at a restaurant with that playlist tbh.

I want to eat in that restuarnat the next time I am in NYC

that sakamoto dinner time playlist is excellent, by the way.

for those with spotify, search "The Kajitsu Playlist". it's good BGM for dinner, perhaps, but it's also good BGM for wandering around your house and living

cool, thx

Saw the film last night in San Francisco, absolutely loved it

I saw sakamoto in kajitsu a few years ago! it's a wonderful restaurant.

I can't say I loved the doc, but if you're a fan, I see no reason not to catch it. it's enjoyable. I esp liked the field recording scenes.

not much YMO content tho, it's pretty focused on his solo material and especially the last few years. I caught a Q&A session with RS and the director and they mentioned that interviews with hosono and takahashi specifically conducted for the film were edited out. oof!

Caught 'Coda' on telly last night. A very ambient documentary, no real narrative, just being able to see Sakamoto hunt for and record sounds, playing about in the studio, reminiscing. Needles to say I loved it. What a handsome man he is, too. See this if you can.

Favourite scene: Him trying to get a nice sound on his terrace. He puts a glass vase upside down to record the ticking of the rain drops, but it's not quite what he's after. He then picks up a blue bucket, looks at it for a while, and then puts it on his head, steps outside, and we see him from behind listening to the rain fall on the bucket on his head. Tranquil and endearing.

yea I've heard a lot about what this doc *isn't* so I've been wondering what exactly it is. if it's just 2 hours of him messing around i'll still watch it

I saw it a couple of months ago, and I thought it was great. Doesn't interrogate him very hard, but it's a v enjoyable 90 mins of hanging out with an interesting guy who does interesting things in an interesting way.

@Britain's Sexiest Cow (jed_)
Could you please post the full review of Tony Wayns of Coda? I'm very interested to know what else he said. I searched with Google but could not find the review.
Thanks!

anybody heard the 2015 deluxe reissue of Ongaku Zukan/Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia? fully loaded with bonus tracks + a whole extra disc of unreleased stuff

http://www.discogs.com/Ryuichi-Sakamoto-%E9%9F%B3%E6%A5%BD%E5%9B%B3%E9%91%91-Ongaku-Zukan-2015-Edition/release/6830161

Wow! No, but I want to.

It's fantastic. Also, weirdly, it's on Spotify (and I presume a bunch of other stream/download sites): https://open.spotify.com/album/2CI4X2v5UpNLxh6RFpspHR?si=YJFSsKveR9Sj-oPc_lZ5OA

The original Ongakuzukan tracklisting is so much better than the Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia version...

It astonishes me that someone with a back catalogue as sprawling as Sakamoto's still has over an hour's worth of unreleased material, makes you wonder how much more there is.

uh wow, that looks pretty excellent. will have to be on the lookout.

I wonder if there's any overlap with this:

https://www.discogs.com/Ryuichi-Sakamoto-Works-I-CM/release/2283320

which is mostly Sakamoto doing commercial music, but believe it or not, it's very good

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and Hidariude No Yume were also reissued with bonus discs of outtakes and unreleased stuff, and then there's been four volumes of the Year Book series (the latest volume of which, 1985-1989, has five discs). I think there's a LOT of stuff in the vault!

I love his commercial music!

listening to the Ongaku Zukan/Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia reissue now, thanks for the head's up! speaking of sakamoto:

.@0PN's next EP for @WarpRecords includes a remix by master composer @ryuichisakamoto https://t.co/FeSnqS0MxL

— Resident Advisor (@residentadvisor) October 25, 2018

Listening to this as well. A lot of it is basically his fusion album – Japanese melodies over Gaucho-ish horn arrangements, Fairlights pads and electronic percussion. It goes down pretty easily but has some nice 80s production touches. The first track was stuck in head this am and is a full-on YMO reunion cum big band. YMBB?

This = Ongaku Zukan

Also, listening to this makes me realize how long it took before I really *got* Sakamoto. I think my first exposure to him was on Sylvian’s first several records and Gentlemen Take Polaroids . I also read the entry about him in the Trouser Press Record Guide (an early bible for me) – the descriptions of his pedigree and Japanese-Western fusion experiments made his records sound incredibly exotic but very little of his catalogue (or YMO’s) was available then (early 90s).

When I finally heard Neo Geo, the followup to Ongaku and produced by Bill Laswell (Sakamoto was kind of the designated Fairlight guy in his Session All-Stars around that time – he’s the one noodling at the beginning of the last track on PiL’s Album), I was a little underwhelmed. It was the first of his own releases featuring big names, and while there were hints of what I would eventually love about him, it had fewer textural experiments and less ambition than I had hoped for. The same was largely true of Heartbeat, the two solid Sylvian collaborations aside.

It was only when I happened upon a cutout Dutch copy of Left Handed Dream and Technodelic at Borders Books and Music that I began to understand what the fuss was about. Yes, he can be overly sentimental at times but at its best the orchestral and Japanese formalism sounds fabulous juxtaposed with various electronic experiments.

Even still, it’s never been very easy to get a complete picture of his output – I’ve still never seen a physical copy of B-2 Unit and I literally just heard Illustrated/Ongaku this week, which are hugely important records in his catalogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUaNz9M8fs8

this is extremely cool

maybe my favorite single of the year thus far actually

Over the last month I've been really diving into his solo works (with some mixed results). I've been delighted to find albums such as B-2 Unit and Esperanto have finally clicked with me. The original version of Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia was a revelation too. Async was the clear standout of his later works although there's still a lot I haven't listened to.

The biggest find is the Works I - CM compilation mentioned a couple of times on this thread by frogbs. That is an incredible collection of music that I've probably played ten times in the last week alone. Great tip on that one!

Isn’t it though? Love it!

I honestly can't stop listening to it. I notice there is a volume two as well. Hopefully that's a similar quality as I'm going to need another fix soon.

nice, thanks for bumping it!

https://pc.video.dmkt-sp.jp/ft/s0007155

It looks like Sakamoto is doing a live streaming performance next week on something called DTV, who also seem to be streaming a few other gigs of his from the last few years.

It being a Japanese streaming site, it appears to be completely locked down (I couldn't get anything to play even with a VPN) but someone here might have better luck than me?

So the stream seems to be up and running here: https://pc.video.dmkt-sp.jp/ti/10000238
Working fine VPN'ed into Japan.

They're showing a 2011 gig now, apparently the live stream starts at 7pm Japan time. (11am here in London!)

enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6td9KUZMfw&pbjreload=10

hmm not sure if that worked... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6td9KUZMfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv3Iqzpv3_I

In this documentary, filmed while he was recording Ongaku Zukan, Sakamoto mentions that he has recorded 30 tracks for the album from which he will choose ten, so I'm guessing that's where the supplemental material for the reissue came from.

Realized this am that the record he produced and arranged for Virginia Astley, Hope in a Darkened Heart, is really required listening for anyone interested in Ryuichi’s mid-80s classy orchestral Fairlight experimental pop phase, a la Ongaku Zukan and his contemporaneous work w David Sylvian.

It’s a legitimately weird record – with nursery rhyme-melodies sung in Astley’s little girl falsetto over Ryuichi’s booming gated drums, sequenced music boxes and gamelans. The duet with Sylvian himself that leads off the record is a pretty unique entry in his catalogue:

https://open.spotify.com/track/5nwDAFzUqt7hVVsKoWGcJN?si=xX7P9oCVScqGde8qpsO5eg

Ohhh! Thanks for the recommendation, sounds ace!

It is! And if you want to go the Bandcamp route

https://virginiaastley.bandcamp.com/

Finally watched the Playing Piano for the Isolated concert last week. It's great!

