|
(Translated by DeepL from my original Italian text)
In his solo career, Ryuichi Sakamoto has proven to be a modern composer, capable of juggling electronic studio equipment and devising multimedia scenarios.
The Yellow Magic Orchestra was an institution of Japanese music.
Formed in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (former bassist of Happy End and Tin Pan Alley, and author of four solo records), Yukihiro Takahashi (former drummer of the Sadistic Mika Band) and Ryuichi Sakamoto, a classically trained keyboardist who was recording his first album, One Thousand Knives (Plurex, october 1978), debuted with Yellow Magic Orchestra (Alfa, 1978), and ephemeral dance-pop vignettes such as La Femme Chinoise, but it was not until the second album, Solid State Survivor (Alfa, 1979), that they achieved success. With a sound that imitated (or, rather, anticipated) British synth-pop and was loosely inspired by Kraftwerk, YMO quickly became a late techno-rock classic. The album is mostly a collection of instrumental electronic novelties such as the propulsive and catchy funk vignette Technopolis, evoking sci-fi fantasy lands, and the demonic polka Absolute Ego Dance. But it also contains a few songs, notably the romantic lullaby with auto-tuned vocals Behind The Mask and the closing dance-club frenzy, Solid State Survivor.
The decidedly commercial turn of the EP X Infinite Multiplies (1980), particularly Multiplies and Nice Age, influenced by Bill Nelson, led to a rapid decline through naive works such as BGM (Alpha, 1981) and unpretentious songs such as Ballet and 1000 Knives.
This album was influential because it was played with the Roland TR808 drum-machine, which had just been introduced (first employed in 1980 by the Yellow Magic Orchestra during a live performance in Tokyo).
The band introduced a new instrument on
Technodelic (Alfa, 1981): the sampler
(a Toshiba LMD-649).
The album is more sung than Solid State Survivor but the main attraction
are still the rhythms and the electronic arrangements.
There are in particular
songs that wed syncopated machine beats and psychedelic atmospheres,
with languid Beatles-esque melodies: Pure Jam and Seoul Music.
There are arrangements that mimic
cinematic soundtracks of thrillers and noirs, especially Stairs.
There is the industrial, robotic, Kraftwerk-ian nightmare of Neue Tanz (their ultimate futuristic anthem)
and there is the
Jon Hassell-ian
Gradated Grey (syncopated rhythms and exotic fog).
There are the convoluted beats Light In Darkness
and the post-human polyrhythmic singalong of Key.
The "sampling" revolution started with this album.
The YMO was provided a hand-made prototype of the LMD-649 by Toshiba's engineer Koharu Murata: it was the first practical "pulse-code modulation" (PCM) digital sampler.
Service (Alfa, 1982) and People With Nice Smiles (Alfa, 1983) are increasingly distracted and confused works, although they get a few happy tunes right. After Service (Alfa, 1983) is an anthology.
After Naughty Boys (Alfa, 1984) the three strong individuals parted ways.
Sealed (Alfa, 1985) is an anthology.
Haruomi Hosono, who had debuted with the psychedelic The Apryl Fool (1969) the electronic Hosono House (1973) and
the exotica album Tropical Dandy (1975),
and had played bass for prog-rock outfit Happy End from 1970 to 1973,
started two parallel careers, one as an ambient composer,
for example on Cochin Moon (1978) and
Philharmony (1982),
on the cassette Watering a Flower (1984),
the tetralogy
Coincidental Music (1985),
Mercuric Dance (1985),
Paradise View (1985),
and The Endless Talking (1986),
the soundtrack Genji Monogatari (1987),
Omni Sight Seeing (1989),
Naga (1995),
and
NDE (Antilles, 1996);
and one as a synth-pop act, Friends of Earth.
He also invented "videogame music", which became a popular genre in Japan.
HAT (Haruomi hosono, Atom heart, Tetsu Inoue) is a
drum'n'bass project that
released Tokyo - Frankfurt - New York (Rather Interesting, 1996)
and DSP Holiday (Daisyworld, 1998).
