TrouserPress.com:: Ryuichi Sakamoto artist album title keyword RYUICHI SAKAMOTO Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto (Japan. Alfa) 1978 (Hol. Purex) 1982 B-2 Unit (Alfa/Island) 1980 Coda (Japan. Midi) 1981 Merry Christmas, Mr.
Lawrence (MCA) 1983 Illustrated Musical Encylopaedia (Japan. School/Midi) 1984 (10) 1986 Miraiha Yaro (Japan.
School/Midi) 1985 Esperanto (Japan. School/Midi) 1985 Media Bahn Live (Japan. School/Midi) 1986 Koneko Monogatari (Japan. School/Midi) 1986 Adventures of Chatran (Japan. School/Midi) 1986 Aile de Hanneamise Royal Space Force (Japan.
School/Midi) 1987 Neo Geo (Epic) 1988 Risky EP (Japan. CBS/Sony) 1988 Playing the Orchestra (Virgin) 1989 A Handmaid's Tale (GNP Crescendo) 1989 Beauty (Virgin) 1990 The Sheltering Sky (Virgin Movie Music) 1991 RIUICHI SAKAMOTO FEATURING ROBIN SCOTT Left Handed Dream (Epic) 1981 The Arrangement (Japan. Alfa) 1990 VARIOUS ARTISTS Piano One (Private Music) 1986 RYUICHI SAKAMOTO, DAVID BYRNE AND CONG SU The Last Emperor (Virgin Movie Music) 1988 Keyboardist Sakamoto did his first session work during his post-graduate studies of electronic and ethnic music at the University of Art of Tokyo in the mid-'70s.
He continued after getting an MFA and, in 1978, released his first solo album, Thousand Knives. Presaging his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra (which he formed later that year), the record consists of electronic disco, commendably quirky for the time it was recorded but now largely dated, with some unnecessary guitar soloing the chief guest performance on the disc, since almost everything else was played by Sakamoto. Only surreal environment-conjuring on one track and musical cross-pollination on another hint at the avant-garde and world music aspects of Sakamoto's later work.
While with YMO, he made B-2 Unit with the help of British reggae musician/producer Dennis Bovell and XTC's Andy Partridge. Though not throwing up as many sparks with them as might have been expected what might he do with Bovell now? it clearly shows him to be an adventuresome oddball rather than a trendy studio hack. On 1981's Left Handed Dream, Sakamoto effectively draws out and integrates his collaborators (Robin 'M' Scott and Adrian Belew, as well as both YMO cohorts), who in turn get the best out of him. The LP varies from slippery, fractured funk to a duel between a grim, darkly atmospheric drone and assorted percussion; it consistently scintillates, though sometimes in a curiously offhand way.
In a lot of ways B-2 Unit has the dynamics that made The Pop Group or Public Image Ltd. So unique: dubby, caustic, rhythmic sound worlds. Sakamoto has fused Japanese minimalism with krautrock, dub and found sound to create infectious sound sculptures. In a lot of ways B-2 Unit has the dynamics that made The Pop Group or Public Image Ltd. So unique: dubby, caustic, rhythmic sound worlds. Sakamoto has fused Japanese minimalism with krautrock, dub and found sound to create infectious sound sculptures.
(In 1990, The Arrangement reissued the tracks featuring Scott about half the album plus several more, evidently outtakes of the original session.) Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is the soundtrack to a film starring Tom Conti, David Bowie and Sakamoto, who performed the entire evocative synth score alone (save a vocal of dubious worth by David Sylvian in an alternative version of the main theme). He more recently acted in The Last Emperor (1987), also contributing half of the suitably atmospheric soundtrack album. (The score won an Oscar.) The disc's only memorable music is Sakamoto's main theme (with its surprisingly European feel), which he explores through much of his side.
Both films' music appeared later in other forms. Coda reprises the first seven tracks of Mr.
Lawrence, while Playing the Orchestra is a live symphonic rendering of music from The Last Emperor, followed by an equally in-depth investigation of about a third of Mr. Lawrence, capped by the restatement of the Last Emperor theme. Lovely, warm, spacious and extremely tough to obtain: a limited-edition CD release in a gorgeous decorated box, with a bonus CD-3 featuring a trio of non-movie tracks.
Esperanto is an abridged version of Sakamoto's end of a dance performance collaboration with New York choreographer Melissa Fenley. His staccato blend of pure electronic sounds and samples of voices and instruments, often electronically altered, is mildly impressive but not engaging. Adventures of Chatran and Koneko Monogatari are also movie scores, the latter for one of Japan's biggest-ever box-office flicks; Honneamise is his score for an animated sci-fi film. Piano One consists of solo acoustic piano pieces by four artists, including Sakamoto and Eddie Jobson.
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (originally released in 1984 in Japan, as Ongakuzukan) opens with 'Field Work,' a low-key dance-rock joint venture with Thomas Dolby that was also released as a single; it's immediately likable but unrelated to the feel of the rest of the record. The LP's title states an idea Sakamoto has toyed with since Thousand Knives: combining pieces of Eastern and Western musics so they're not readily identifiable yet complement each other as part of an organic whole. He sometimes crosses the line into pretentious piano muzak when meddling with European 'classical' music, but it's a mostly worthwhile attempt, if it does require patience to absorb the subtler angles. (He explores all this more ambitiously and successfully on Neo Geo.) Three tracks on Miraiha Yaro (aka Futurista) have conventional melodies almost reminiscent of TV themes but tricked up with oddball, loud and/or abrasive synth arrangements (as if to counterweight the tunes' prettiness). 'Milan 1909' is an electronic curator's narration on the Futurist art movement, over restrained keyboard; 'Verso lo schermo' is electro- disco-cum-opera, with Italian lyrics; 'Water Is Life' is a wall of music chopped up and distorted, along with a voice slowed to a deep slur. Helpers include vocalist Bernard Fowler, guitarist Arto Lindsay, Sakamoto's wife Akiko Yano (some Japanese lyrics) and saxist Maceo Parker (of James Brown fame).