NIT's spotify link is to a mellow 80's compilation :)
Still, having checked the Virginia Astley album, I thank you! Lovely stuff, esp. the latter half. Loved reading up on her, too

69 years old today

he's currently flooding Twitter with birthday wishes causing me to come to the realization that he is a strikingly handsome man, even today

nice

Bad news:

https://thequietus.com/articles/29458-ryuichi-sakamoto-diagnosed-bowel-cancer

Nooooooooooooooooooo :(

Oh man :(

ugh, hopefully he pulls through :(

Ah, fuck. :(

jesus, no

hoping the best for him. Takahashi had a brain tumor removed just a few months ago, as well. :(

its hard to gauge the tone of YT's social media posts, he seems optimistic but apparently he's not out of the woods yet

the one time I randomly catch an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BuelFc2j1VM/

Heart does a flip again now when I see this thread bumped.

Me too :(

Then enjoy this instead, as he has the closing track

https://modernobscuremusic.bandcamp.com/album/prsnt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC5Ry5092Pk

now here's a powerful image

https://i.imgur.com/RtP0rpZ.png

I would listen to this crossover.

btw before anyone asks I have no idea what the context of this is, I just saw it in a YMO FB group. i wish i knew

Money Mark
February 24, 2012
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Keith Emerson!…i’m standing with two of the very best!!….YMO,ELP….backstage,Hollywood Bowl

new album is heavy. maybe it's knowing about his health struggles, maybe it's because YT recently passed, but wow is there a lot of weight to what is essentially a solo piano album (there are some synths too of course). you can even hear him breathing throughout. almost sounds like he's struggling sometimes.

like I'm listening on headphones and I keep thinking someone is behind me

While I thought async was elegiac this new one, 12, is almost too much.

oh man, yeah, “heavy” is the right word. I’m usually not a fan of his solo piano stuff either but this one is hitting differently for sure. haven’t quite decided if it’s due to the circumstances but don’t think it’s just that. hits pretty hard in any case and isn’t something i can just throw on casually.

the least interesting ymo member. i consider his solo output pretty overrated. on the other hand, hosono and takahashi solo material is pretty consistent.

the least interesting ymo member. i consider his solo output pretty overrated. on the other hand, hosono and takahashi solo material is pretty consistent.

Geeta Dayal with an excellent piece on the album:

https://4columns.org/dayal-geeta/ryuichi-sakamoto

CerebralCaustic, I can understand that opinion if you're solely judging based on solo albums. But have you checked out Sakamoto's production/arrangement work? It's incredible. Taeko Onuki and Akiko Yano's early-to-mid '80s albums, for starters? It's incredible.

12 has turned into a daily play for me. i hope he can release more music, but if he doesn't, it's a powerful final act.

xxpost nonsense

fwiw Sakamoto is my "least favorite" of the three too, only because Hosono's music is very spiritual and precious to me and Takahashi has done so much stuff I absolutely love, while Sakamoto has a bunch of albums I'm just not really too interested in. that said I still love him and own a lot of his solo albums. so "least favorite" isn't really a term I like using. pound for pound surely YMO is one of the greatest bands in history

Geeta's review was nice. wonder what she's been up to?? not posting on ILX I see.

This sounds fun. Guess I'll probably get to see it at Big Ears.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CpAnOjCM7iB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

agree on Hosonos output being the most consistently good one,
but Sakamoto and Takahashi both had their fair share of bland assembly-line productions, no?
Both LOTS of great ones too, obviously...
I think async is the best Sakamoto has been on album length in a long time, really love that one.
Have yet to hear 12.

say it ain't so Sakamoto

A Q&A about 12 with @commmons
and Ryuichi Sakamoto
17/20

全体を通して「プログレッシブ ロック」的な感じがしたのですが、いわゆるプログレ感を意識されることはあったのでしょうか？

The whole album has a progressive rock vibe to it but did you have this in mind?

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) March 22, 2023

全くありません。人生でプログレが好きになったことも影響を受けたこともありません。

Not at all. I’ve never in my life liked prog rock and I’ve never been influenced by it either.#skmtnews #ryuichisakamoto #坂本龍一 #twelve

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) March 22, 2023

It's cool. I have never heard any Prog influence in RS or his projects. Dunno what the person asking the question was listening to.

It’s an ambient electronic piece? I am still digging into that record somewhat. It’s mixed for 360 reality audio which is pretty cool. But I honestly don’t get the prog connection at all.

【訃報】音楽家の坂本龍一さん死去 71歳https://t.co/PQ6k4eokvv

80年代に3人組バンド・YMOで世界的ヒット曲を生み出した。映画音楽でも知られ、88年には米映画『ラストエンペラー』で米アカデミー作曲賞を日本人で初めて受賞。晩年はがん闘病が続いたが、最後まで音楽作りに情熱を注いだ。 pic.twitter.com/n7DlL2UdpA

— ライブドアニュース (@livedoornews) April 2, 2023

RIP!

pic.twitter.com/mYLMEN6HrZ

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) April 2, 2023

:*(

Oh no

Ah damn. But such legacies he and Takahashi left.

I was just asking my friend in Tokyo what the deal was when YT passed, and it was front-page news. Sakamoto is probably more well-known. He said it was announced on the little TVs they have on the Yamanote line.

😞

Oof. Fuckin cancer.

been dreading this news, what a life and career

he lived an amazing life and left behind so much good music. RIP Sakamoto

Oh no 😢

His latest record was already haunting but man it’s too much to bear right now

Listening to 12 this morning (for the first time in a month or two) was definitely a changed experience.

an artist that, once i discovered him, has never really fallen out of favor or rotation. over half my life now, have always just had him "around" but never really considered him a favorite for whatever reason (seems like he pretty much was the whole time). looking back, very cliche, but what a wholly legendary resume. hard to know what to say when an innovator of his calibre leaves. unending respect. rest well.

I braced for this everytime I saw a headline about him over the last 7 or so years. I suppose the inevitable is inevitable, and think it’s inspiring that he wasn’t just active until the end, but also through cancer and into his 70s. What an absolute legend. I’m grateful for what RS has given this world.

YMO were always such a perfect band for me, because they resembled the 3 parts of a person - YT had the looks, HH had the soul, and RS had the brains. Sakamoto was on a very similar wavelength to Brian Eno, someone who clearly thought about music on a deep and philosophical level. There was such purpose to everything he did, and holy hell did he do a lot of it. async in particular, it says so much despite being fairly minimal. tbh this kind of prevented me from getting into his stuff as much as Takahashi's (whose work is a lot more fun) or Hosono's (whose stuff is more warm and spiritual) - everything Sakamoto did outside of his pop phase had a very particular heaviness to it. His last two especially. async feels like it's bearing the weight of the world. 12 confronts his own mortality in such a direct manner. It's hard to listen to sometimes. But man, it's such brilliant stuff.

RIP Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Here he is with anti-nuke mascot Monju-kun in 2012. pic.twitter.com/zqpVTHa2CM

— Mondo Mascots (@mondomascots) April 2, 2023

God damn it. RIP.

So many heroes going. It's a sadness that can be overwhelming. But we will always have the music.

^^^
I've been a fan of RS since discovering him through his (sensational) contributions to David Sylvian's Secrets of the Beehive, 35 years ago. It's like hearing that an old friend has died. A true titan. RIP.

I was thinking, was that Hosono concert at the Barnican the last time YMO played together?

*Barbican

RIP, what a legend

thought this recent statement he made was beautiful

"Since I have made it this far in life, I hope to be able to make music until my last moment, like Bach and Debussy whom I adore."

i think i will dig out the first mari iijima record, love the songs they did on that one

Belatedly discovering the broader YMO universe in 2019 was probably the last time I got really excited about a whole swath of music that was more or less unknown to me. I'm grateful that he left behind so much, because I've still only scratched the surface — but I'm angered that he's gone, because I knew he was fighting to keep going and 71 seems too young. It probably doesn't help that I was just reading about diminishing life expectancy trends in different parts of the world. RIP, anyway!