Hosono also collaborates to World Standard. The project was started by
Shichiro Suzuki and recorded
World Standard (Non Standard, 1985), later reissued with rarities as
Le Train Musical, and Allo (Non Standard, 1986).
Then Suzuki became Everything Play and released three albums. Only in the 1990s did Suzuki resurrect
World Standard with help from Hosono.
of a country-rock ambient music:
World Standard II (FOA, 1995),
Country Gazette (Daisyworld, 1997),
Mountain Ballad (Daisyworld, 1999),
Jump For Joy (Daisyworld, 2003)
Ever since Saravah (Toshiba, 1977), Takahashi has composed solo albums in which he gives free rein to his imagination: the phase that began in 1980 with Murdered By The Music (Statik), and continued with Neuromantic (Alpha) and What Me Worry?, is the major one.
The youngest of the three, Sakamoto, was also the most successful. Indeed, his solo career appears much more important today than YMO's.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, the keyboard prodigy of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, had already made his solo debut with One Thousand Knives (Plurex, october 1978).
He was followed by more erratic albums: Summer Nerves (1979), with jazz-rock and prog-rock guitarists such as Kazumi Watanabe, Kenji Omura, Masaki Matsubara and Shigeru Suzuki (of the Happy End), B-2 Unit (Alfa, 1980), techno and industrial dance experiments such as Participation Mystique with the collaboration of Andy Partridge (XTC) and Dennis Bovell (reggae producer), Hidari Ude No Yume (1981), published in the US as Left Handed Dream (Epic, 1981) but with many variations, a collaboration with producer Robin Scott (the one from Pop Muzik) and guitarist Adrian Belew (and also keyboardist Hideki Matsutake, violinist Kaoru Sato, saxophonist Satoshi Nakamura, and instruments such as marimba, didgeridu, sho, hichiriki, etc.), and End Of Asia (Columbia, 1983), which employs only medieval instruments. They are mostly home exercises to learn as much as possible about using the recording studio.
Sakamoto also collaborated on some works by David Sylvian, and released two albums with Kazumi Watanabe. Kylyn (1979) and Tokyo Joe (1982).
Even amid the mishmash of ideas, Ongakuzukan (Midi, 1984),
better known as
Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia
(Virgin, 1986), established the theme of his mature age: the fusion of Western music and Eastern sensibilities, realized through the soft orchestral jazz of Etude and Tibetan Dance, with some avant-garde vagueness as in the minimalist iterations of Paradise Lost.
The single Field Work, on the other hand, represented the last gasp of synth-pop. Much more unhinged is Mirai-ha Yaro/ Futurist (Midi, 1985), which marks a regression to its experimental phase.
Neo Geo (CBS, 1987) marks the pinnacle of his career, thanks to the contribution of Bill Laswell and a host of collaborators: his ethnic roots interpenetrate Western muzak and funky rhythms to the point of lapping the electronic world-music of Holger Czukay and Peter Gabriel. The synthesis is highly sophisticated, if not ingenious: on the sturdy funky foundations of the title-track stand almost "industrial" polyrhythms and a shrill female chant in Japanese, among the African tribalisms of Shogunade are camouflaged ominous electronic scans.
But it is the instrumental tracks that dominate, enclosed between two watercolors for piano and electronics, bordering between cocktail lounge and new age: Before Long and After All. The airy melodies, worthy of a 1960s soundtrack, such as Free Trading, the symphonic overtures spoiled by Zappa's clownish flair, such as Parade, constitute as many essays of how to graft avant-garde music, (or at least high technology) onto commercial music.
