The Somei Satoh thread

His work is always interesting and occasionally profoundly beautiful. He does not sound like Arvo Part, but if you have had any of your buttons punched by Arvo Part, then you could do a lot worse than to look into Somei Satoh. This thread will probably be short, but he is too good to not have his own thread.

my introduction to Satoh was Anne Akiko Myers - got the album for the Debussy & Takemitsu but got floored by "Birds in Warped Time"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Fs0ecgsOE

this is tremendous

seriously guys, Toward the Night is a must-own

need to get that one. the only one I have is Mantra and it is Deep: http://www.newalbion.com/NA016/index.htm

Yeah that one is solid too. Basically I haven't heard anything by Satoh that I didn't love. Attn ilm ambient dudes & anybody with some "darkwave" sympathies I'd guess, I have a classical composer for you all, his name is Satoh and he kicks all kinds of ass.

Mantra is a lot closer to David Hykes & the Harmonic Choir / Karma Moffett's 'Golden Bowls of Compassion' than anything even remotely Western Classical sounding, as you say would fit better on a dark ambient playlist than with most Takemitsu or Part. (Ok, maybe some of the really spaced Part.)

Is Towards the Night more isolationist or is it closer to that youtube clip?

Toward the Night is actually more filmic, there is a real ache to it, an emotional breadth; it's orchestrated for strings (maybe some woodwinds? I mainly hear strings), playing long whole notes in slowly-developing movements. Frankly incredible. I haven't yet been able to pin down any "this is what Satoh does" style; he seems to have a lot of different looks.

checking it out, thanks

just waking this up because his music is so beautiful. I recommend toward the night to everybody, it takes my breath away.

Im listening to the Anne Akiko thing and it is lovely!

Reminds me of Sakamoto's stuff, but I am seriously underschooled in this shiz.

unschooled is fine satoh is just such a pleasure to listen to! Margaret Leng Tan, who studied with John Cage, has some recordings of Satoh.

Thanks for this! I am enjoying it.

Towards The Night is beautiful.

ha ha Toward. go to all the trouble of italicizing and then mispell it, good job

New Albion was a very interesting record label

It's still around!!

http://newalbion.com/

ok admittedly the most recent new release is 2008

yes I should not talk about them in past tense, they're still up. I wouldn't count on new releases for the immediate future but I don't think they're down for the count. was just talking about the first ten years, mainly, they walked a very interesting line between electronic / new music / new age / early music. the early music + electronic music connections were particularly right on, when they were putting out things like Island of St. Hylarion and Carl Stone's Mom's back to back they were definitely waking me up