Rip to a good one

RIP, spinning BGM right now

Often find BTTB a little sentimental, but it's hitting the spot right now. Farewell, Ryuichi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btyhpyJTyXg

there are like 3 or 5 sakamoto docs out there, anyone here seen multiple who recommend the best one?

My favorite is Tokyo Melody followed closely by CODA

RIP. I'd be remiss not to mentioning that his parody of "Bolero" in Femme Fatale is one of the most thrilling musical jokes in any American(ish) film.

Reading the story in the Guardian, I had no idea that Eric Clapton(!) had covered Behind the Mask.

hell yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXUJoHyiuw

Biggest RIP. Only 1996 is making sense today.

Reading the story in the Guardian, I had no idea that Eric Clapton(!) had covered Behind the Mask.

― ionjusit (P. Flick),

His greatest recording

most of his recent stuff is depressing the hell outta me right now so instead I'll link this 2019 track that's an interpretation of "Energy Flow" with tabla and two rappers...I'm guessing fans may recognize who these guys are. I think I actually voted this #1 on the ILM 2019 poll...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUaNz9M8fs8

I tried listening to /05 today but 'Shining Boy...' is just too much to take, probably his most perfect melody, and oh so very sad. I switched to a B-2 Unit live bootleg instead.

For some non-depressing RS, this is just a long string of concise bangers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9intgzzLfk

ahh yeah, his commercial jingles were so good - as an album this would be like, top 5 for me

https://www.discogs.com/release/2283320-Ryuichi-Sakamoto-Works-I-CM

man this sucks. as fate would have it my copy of B-2 Unit arrived a couple days ago, listening now and "Thatness and Thereness" is suddenly heartwrenching

most of the rest, I've suddenly realized, sounds like proto-Autechre, particularly "E3-A" which fooled me into thinking I was listening to Chiastic Slide briefly

its one of those like E2-E4 where every time I see the release year I do a double take

Saw some weird TV mini-series called Wild Palms which he did the score. That stood out to me. I've been meaning to listen to Yellow Magic Orchestra too. RIP.

thanks for the tokyo melody rec upthread

the “tong poo” scene was so cute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHhksjfg8Ik

i like all the headlines calling him a 'pop star' because that's a sort of odd idea of what ymo were although i guess not completely incorrect

They were definitely pop stars in Japan.

You’re welcome, original bgm!

My first encounter with Sakamoto was on Japan's "Taking Islands in Africa", a lot warmer emotionally than is usual for Sylvian; and after seeing references to David "Sylvain" in two major Sakamoto obituaries, it's no wonder that he's given up trying to impress himself on modern-day music culture.

Sylvain David Sylvain

"Bamboo Houses" was probably the first time I heard Sakamoto, hated it at the time but then again I was about 14 and I came round to him in time.

So glad I got to see the aforementioned ramshackle YMO 'reformation' at the Barbican Hosono gig a few years back!

he's been doing albums with alvo noto for raster noton since 2002. i've not heard a single one. samples suggest they are very minimal (as per the sleeves)

I saw them play together at the Sydney Opera House - I actually found it a bit uninvolving, but I listened to the live album from the show this morning (‘Two’) and felt it worked much better as a recording. Odd. But I suppose there is a delicacy and intimacy to all the scrapes and rustles that works much better in nearfield listening than it does in a cavernous concert hall.

^This is congruent with my experience of the HAS/YMO gig at the Meltdown Festival in London.

I was kinda perplexed by the setlist and arrangements, and wtf was Fennez doing on stage? But listening/watching back, and after hearing more Sketch Show records, it sounds great to me now.

I really liked the London 2008 live record. Though it's kind of amusing that it only has 3 actual YMO songs on it (4 if you count the new "Rydeen"). Was nice to hear the Sketch Show material live, though "Flakes" and "Mars" are both weird choices in a live context. They have a lot of tracks I think may have worked better. Oh well. The new version of "Ongaku" in particular was really pretty.

Yeah, I stupidly went probably expecting modular synths, Akiko Yano bouncing around, and a 12 min version of Tong Poo, but instead it was this very hushed and measured glitchy electronica.

I'm so glad it was filmed to give the older me a chance to revisit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEs3R3UJr74

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_N6zz60lI

actually I didn't know the London show was professionally shot. funny I assumed all the percussion was electronic but at one point you can see Hosono tapping on a glass bottle with a pencil. I agree it's not what you'd expect from a YMO show but I can really respect that they kept evolving and made no effort to try to recapture the past. I mean the '79 YMO shows supporting Solid State Survivor were absolutely nothing like the '84 ones for Service, in fact every single album they did was way different, so I guess it's YMO after all.

that clip of Sakamoto appearing for the encore is super cute. I can't imagine how geeked out I would've been if I saw that. Reminds me of one of the cutest YMO clips - the part in the Tokyo Dome show where Sakamoto slips in the Cosmic Surfin riff, clearly surprising the other two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfY9AKKK28M

Looking at his work in terms of an album discography is pretty intimidating to someone who mostly focused on his film music. What are the absolute must listens?

that clip of Sakamoto appearing for the encore is super cute. I can't imagine how geeked out I would've been if I saw that.

It was a magical moment for sure. Enhanced considerably by the fact that, as it usually goes when seeing an artist from anywhere in London, a huge slice of the audience was Japanese.

I was in the last row of the very front stalls at the Barbican gig with an aisle right behind me and I turned around just in time to see YT walking down the aisle to the stage, I was giddy, I could have fist-bumped him on the way past.

he's been doing albums with alvo noto for raster noton since 2002. i've not heard a single one. samples suggest they are very minimal (as per the sleeves)

― koogs

these are all great imho

Eric H I’m very partial to - in no particular order -

B-2 Unit
1000 Knives
Esperanto
Neo Geo
async
Left Handed Dream
GEM Collection

missing one or two ottomh but I think these are pretty wonderful non-sndtrk albums.

Thanks! Realizing now I have listened to (and love) Thousand Knives, but looking forward to sampling the rest!

that list is more or less my sweet spot too but i’d probably add works/CM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R731jAs0_NU

i’d be lying if i said i like the 2000s glitchy electronic RS or YMO stuff even 1/4 as much as my faves from either discographies but i also respect them following their interests and it can be pretty. disappearance with taylor deupree is prob the one i’ve played the most, though it’s been a few years.

also features a relatively early appearance from ichiko aoba:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIRO5k6bmKY

def also respect how he stayed plugged in and worked with lots of younger musicians basically his whole life

Also not to discount his playing and production for others especially with ex Akiko Yano. Gohan Ga Dekitayo (sp?), Ai Ga Nakucha Ne and Tadaima are all strange, exciting albums.
I also live for YMO up until Naughty Boys when it got too slick for a while ( for me ).

yeah I love the CM stuff! illustrated musical encyclopdia is so fng good too

the slickness is the point I think, the whole album sounds like 40 minutes of commercial jingles, but you can actually enjoy them because they're not trying to sell you anything (besides more YMO albums I guess)

tbh I'm not too sold on glitchy Sakamoto either but that stuff seems to have cultivated an entirely different audience so I assume it's very good for what it is. I would say the same about a lot of Brian Eno albums. async, his latest "proper" record, is very nice. I also really dig Chasm, which strikes me as one his few true "solo" records, in that it brings in a lot of guests and doesn't really have a concept behind it. the hip-hop track on it is fascinating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1lqJPNKTTw

Oh yeah how could I have left IME out of that list? For shame.