In the meantime Sakamoto had begun to work for the cinema, to which he gave the (mostly cloying) scores for Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), of which Coda (Midi, 1988) is the piano version, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1986), perhaps the most sophisticated fusion of Western themes Oriental and minimalist that Sakamoto had been preaching for years, Masanori Hata's Adventures Of Chatran/ Koneko Monogatari (Midi, 1986), Hiroyuki Yamaga's Aile De Honneamise (Midi, 1987), Volker Schloendorff's A Handmaid's Tale (Crescendo, 1989), Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky (1990); Pedro Almodovar's High Heels (1992), Wuthering Heights (1992), Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is The Devil (1998), Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto/Taboo (1999); etc. Esperanto (Midi, 1985) contains music for the ballet, probably inspired by David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Wongga Dance Song, Adelic Penguins, A Carved Stone).
Asian Games (Verve, 1988) is a collaboration with Bill Laswell. Playing The Orchestra (Virgin, 1989) is a live double.
By now famous, Sakamoto indulges in the habit of enlisting legions of prestigious names for his records. Beauty (Virgin, 1990) is thus even more lambasted in its realization, although the compositions almost always lack depth.
This is where the story of Sakamoto the forerunner ends, for that of Heartbeat (Elektra, 1991), steeped in African-American dance music, Sweet Revenge (Elektra, 1994), tempted by the hip hop of Same Dream, the soul of Moving On, the orchestral pop of the title track, and above all the expressionist ballad of Love And Hate, is an artist desperately trying to stay with the times.
Sakamoto had been an intellectual force on the level of Peter Gabriel and David Sylvian for integrating ethnic music into the conceptual structures of the Western avant-garde.
Meanwhile, the Yellow Magic Orchestra returned with Technodon (1993).
Smoochy (1995) is a lighter work, playing postmodernly with consumer genres, as in Bibo No Aosora and Aishiteru, Aishitenai.
1996 (BMG, 1996) is a collection of "hits" reworked for a chamber setting.
Discord (Sony, 1997) may be the most ambitious record of Sakamoto`s career. It contains only four kilometer-long tracks (plus a video and an Internet connection). Grief is a mixture of Japanese ceremonial music and European symphonic music. The tragic tone of the beginning, in which dissonances and minimalisms are magically camouflaged, darkens further to a gloomy, funereal sequence punctuated by tolling bells, and then opens into a more interlocutory sequence, replete with dissonances, that seems to prelude something less mournful but only preludes the end. The other highlight of the disc is Prayer, a more complex composition that, after a subdued beginning with a trombone babbling, soars into a delicate clarinet melody that seems to "tell" the prayer of the title, ending with a tender chinwag of violins and piano. Salvation is the weakest track, a kind of opera-conversation with a background of Japanese melodies performed by a string orchestra.
The approach to the orchestral dimension is not all that surprising, given his track record in the soundtrack field. What is surprising is the style he has arrived at, a style that crosses Richard Strauss and Kitaro.
Anger Grief is the remix disc.
|
Nella sua carriera solista Ryuichi Sakamoto ha dimostrato di essere un
compositore moderno, capace di destreggiarsi con le apparecchiature dello
studio elettronico e di concepire scenari multimediali.
La Yellow Magic Orchestra fu a lungo un'istituzione della musica
giapponese.
Formati nel 1978 da Haruomi Hosono (già bassista degli Happy
End e dei Tin Pan Alley, e autore di quattro dischi solisti),
Yukihiro Takahashi (già batterista della Sadistic Mika
Band)
e Ryuichi Sakamoto,
tastierista di formazione classica che stava registrando il suo primo album,
One Thousand Knives (Plurex, october 1978),
esordirono con Yellow Magic Orchestra (Alfa, 1978),
e effimere vignette dance-pop come La Femme Chinoise,
ma soltanto con il secondo
Solid State Survivor (Alfa, 1979) ottennero il successo.
Con un sound che imitava (o, meglio, anticipava) il synth-pop
Britannico e si ispirava liberamente ai
Kraftwerk,
gli YMO diventarono rapidamente un classico del tardo techno-rock.
The album is mostly a collection of instrumental electronic novelties
such as the propulsive and catchy funk vignette Technopolis,
evoking sci-fi fantasy lands,
and the demonic polka Absolute Ego Dance.
