Ryuichi Sakamoto S/D

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/

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.