Just leaving this slice of madness here -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HIbDVNG7E8

aha yes. The bside of that single is really cool, iirc, not rock, more of a YMO sound

Did we post these?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9intgzzLfk

Eric H I’m very partial to - in no particular order -

B-2 Unit
1000 Knives
Esperanto
Neo Geo
async
Left Handed Dream
GEM Collection

missing one or two ottomh but I think these are pretty wonderful non-sndtrk albums.

Often think about Ryuichi Sakamoto hating the music in his favorite restaurant so much he pro bono made them a replacement playlist — inspirational. https://t.co/y3aN62y692 pic.twitter.com/xCRsCb1Z8y

— Nick Newman (@Nick_Newman) April 2, 2023

ha I love that story too

apparently this is the playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2YY3rAwm9tldNhlBmuMqgY?si=tBcsQ5q_SsWhBPp_cHIu2w&dd=1&nd=1

Had a rabbit hole moment last night and made a mix of some of RS' production work from the late 70s to the early 90s.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3cgychgpp8o9eaei95w80/h?dl=0&rlkey=4swircqlijwji9limzl1zgdkf

Miki Imai - Watermark
Akiko Yano - Canton Boy
Kanako Wada - Creation My Heart
Tokiko Kato - Alabama Song
Robin Scott - Once In A Lifetime
(Phew) - 終曲（フィナーレ）
Akina Nakamori - Everlasting Love
Mari Iijima - My Best Friend
Friction - I Can Tell
Raijie - Tabidachi
Hayaku Aitsuni - South Of The Border
Seri Ishikawa - いろ、なつ、ゆめ～彩・夏・夢
Virginia Astley - Tree-Top Club
Hiromi Go - Your Name Is Psycho
Jill Jones - You Do Me (7'' Mix)
Thomas Dolby - Field Work
Koharu Kisaragi - Neo-Plant

Virginia Astley’s Hope in a Darkened Heart is an incredible record

I love his score for the 1993 limited series WILD PALMS. Such a sinister, claustrophobic work

xp seems to just be a .rtf file?

Sry Sleeve, files are still uploading, check back in 2 mins.

lol np, thanks

Errata already, the (fantastic) Koharu Kisaragi track is Träumerei, not Neo-Plant

Thanks for the download!

aww at that restaurant playlist, I would have loved to make him a semi-ambient/ambient mix cd

_BIG_ fan of this particular miki nakatani album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ahRf9NggM

RS appears to have done a lot of stuff for it

Producer, Composed By, Arranged By, Performer [Performed By], Mixed By – Ryuichi Sakamoto

https://www.discogs.com/release/2456654-%E4%B8%AD%E8%B0%B7%E7%BE%8E%E7%B4%80-%E7%A7%81%E7%94%9F%E6%B4%BB

his daughter also covered the opener, tho I prefer the other ver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUrxDFXWWJc

I did my best to recreate the Kajitsu Playlist for Tidal, missing two tracks that Spotify had.
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/02b62cb5-3c23-4320-9791-a15c726a1216

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUw6nUkjFcM

RIP Luigi :(

Fucking Jacobin... this is a tweet leading to an article I will not be reading:

The brilliant cornucopia of Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s work crystallizes the freedoms and desires that neoliberalism has betrayed.

to be fair, Sakamoto was a Marxist when he was in uni!

surprised I haven't seen too much discussion of his collaborations with Fennesz - Cendre gets a lot of love but I also adore Flumina from 2011. very conceptually rigid but always strange and beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwELGACE-GY

That Fennesz + Sakamoto set (2 CDs) is the only thing of his I own in physical form.

wow wonder how his score for Snake Eyes sounds

https://www.discogs.com/master/288313-Ryuichi-Sakamoto-Snake-Eyes-Music-From-The-Motion-Picture

Oh damn, would listen
This is not the g I joe thing is it?

revisiting async now, didn't know at the time that he approached it thinking it would be his last album

it is a lot heavier and ominous than I remembered. I guess the weight of his death is all over this thing. it's the soundtrack to a world falling apart, much as his own body was. also I think it might be one of his very best solo albums, as difficult a listen as it may be.

it really is

been filling in the gaps of my knowledge of sakamoto's discog over the past two days and it's been an incredibly rich musical experience. guy was always making at least fifteen different kinds of music and he rocked at all of them. i was unaware of and am now totally in love with his ambient pop house album from 1992, heartbeat

highly recommend his bonkers 1985 film adelic penguins, which uses music from esperanto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-nJPWJE0cs

BTTB for me today, which I had never heard before, and Hidariude No Yume, which I had bleeped over in the past and is also excellent.

feels corny to say it but I think both Ongaku Zukan & Esperanto are precursors to vaporwave. the former is the kind of stuff they love to sample and the latter sounds to be like what OPN does at his more interesting and creative. but they're both so very different to each other, listening side by side you'd never know they were by the same artist, much less released in consecutive years. that's what makes his career so fascinating to me - Hosono has a very diverse career as well but everything he does has sort of an aural watermark, even with his productions you can tell it's him. Sakamoto was, as Brad mentions, just pretty good at everything

Ongaku Zukan & Esperanto are precursors to vaporwave

i'm listening to futurista rn and i think it should be included in this list

god this record is absolutely incredible wtf

haven't heard that one in a while but you're probably right

Because of recent searches, YT is throwing RS suggestions at me and I came across this installation piece called 'Plankton', a lovely close-up, detailed sound design/ambient thing.

Futurista is great and a track from it was featured in the fabulous Optimo mixtape "Polyphonic Cosmos"

I admit that I've never been a deep head when it comes to Sakamoto/YMO, prior to async I had only heard random tracks here and there, but I've been listening to 'Playing the Piano' a ton.

heartbeat is so good!

i knew sakamoto primarily as a pianist and composer for a long time before diving into his y.m.o. and early solo work. have never heard anything of his from the 90s tho, enjoying the dive.

he really was a special piano player, incredibly dynamic with unique voicings that find a midpoint between evans and cage

What a talent, to be able to play like that and not have to do it, the experimentation and the pop stuff from so early on, jeez.

Extract from a 'Sound on Sound' interview from 1998, I'd love to know where this place was/is.

"This time I'm interviewing Sakamoto in one of the most unusual hotels I've ever set foot in. He seems to have a taste for the out-of-the-ordinary, whether in music or in hotels, but this takes some beating. It's located in West London, and is so private that there's no signposting outside it. Inside, it's composed of rectangular shapes painted white, with interior design in an ultra-sparse, minimalistic style somewhere between Zen and '60s chic. The corridors are laced with identical white panels as far as the eye can see, the only thing indicating that these panels are actually doors being a small button on each, with a tiny red light and a keyhole."

This is a p arresting version of one of his best known singles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efpU91sflaI

yes, that one is incredible. sounds like a video game soundtrack version of ligeti's music ricercata, or something

lovely video by Dolby upthread.
had never heard of RS until Dolby worked with him, so was really nice to find out the backstory to 'fieldwork' which is still one of my fave dolby singles.

the bit in that video that I liked was him saying you could play something for him and he could play it back perfectly by ear. I've actually heard that a few times about him, which I think is a skill very few musicians possess.

Because of recent searches, YT is throwing RS suggestions at me and I came across this installation piece called 'Plankton', a lovely close-up, detailed sound design/ambient thing.

― MaresNest, Wednesday, April 5, 2023 12:51 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I thought you may have been referring to the Sketch Show tune called "Plankton", which RS actually isn't on...before finding out he actually did do an hourlong piece for an installation. this guy just has so much out there. his Discogs page has nearly 300 entries on it. I like that quote from The Sheltering Sky that's on async, about how life seems limitless because we don't know when we will die...indeed, Sakamoto's catalogue seems limitless, there's always so much more to hear. How many people out there actually know every single one of his solo albums and soundtracks?

budman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl5fBJ2j3x0

I kinda love how the concept of 'selling out' just doesn't seem to exist in the music community in Japan.