Not as engaging as it is impressive, but almost. Media Bahn is a double live LP of a subsequent tour in support of the album; Sakamoto is aided by Fowler and percussionist David Van Tieghem. Neo Geo is Sakamoto's biggest all-star affair, boasting Van Tieghem, drumming by jazz star Tony Williams and reggae heavyweight Sly Dunbar, bassists Bootsy Collins and Bill Laswell (also Sakamoto's co-producer/writing partner here) and, on one track, a strangely simpatico Iggy Pop vocalizing his own thoughtfully dramatic lyrics. Sakamoto spends the rest of the album carrying forth the Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia experiments, which get most exciting when he tries weird intertwinings of Japanese music and rock/funk.
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The LP's highlights are among Sakamoto's best work. ( Risky is a CD-V of five Neo Geo tunes, four of which have visual contents for those equipped with videodisc players.) With Beauty, Sakamoto really becomes the Quincy Jones of alternative music. His all-star cast includes Arto Lindsay (no guitar, only vocals and poem reading), Robbie Robertson (Sakamoto co-wrote songs for Robertson's second solo LP), Sly Dunbar and would you believe Brian Wilson singing backup to Robert Wyatt's lead on the Stones' 'We Love You'? Although more exciting on paper than it turns out to be in the grooves, that's not so bad a thing.
About the only celebrity who retains much identity here is Youssou N'Dour, with various vocal embellishments and a lead vocal on 'Diabaram' (which he co-wrote); otherwise it's Sakamoto's show (he even sings lead in English for the first time) as he deftly injects Japanese, Arabic, Indian and African elements into western pop musics. It's not as exciting or as decisively successful as Neo Geo, but its sophisticated synthesis is both pleasant and A-for-effort admirable. A Handmaid's Tale and The Sheltering Sky are both critically and commercially unsuccessful movie adaptations of well-received novels, the former by Margaret Atwood and the latter by Paul Bowles; Sakamoto did the scores for both. For the latter, his compositions mostly played by the London Royal Philharmonic Orchestra are somewhat repetitive but evocative, with a main theme vaguely reminiscent of his Last Emperor theme. Half of The Sheltering Sky album has little or nothing to do with Sakamoto: three tracks are by composer Richard Horowitz and there are several striking samples of North African music and a couple of period pieces.Jim Green See also.
Ryuichi Sakamoto - B-2 Unit (1980 XLD Flac(Image) + Cue + Log & MP3 CBR 320Kbps 1988 Alfa Records 32XA-230 182 or 88 Mb Artwork(png) - 16 Mb Abstract, Electronic A perfect, dark companion to Yellow Magic Orchestra's own fantastic Technodelic, B-2 Unit finds Sakamoto exploring a decidedly more experimental side of electronic music. When listening to this now, it's important to recall how much painstaking programming went into creating this music. There were no DAW's, no Pro-Tools or Ableton, no modeling synthesizers and the only commercially available sampler was the 8-bit, insanely expensive and difficult Fairlight CMI.
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To sequence the synth / drum machine parts to get that 'precise' sound meant countless hours sitting at the Roland MC 8, a sequencer where every note and chord needed to be punched in manually. Having done something similar myself recently I can attest: as great as the end result is, the process is maddening.
When so much work goes into a record, you can guarantee the artist believes deeply in every track. Thusly, there are no weak tracks on B-2 Unit, only wild, expressive, experimental electronic pop music.
A huge criticism levied at electronic music, especially at the time, was that it was cold and soulless, lacking in emotional depth. Those things could definitely be true, plenty of artists certainly used this aspect to define their sound. Not so, Ryuichi Sakamoto.
'Thatness and Thereness', for all it's melting electronic washes, is anchored by Sakamoto's excellent melodic chops, as pretty as any smooth jazz number. But that's not the most on offer in B-2U. Opener 'Differencia' must have shocked the shit out of the YMO faithful with it's dark aura and skewered drum machine hiccuping all over the place. 'Participation Mystique' continues this after the false comfort of 'Thatness and Thereness' with pounding drums, distorted drone figure and a mutilated vocal that sounds like a whispering spectre. 'Iconic Storage' posits industrial instructional film music as dark pop while 'Not the 6 O'Clock News' is just straight up industrial music, as uncompromising as anything coming out of England at the time. 'E-3A' pits Sakamoto's synth prowess against dub producer Dennis 'Blackbeard' Bovell. Bovell, no stranger to non reggae musics, having produced post-punk noise funksters The Pop Group's debut Y and The Slits Cut, approaches the track with a fine tuned sense of rhythm, weaving seemlessly in and out of the hi-q bass squirts and clicks.
'Riot in Lagos' is the closest B-2U gets to YMO's electro pop but still a bit 'off', though it certainly clues the listener to the general direction that that band would take less than a year later on Technodelic. Still sounds fresh 32 years later. Uploadgigcom: nitroflarecom: rapidgatornet: https://rapidgator.net/file/6a2a62240ac6532f408dcc4bac62bcc1/lq5uf.RSakamoto80B2UnitScans.rar.html.