Ryuichi Sakamoto S/D

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