There are acres and acres of commercials with YMO together and separately, selling all sorts of things, I wonder if it started in the bubble or if it's always been so.

XXP - it is rather lovely too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEt2YzR0zEk

bizarre to see him actually drinking beer in the commercial. in America you can't do that...you can open the bottles and clink the glasses but you can't actually drink out of them

I realise I'm doing the exact same thing as when Yukihiro passed, diving into the back catalogue, watching documentaries and YT clips, I'm feeling sad as hell, but (as frogbs points out) how fucking glorious is it to have this seemingly endless ocean of music to dive into?

speaking of YMO commercials I came across this recently, not sure what the point of this commercial was except to make people question their sexuality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m4ZCWqn13o

hot

going down the rabbit hole of wacky 80s/90s peak economic bubble ads that sakamoto seemingly did a thousand of. it's such a joy to watch the man, he has such a natural charisma and warmth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IRt3Kpinb0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEnMp8Y8_FY

(tried listening to async, my favourite album ever, today - I can't. there's dark and strange magic coursing through those songs and it's going to take a while to be able to approach them after his passing.)

wow adelic penguins is so good

Every time I see this thread bumped I fear I'm going to read that he's died.

― Naive Teen Idol, Friday, April 3, 2015 12:32 AM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

say it ain't so Sakamoto

全くありません。人生でプログレが好きになったことも影響を受けたこともありません。

Not at all. I’ve never in my life liked prog rock and I’ve never been influenced by it either.#skmtnews #ryuichisakamoto #坂本龍一 #twelve

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) March 22, 2023

― frogbs, Wednesday, March 22, 2023 1:57 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not entirely Ryuichi-related, but in addition to having that fear yet again this week, one of the odder things about the world we live in is that celebrities are tweeting literally up to the day before they die and then, boom, they're gone. Roger Ebert was reviewing movies before he announced he was in the final stages (10 years ago this week, actually), David Crosby was grading the joints his Twitter followers rolled literally the day before he died -- and here you have Sakamoto, presumably on his death bed, telling some schmo that, no, he's never been into prog at all and WTF is that question, dude.

It's a strange sensation as a fan.

I think it's nice? May we all squeeze every last drop out of life.

agree with this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsH_UBptm-U

timeless

The amazing thing about that piano version of Riot in Lagos is that it makes the groove more prominent, and in turn, the overall Afrobeat/Fela feel of the piece. I love it – it was the only version available in Spotify for a long time, and got so used to it.

I think it's nice? May we all squeeze every last drop out of life.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, April 6, 2023 11:25 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh I agree -- I mean, that's exactly what the folks I cited did. It's just sudden is all. I mean, as I posted, I was dreading Sakamoto's passing for 8 years. But I think when you see people doing interviews and shooting the bull with fans it can be surprising to then learn they've passed.

The amazing thing about that piano version of Riot in Lagos is that it makes the groove more prominent, and in turn, the overall Afrobeat/Fela feel of the piece.

Yes! BTW, I'm assuming on at least this cut there are multiple Sakamotos "playing the piano" (ie, overdubs) as there are things happening that require four hands.

well my Youtube recs are like 50% Sakamoto now, which rules. check this shit out, how awesome is this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a8xV9xOHqA

after listening to all of his '80s and '90s "pop" albums in a row i came out with smoochy as my favorite. it reminds me of the chill-out-ier corners of something like beaucoup fish

Since people are rediscovering his early 90s stuff I'm gonna say don't sleep on Technodon. I think its an album that works much better in the context of their other 90s releases instead of what YMO had done a decade ago. It's actually really good. In retrospect its super cool that such a high profile reunion happened and they decided to take it in a direction that conceptually was unlike anything they did in their original incarnation. Feel like it would be regarded a lot differently if it didn't have the YMO name (which technically, it didn't!)

If nothing else the track "Nostalgia" is a excellent, haunting Sakamoto piece - if you took it out of context and put it on a RS mixtape I don't think anyone would guess what it was actually from. Initially I thought it was funny that a YMO reunion would have a track called "Nostalgia" that sounded nothing at all like YMO, but I guess it is kinda similar to those Prologue/Epilogue pieces on Technodelic. Actually I think most tracks here would be neat highlights on mixtapes. But people don't like the album.

The latest ep of Gilles Peterson's radio show predictably has a Sakamoto tribute and the first two tracks they play are an orchestral "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence" followed by "You're Friend To Me" and that's a great illustration of the "wait, this is the SAME GUY?" aspect discussed itt.

oh wow turns out i love technodon, thank you frogbs, nobody ever has anything good to say about this record yet it rules

I never knew there was a third version of "Forbidden Colours" - a live recording by RS that Sylvian re-recorded his vocals for:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMjtAP2_j9E

xpost

count me in as another Technodon lover (my fav YMO album in fact)!

Technodon is great. I encountered the YMO albums in a fairly random order, so it never felt like an outlier (especially given the wild swings across their original run). It's probably got the strongest Kraftwerk influence of any of their LPs? with shades of LFO's Frequencies in places too.

I think there's always been a continuity between what they're doing in and out of the band at any one time. I wish they'd done a final LP in the 00s drawing on all the glitch/IDM stuff they were doing separately, but I guess we have the Londonymo / Gijonymo live albums for that (which "claim" a lot of Sketch Show / Sakamoto solo stuff under the YMO banner).

I think maybe it's an outlier in terms of melody, it has none of the bright, sunny stuff they're known for. If you dig it I highly recommend Hosono's Medicine Compilation (which is not actually a compilation).

I too wish they'd done one more album, in fact in 2007-2008 it really looked like something was in the works, as they had released a few singles under the HASYMO name. Maybe the whole idea of getting back together, reopening the YMO name, and possibly touring again was a bit overwhelming. I'm kinda bummed we only got the 2 1/2 Sketch Show albums - I've really grown to appreciate those a lot

A brilliant piece of writing and remembering here https://t.co/hheEJRAovD

— Fielding Hope (@fieldinghope) April 14, 2023

“Sakamoto passed away after several years of preparation.
I heard that he passed away quietly, with no regrets for himself or his family.
After knowing that, I feel at ease.”
Haruomi Hosono

;_;

slightly off topic but does anyone else get a slight ick from Toop and his writing? parlayed a leechy career in journalism (is there any other kind?) into very dull experimental music. the opening line of his piece on Ryuichi:
'That left unsaid and at the centre of us, unspeakable silence. Turbulent thoughts but faltering words, a very specific form of silence' - not even grad school shit. leave us to grieve Ryuichi without this bullshit poetry!

Ha ha -- I get what you're saying but I like Toop and think he generally includes enough specifics and substance to warrant (or at least mitigate) the florid poesy. I have also found that Sakamoto's passing seemed to hit a lot of people surprisingly hard -- and not just the friend of mine who literally called me in tears when he found out!

this track here always makes me really emotional. it's not even on the Ongaku Zukan LP proper, you have to get the original with the bonus 12" to get it (or just get the CD). the way the icy synths come in 2/3rds of the way and just completely change the tune always makes me get chills. that's the kind of trick groups like Underworld and Orbital used to pull off in the 90's. wouldn't be surprised to find out it's just a chill version of one of his advertising jingles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I59rqjeSUo

I went to see Suga last night with my partner, and I was surprised by a nice tribute to Sakamoto when they played a personal recording of Suga with Sakamoto at what appeared to be his home. Sakamoto plays something on the piano while Suga looks on - he then smiles at the camera, gets up and the two share a warm embrace.

