Ryuichi Sakamoto S/D

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.