But it also contains a few songs, notably the
romantic lullaby with auto-tuned vocals Behind The Mask
and the closing dance-club frenzy, Solid State Survivor.
La svolta decisamente commerciale dell'EP X Infinite Multiplies (1980),
in particolare
Multiplies e Nice Age, influenzate da Bill Nelson, portò a una rapida decadenza,
attraverso opere naive come
BGM (Alfa, 1981) e canzoni senza pretese come Ballet e
1000 Knives.
This album was influential because it was played with the Roland TR808 drum-machine, which had just been introduced (first employed in 1980 by the Yellow Magic Orchestra during a live performance in Tokyo).
The band introduced a new instrument on
Technodelic (Alfa, 1981): the sampler
(a Toshiba LMD-649).
The album is more sung than Solid State Survivor but the main attraction
are still the rhythms and the electronic arrangements.
There are in particular
songs that wed syncopated machine beats and psychedelic atmospheres,
with languid Beatles-esque melodies: Pure Jam and Seoul Music.
There are arrangements that mimic
cinematic soundtracks of thrillers and noirs, especially Stairs.
There is the industrial, robotic, Kraftwerk-ian nightmare of Neue Tanz (their ultimate futuristic anthem)
and there is the
Jon Hassell-ian
Gradated Grey (syncopated rhythms and exotic fog).
There are the convoluted beats Light In Darkness
and the post-human polyrhythmic singalong of Key.
The "sampling" revolution started with this album.
The YMO was provided a hand-made prototype of the LMD-649 by Toshiba's engineer Koharu Murata: it was the first practical "pulse-code modulation" (PCM) digital sampler.
Service (Alfa, 1982) e
People With Nice Smiles (Alfa, 1983)
sono
lavori sempre più distratti e confusi, anche se azzeccano qualche melodia felice.
After Service (Alfa, 1983) e` un'antologia.
Dopo
Naughty Boys (Alfa, 1984)
le tre forti personalità si separarono.
Sealed (Alfa, 1985) e` un'antologia.
Haruomi Hosono, who had debuted with the psychedelic The Apryl Fool (1969) the electronic Hosono House (1973) and
the exotica album Tropical Dandy (1975),
and had played bass for prog-rock outfit Happy End from 1970 to 1973,
started two parallel careers, one as an ambient composer,
for example on Cochin Moon (1978) and
Philharmony (1982),
on the cassette Watering a Flower (1984),
the tetralogy
Coincidental Music (1985),
Mercuric Dance (1985),
Paradise View (1985),
and The Endless Talking (1986),
the soundtrack Genji Monogatari (1987),
Omni Sight Seeing (1989),
Naga (1995),
and
NDE (Antilles, 1996);
and one as a synth-pop act, Friends of Earth.
He also invented "videogame music", which became a popular genre in Japan.
HAT (Haruomi hosono, Atom heart, Tetsu Inoue) is a
drum'n'bass project that
released Tokyo - Frankfurt - New York (Rather Interesting, 1996)
and DSP Holiday (Daisyworld, 1998).
Hosono also collaborates to World Standard. The project was started by
Shichiro Suzuki and recorded
World Standard (Non Standard, 1985), later reissued with rarities as
Le Train Musical, and Allo (Non Standard, 1986).
Then Suzuki became Everything Play and released three albums. Only in the 1990s did Suzuki resurrect
World Standard with help from Hosono.
of a country-rock ambient music:
World Standard II (FOA, 1995),
Country Gazette (Daisyworld, 1997),
Mountain Ballad (Daisyworld, 1999),
Jump For Joy (Daisyworld, 2003)
Fin da Saravah (Toshiba) del 1977
Takahashi ha composto album solisti in cui dà libero sfogo alla fantasia: la fase iniziata nel 1980
con Murdered By The Music (Statik), e proseguita con Neuromantic (Alfa) e What
Me Worry?, è la maggiore.