It was a very young crowd that seemed concentrated around the teens and early 20's, and several fans behind us didn't even know Sakamoto had died. I forgot the two collaborated, and it seemed to emphasize the impact these cross-generational collaborations can have on both sides of the equation - I got the impression most of the fans probably knew Sakamoto only through Suga, i.e. at minimum their collaboration has become their gateway to him, and it was clear Suga had a tremendous amount of respect for Sakamoto's work.

what a wonderful song, frogbs -- i had no idea Replica and マ・メール・ロワ after it were bonus tracks on Ongaku Zukan! i've listened to that record 10000 times and always thought it closed so strongly and poignantly with the children's choir and koto of マ・メール・ロワ.

I've been listening to Esperanto this morning. How on earth was this made in 1985? I can't think of many albums that sound as ahead of their time as this.

YT is still bringing up Sakamoto (and Takahashi) things for me to check out, I keep happily clicking, this is lovely...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxD4141Pyl0

What a fantastic arrangement! It nearly brought tears to my eyes. I wonder if a recording is available on CD.

Ryuichi’s Last Playlist.

We would like to share the playlist that Ryuichi had been privately compiling to be played at his own funeral to accompany his passing. He truly was with music until the very end.

- skmt managementhttps://t.co/QPeSnthq9p pic.twitter.com/lK7B2ltUM9

— ryuichi sakamoto (@ryuichisakamoto) May 15, 2023

Spooky to look at the "date added" column. Seems he was putting it together right on Spotify (mostly last June) and they just now set it to public.

Here's a nice compilation of various piano cameos on his Sound Street show on NHK from 1982-85

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4tS8KJv5Ss

He breaks into the sequencer riff of DAF's El Que for a sec at one point, which is mad.

A lengthy tribute collection came out recently:

https://microambientmusic.bandcamp.com/album/all-micro-ambient-music-5-disc-set

And there's a forthcoming live event that will be streamed as well:

https://microambientmusic.peatix.com/

Details:

AUG 24
In Memoriam Ryuichi Sakamoto Micro Ambient Music 'Improvisation for serenity'
(Thu) 18:00 (8 days) | online | By RITTOR BASE

Event details
In memory of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away in March, a compilation album entitled "Micro Ambient Music" was released on 13 July on bandcamp. Although the reputation of Ryuichi tends to be biased towards his work with YMO and in the field of film music, it is also true that the true value of his ideas and music can be found in his works from the 21st century onwards. This compilation album is a total of 41 musicians from Japan and abroad who were closely associated with Ryuichi in his later years. The sound of the album is a total of 3 hours 56 minutes of music.

The bandcamp distribution is limited to 31 October, but in order to bring the sound to as many listeners as possible, it has been decided that live performances will be held by the Tokyo-based musicians who participated in this work over two days from 24-25 August. Three groups each day, six artists in total, will perform with a theme of 'Improvisation for serenity'. Duos performing in unusual combinations. After the performance, there will be an after-talk by the participating musicians, so don't miss it.

The part of the proceeds will be donated to Trees for Sakamoto.

Participating artists
24 Aug (Thu)
Tetuzi Akiyama Tomoyoshi Date
Ko Ishikawa Chihei Hatakeyama
Sachiko M Kazuya Matsumoto
Otomo Yoshihide (after-talk only)

Friday 25 August
Tomotsugu Nakamura Sawako
Yui Onodera Ken Ikeda
Toshimaru Nakamura Yumiko Tanaka (photo: asanao Matsumoto)　

Takashi Kokubo (ambient sound provided during live transitions on both days)

＜Ryuichi Sakamoto Micro Ambient Music "Improvisation for serenity" in memory of Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Date: 24 (Thu) - 25 (Fri) August 2023, both days open 17:45 start 18:00
Venue: Ochanomizu RITTORE BASE
　Ochanomizu Christian Centre B1, 2-1 Kanda Surugadai, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0062
　Venue map
　(2 min walk from Ochanomizu Station on JR Chuo/Sobu Line, 3 min walk from Ochanomizu Station on Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line, 3 min walk from B1 exit of Shin-Ochanomizu Station on Chiyoda Line)
■Attendance ticket at the venue: General/4,400 yen, Students/3,300 yen (archived viewing of the two days is also available).
Capacity: 30 people on both days. Doors open 15 minutes before the start of the performance and people enter in order of ticket number.
Tickets to watch the archived broadcast: ¥3,300 for adults, ¥2,200 for students (archived viewing of the two days is available).
Archived viewing deadline: 31 August 2023, 23:00.

(Timetable)
Thursday, 24 August
18:00 - 18:35 Tetuzi Akiyama + Tomoyoshi Date
18:45 - 19:20 Ko Ishikawa + Chihei Hatakeyama
19:30 - 20:05 Sachiko M + Kazuya Matsumoto
20:05 - After Talk: Otomo Yoshihide + Date Hakkin "Ryuichi Sakamoto's Music after 2000".
Friday 25 August
18:00 - 18:35 Tomotsugu Nakamura + Sawako
18:45 - 19:20 Yui Onodera + Ken Ikeda
19:30 - 20:05 Yumiko Tanaka + Toshimaru Nakamura
20:05 - After Talk: Yumiko Tanaka + Hiji Hatakeyama + Hakkin Date "On Japanese and Western music, improvisation and notation".

(Quick check confirms the streaming price is about $23 so I'd say that was an excellent deal.)

https://fruitandgroovescollective.com/2023/08/29/ryuichi-sakamotos-final-performances-captured-for-concert-film/

Just saw the Sakamoto Coda doc. Some of it is a sad look at him struggling with throat cancer and just eating and drinking. Some fascinating sections showing him creating music. The doc only briefly nods back to the past so you don’t get to understand how this guy talking about Bach is also a guy who played on a cover of Archie Bell & the Drells and on YMO songs.

Left Handed Dream sort of fulfills my long-time wish for an album that would take the vibe of the more windswept and fabular John Wesley Harding tunes (As I Went Out One Morning, All Along the Watchtower, The Wicked Messenger, etc) and stretch them across a whole LP length.

One of the modi operandi for Left Handed Dream was to keep the lyrics extremely simple, at least as regards the language, if not the import/impact/meaning of the songs. Perhaps because Mr. "Music Plans" Sakamoto himself was not up to the task, he outsourced, and trusted the right people with the job. I love the lyrics to these songs. Here are English renditions of the five in Japanese.

...

Boku no Kakera (Fragments of Me) (words by Shigesato Itoi)

Let's lift them up:
these fragments of me.
Thank you for
these fragments of you.

...

Saru to Yuki to Gomi no Kodomo (Children of the Monkey, Snow, and Trash) (words by Shigesato Itoi)

The monkey's house is
where the monkey lives.
The monkey's father
and the monkey's mother,
the monkey's children.
"I love you."
The monkey's house is
encircled by the woods.

The snow's house
is where the snow falls.
The snow's father
and the snow's mother,
the snow's children.
"I love you."
The snow's house is
encircled by the sky.

The trash's house
is where the trash lives.
The trash's father
and the trash's mother,
the trash's children.
"I love you."
The trash's house is
encircled by the soil.

Float. Floating.
Tomorrow
floats too.
Tomorrow
is floating.

Green.
Blue.
Blue
is green.
The light is radiant, isn't it?

The flower's house is
where the flower lives.
The flower's father
and the flower's mother,
the flower's children.
"I love you."
The flower's house is
encircled by the sky.

Bloom.
Bloom.
Tomorrow
will bloom too.
Tomorrow
is blooming.

(Repeat first verse)

...

Kachakucha Nee (An Irritating Mess) (words by Akiko Yano, in the Tsugaru dialect spoken where she grew up)

What a mess we're in. What an irritating mess we're in.
Let's bear up under it already.

...

Living in the Dark (words by Tetsuro Kashibuchi, Moonriders' drummer)

(Verse 1)
A dreamstorm crumbling to dust
A sandstorm raging past
(x2)

(Verse 2)
The color of gold calling
Arriving in paradise at last
(x2)

(Chorus 1)
The birds are going too
Flocking together
Ringing
The song of the earth

(Verse 3)
Drawing a circle with the inner eye
Driving away illusions
(x2)

(Chorus 2)
Boundlessly
Far away
Alive for the sake of
Rapture

(Verse 4)
A dreamstorm crumbling to dust

(Chorus 3)
The birds are going too
Flocking together
Ringing
The song of the earth

(Verse 5)
A sandstorm raging past

(Chorus 4)
Boundlessly
Far away
Alive for the sake of
Rapture

(Verse 6)
The color of gold calling

(Chorus 5)
The birds are going too
Flocking together
Ringing
The song of the earth

(Verse 7)
Arriving in paradise at last

(Chorus 6)
Boundlessly
Far away
Alive for the sake of
Rapture

(Verse 8)
Drawing a circle with the inner eye

(Chorus 7)
The birds are going too

...

Venezia (words by Tetsuro Kashibuchi)

The beautiful boy
in a desolate castle,
wearing his armor,
basks in the sun.

Red rose, Venezia!
Country eternal, Venezia!
Castle of sand, Venezia!
Country eternal, Venezia!

In springtime they gambol,
the old noblemen,
out in the moorland parading their horses
and coughing up blood in the thickets of heath.

Red rose, Venezia!
Country eternal, Venezia!
Castle of sand, Venezia!
Country eternal, Venezia!

Akiko Yano otm on that one

Agreed. And she did the words for Tell It to Me too!

But the softly-spoken words to Boku no Kakera, set to that eerie music, hit pretty hard too.

Realized this am that the record he produced and arranged for Virginia Astley, Hope in a Darkened Heart, is really required listening for anyone interested in Ryuichi’s mid-80s classy orchestral Fairlight experimental pop phase, a la Ongaku Zukan and his contemporaneous work w David Sylvian.

It’s a legitimately weird record – with nursery rhyme-melodies sung in Astley’s little girl falsetto over Ryuichi’s booming gated drums, sequenced music boxes and gamelans. The duet with Sylvian himself that leads off the record is a pretty unique entry in his catalogue:

https://open.spotify.com/track/5nwDAFzUqt7hVVsKoWGcJN?si=xX7P9oCVScqGde8qpsO5eg

This was an amazing recommendation. I am not often blown away on first listen. Echoes of early Leonard Cohen (!) and Syd Barrett (!!!). As NTI says, this is absolutely the place to go for those who can't get enough of Forbidden Colours, Bamboo Houses, or Bamboo Music. (And where hence? Are there more Sakamoto-orbit albums/songs that explore these particular woods?)

interesting bit in the recent Mouse on Mars interview:

One of the many distinct ingredients within Idiology is the distortion that drives immediate standouts like the noise-punk single “Actionist Respoke.” Ryuichi Sakamoto’s reps actually reached out to the duo around this time to ask if they could produce a similar beat for the composer. Since it was more of a work-for-hire situation than a proper collaboration, they politely declined and were surprised to hear a similar technique surface on Sakamoto’s next pop record.

“They basically reconstructed the beat from ‘Actionist Respoke’,” explains St. Werner. “It made me laugh because it was so cleanly distorted. I thought, ‘Oh God, they put [the song] through some distortion device and obviously used pedals or plugins.’”

anyone know what track St. Werner is referring to here? the Actionist Respoke single came out in early 2001...Sakamoto was pretty much done making pop by that point, so I am guessing this is Chasm, which I suppose is as much as "pop record" as you'll get out of him in the 21st Century. so then the track must be "Coro"?

Nice to see an upgraded version of this, wonder if he was a fan of Cabaret Voltaire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quev-hsqR9w

I know he was a fan of Throbbing Gristle.

This is quite quite lovely

https://x.com/istevejansen/status/1759165971690815719?s=46&t=byMYjCp2JCdH5mkSaZqRBQ

The other day I decided to figure out where exactly Hosono's guest appearance on the Thousand Knives version of Thousand Knives happens -- he's credited with finger cymbals. Knowing Hosono's sense of humor I figured he'd show up for one clink and then back right out, but no, he's actually quite prominent from about 7:30 through the end!

Seeing Opus tomorrow. Anyone see it yet? Good NY Times review:

The twin themes of “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus” are art and mortality, and they’re twisted so tightly together that they become inextricable. Shot in black and white to match the keys of the piano, the film entirely consists of the influential Japanese musician’s final concert. One might say it was a performance for nobody — Sakamoto filmed alone in a studio, with only the crew there as audience. But it’s more correct to say it’s for us, a gift from a master.

NHK have a documentary coming out next week called 'Last Days' that looks interesting.

https://www.barks.jp/news/?id=1000245935

I did go to see Opus. I am putting my thoughts behind a spoiler.

I was enthusiastic, going in, hoping that the performance would reflect RS's more recent albums, prepared piano and/or collaboration. This was not to be the case. The first half of the concert film finds RS playing pieces of solo piano music that I didn't recognise, very slow, very banal. The pieces were not complex in any regard, and felt to me as if they could be improvised-- not just by RS, but really, by any pianist. Only the sheet music in front of him indicated that he was playing composed music. I found this part of the film frustrating. This frustration was compounded by a sense of guilt that I did not appreciate the epigrammatic quality of the performance. I sat and wished I hadn't come.

In the middle of the film, he plays a brutally slow chorale for prepared piano-- it is gorgeous. He followed it with some kind of extrapolation on themes from "Merry Christmas, Mr. Laurence", which was also transcendent. The pieces were getting more interesting. I noticed other people in the theatre were snoring, more than one, probably two or three. I started to feel, myself, very sleepy. I didn't want to fall asleep in the theatre, so I told the friend I was with that I would go to concessions, buy some popcorn, and listen to the music from the lobby. I did so, and listened to the last six-or-so pieces with popcorn. One of the last pieces was a very-beautiful rendition of "Forbidden Colours".

My friend and I agreed that the film felt like it would work better if presented as accompaniment to other activities. That we'd both enjoy having the film on at home as we cooked dinner or cleaned house or whatever. We were walking to the subway. I was talking about how much I admired RS as a film composer. A woman walking near us interrupted our conversation to jump in. She had attended the same screening, by herself. We chatted with her all the way to the subway and rode the subway with her, in conversation.

She was a Sakamoto superfan. She'd travelled from the West Coast to Toronto just to attend this screening. She referenced every song that RS had played, she clearly knew everything about it. She told me that Opus was the full version of a previous concert film, that a six-song cut of the film had made the rounds already. She seemed very enthusiastic about the film, and I didn't want to express my comparative lack-of-enthusiasm to her to colour her experience, so I kept my feelings to myself. I feel inclined to keep my feelings to myself, now, even, which is why I put the spoiler tag on these paragraphs.

I did tell her that I did want to see a Sakamoto documentary. One that covered YMO and so on. She recommended Coda, which I've added to my watch list.

tl;dr, I wouldn't recommend seeing this film in cinema to anybody who finds Sakamoto's music to, at times, be wallpaper-y. You may find yourself bored, as I was. I would recommend this film to anybody who desires to watch it at home, where it can serve as accompaniment.

Seeing it on a second date, so if the theater isn't full, that could work out right. Thanks for all the info! And definitely curious about Coda as well.

And not to digress, but seeing a screening of The Raid later today, so this could be an all-time contrasting double feature.

Sorry my formatting was bogus, was hoping to hide all that info. I actually think it might make for an excellent make-out-in-the-theatre soundtrack, may things work out in your and your date's favour!

It's showing at the film fest here, I didn't try to make my partner go for fear it would be boring, especially without any context.

Also missing the Ennio Morricone and Richard Davis docs. :(

Funny this thread resurfaces alongside the PiL Album thread, I had no idea RS played on that

It worked just right having fgti's first paragraph osbscured by spoiler alert but reading the rest before going, and then going back to that first graf.

I was amazed by how it was shot, with no shot seemingly repeated twice. Totally get what fgti wrote about the music itself (great to hear it from your perspective). Would love to see this format with other solo pianists.

And it was a great date movie as far as being able to pay attention to it moment by moment without fully concentrating on it (as I would with any plot-driven movie).

When I'm listening to Summer Nerves and think that Ryuichi Sakamoto studied composition at university... I realize that here is someone who truly used his powers for good.

_Opus_ premieres in the US on the Criterion Channel in an hour from now.

Really powerful experience seeing this on the big screen at the London Film Festival. My mate couldn't make it, so I gave a ticket back and it went to a middle aged Japanese lady - like to imagine she danced to YMO in her youth.

My thoughts on Opus

This is awesome. I love when Ryuichi sings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEbSNjY8d-M

Side B of Neo Geo is nigh-on perfect.

Wait, ANDY PARTRIDGE is on B-2 Unit?!??

Made it through a full listen of Sweet Revenge this morning. It has little of what I love about Sakamoto['s 1980s work, which is all I can speak to for now] and yet -- say what you will about the anodyne sophistipop, the man knows how to sustain a mood. And it's "wow, this is awful" moments are awful in a way I have no reference points for, so it's a WEIRD kind of awful, which isn't that awful... and then it ends with this beautiful thing, a Taeko Ohnuki/Sakamoto co-write:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B1SHrZy9R8

I don't exactly want to put myself through the ordeal again soon, when I could be playing Summer Nerves or Ongaku Zukan instead. But I *respect* its bizarre artistic choices and may need to return to it down the line.

I like Smoochy but I'm hoping Discord makes an eternal break with the "international world music superstar" chapter of his career. Futurista is wonderful, and Neo Geo is great, and half of Beauty is great, and Heartbeat has its moments, and Sweet Revenge is uh ... so there's a depressing sense of diminishing returns, up until Smoochy which feels like a "here's what I've learned this decade" culmination, and doesn't suck at all.

I made myself an edit of the Handmaid's Tale soundtrack (1991) that excises the traditional hymns, and have played that several times over the last few days -- it's good! Dense and dark and heavy on the synth atmospherics.

Feels like, in the '90s, he stayed truer to himself (or to be fair... to the version of himself that I fell in love with) on the soundtracks than on the solo albums.

That said, I listened to the last four tracks on Heartbeat today and realized I really like all four. My Sakamoto dive is an exploration in progress, and it's encouraging that my thoughts change nonstop.

One thing that hasn't changed over the past half year: Wings of Honneamise is my favorite Sakamoto release of all.

How beautiful is Esperanto?!!!

Oh the joy of connections... Shigesato Itoi, who wrote most of the lyrics for Left Handed Dream and often wrote for / co-wrote with Akiko Yano too, went on to work with Miyazaki on the Japanese taglines of the Ghibli films, and even voiced the dad in Totoro.

That specific connection really blew my mind when working through the solo albums of each YMO member!

Shigesato Itoi also created the Mother/Earthbound series of video games, and that game's composer was in a band called The Beatniks with YMO drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. Lots of YMO-like music in those games.

and that game's composer was in a band called The Beatniks with YMO drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. Lots of YMO-like music in those games.

Keiichi Suzuki, yes! -- who is all over Morio Agata's vast catalogue too, including some of its most beautiful corners. As it happens, I'm finishing up my nteenth replay of Seiken Densetsu 3 and was wondering what to play next. I never got around to Mother as a kid. I think it's time.

I recommend starting with Mother 2/Earthbound.

Took this as a sign to finally start a playthrough of Seiken Densetsu 3 (and check out some Morio Agatha records).

I started a file in Earthbound a few days back. So far so awesome. The dialogue!! The battles!

Enjoy, Travis. SD3 is pretty immediate, Agata maybe less so, but bear with him and at some point you're sure to find he's blown your head right off, the sneaky fucker.

The Neo Geo discussion on the Ongaku Zukan poll thread made me think about why an artist as accomplished as Sakamoto would want to work with a producer like Laswell, whose “car crash” cross cultural experiments were very hit and miss compared to Ryuichi. And I have to think at least part of the answer was Laswell’s Rolodex.

Neo Geo may be kind of a more downtown spin on Ongaku Zukan but it def. paved the way for his All Star collabs with Robbie Robertson, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson, Youssou N’Dour, Sly and Robbie, etc. Which weren’t necessarily successful but def. sort of enhanced his reputation and industry power in a way I suspect Andy Partridge, Robin Scott and Adrian Belew couldn’t really.

Over the years, I've noticed the Anglo fan contingent keeps having problems with Beauty, Heartbeat &tc. Where's the problem exactly? It's like there's a snub of implied bad faith in these formal and language experiments he was doing - how so? Why would "Neo Geo" as a concept to these albums be a failure? Conversely to British fans, Gen-X Italian ones near-unanimously regard Beauty as his acme among Sakamoto's pop albums. Where's the rocki$t main$tream $hark-jump there? Because I don't hear it. I hear a rightfully ambitious music that is more communicative/engaging than before, because it's based on novel socio-global ideas and not just artfully/tidily formal or stylistic ones like the works up to '87. The collision between Foster/dub/Okinawa in "Romance", to name but one out of several possible examples on Beauty, is much more than just a cool or artful concoction - the enthusiasm in that heady mix is palpable, and contagious. The stretch from Beauty to Chasm has no business being scoffed at.

I love Beauty and Heartbeat. I think the former makes slightly more sense in its original Japanese tracklist vs the UK one which adds the (awesome, but out-of-place) You Do Me single. I think Heartbeat is more slept on than anything else - it's not on the streamers. Maybe people bump on the 90s synth presets, but these things are cyclical and those sounds are v in-vogue right now.

Cloud #9 is one of my favourite Sylvian/Sakamoto joints.

I don't mind that he expanded his circle of collaborators -- Futurista has a whole bunch of western guests and that's still top-shelf Ryuichi for me. I don't deny that he kept his searcher's heart alive and well. There's a great anecdote about how each time he would deliver these late '80s and early '90s records to his label, he would proudly announce them as his latest pop album. Then the label head would listen, and call Ryuichi back in, and tell him, "In what fucking world is this pop music?!?! What pop music are you even listening to!!"

But personally I find it hard to connect with the rhythmic and sonic ideas he was pursuing. There's more gloss, less forest. frogbs's example of comparing the Asatoya Yunta on Beauty and Hosono's on Paraiso may be instructive. Sakamoto's sounds lovely and full, but its sonic world doesn't have much to do with the likes of Futurista anymore, even less so War Head or something.

So I respect that strecth more than I enjoy it. Surely there is no album on earth that sounds like much Sweet Revenge...? It may not be the kind of crazy that I fall for, but it's still crazy alright.

Oh yeah, a friend did play me four tracks from Chasm the other day and they were all 100% awesome. I really like Smoochy too.

"undercooled" is one of the coolest tracks he ever did. the fact that it uses the skipping CD noise!! brilliant

Undercooled was the awesomest of the four. My friend (a Chinese uni student who's gone travelling to Japan) introduced it as guided by a pan-Asian peace sentiment: Japanese composer, Korean rapper, traditional Chinese instruments. You live in East Asia long enough, that kind of message has impact.

Max's argument is compelling though. Gonna listen to Beauty again with an ear for that enthusiasm.

Ah yeah, Romance *is* wonderful. Romance followed by Chinsagu no Hana has been my favorite thing about Beauty.

Chasm is an incredible record. I also love this version of Undercooled that came out a few years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQNTcoayZ3E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou7szZ1Y2B4

trailer for new doc Ryuichi Sakamoto: Diaries, narration by Min Tanaka (!)