Il più giovane, Sakamoto, è anche quello che ha avuto
maggior successo. La sua carriera solista appare anzi oggi molto più importante di quella della
YMO.
Ryuichi Sakamoto, il tastierista prodigio della Yellow Magic Orchestra,
aveva già debuttato come solista con
One Thousand Knives (Plurex, october 1978).
Gli fecero seguito album piu` erratici:
Summer Nerves (1979), con chitarristi jazz-rock e prog-rock come
Kazumi Watanabe, Kenji Omura, Masaki Matsubara e Shigeru Suzuki (degli Happy End),
B-2 Unit (Alfa, 1980), esperimenti di techno e industrial dance
come Participation Mystique
con la collaborazione di Andy Partridge (XTC) e
Dennis Bovell (produttore reggae),
Hidari Ude No Yume (1981), edito negli USA come Left Handed Dream (Epic, 1981) ma con numerose varianti, una collaborazione con il produttore Robin Scott (quello di Pop Muzik) e con il chitarrista Adrian Belew (e anche
il tastierista Hideki Matsutake, il violinista Kaoru Sato, il sassofonista Satoshi Nakamura, e strumenti come marimba, didgeridu, sho, hichiriki, etc), e
End Of Asia (Columbia, 1983), che impiega soltanto strumenti medievali.
Sono soprattutto esercizi a casa per imparare il massimo possibile sull'uso dello studio di registrazione.
Sakamoto collaboro` anche ad alcune opere di David Sylvian, e pubblico` due
album con Kazumi Watanabe.
Kylyn (1979) e Tokyo Joe (1982)
Pur nel calderone di idee,
Ongakuzukan (Midi, 1984), riedito come Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (Virgin, 1986),
stabili` il tema della maturità: la fusione fra
musica occidentale e sensibilità orientale, realizzata tramite il soffice jazz orchestrale di
Etude e Tibetan Dance, con qualche velleità avanguardistica come nelle iterazioni
minimaliste di Paradise Lost.
Il singolo Field Work rappresentava invece l'ultimo sussulto
di synth-pop. Molto più dissennato è
Mirai-ha Yaro/ Futurista (Midi, 1985),
che segna un regresso alla sua fase sperimentale.
Neo Geo (CBS, 1987)
segna l'apice della sua carriera, grazie al contributo di
Bill Laswell e di uno stuolo di collaboratori: le sue radici etniche compenetrano la muzak occidentale e i
ritmi funky fino a lambire la world-music elettronica di Holger Czukay e Peter Gabriel. La sintesi
è sofisticatissima, se non geniale: sulle robuste fondamenta funky della title-track si ergono
poliritmi quasi "industriali" e uno stridulo canto femminile in giapponese, fra i tribalismi africani di
Shogunade si mimetizzano scansioni elettroniche minacciose.
Ma a dominare sono i brani strumentali, chiusi fra due acquerelli per
pianoforte ed elettronica, al confine fra cocktail lounge e new age: Before Long e After
All. Le melodie ariose, degne di una colonna sonora degli anni '60, come Free Trading, le
ouverture sinfoniche viziate dal piglio clownesco di Zappa, come Parata, costituiscono altrettanti
saggi di come innestare la musica d'avanguardia, (o quantomeno l'alta tecnologia) sulla musica
commerciale.
Nel frattempo Sakamoto aveva cominciato a lavorare per il cinema, a cui diede
le (perlopiu` stucchevoli) colonne sonore per
Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), di cui
Coda (Midi, 1988) e` la versione per pianoforte,
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1986),
forse la fusione piu` sofisticata dei
temi occidentali, orientali e minimalisti che Sakamoto andava predicando
da anni,
Masanori Hata's Adventures Of Chatran/ Koneko Monogatari (Midi, 1986),
Hiroyuki Yamaga's Aile De Honneamise (Midi, 1987),
Volker Schloendorff's A Handmaid's Tale (Crescendo, 1989),
Bernardo Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky (1990);
Pedro Almodovar's High Heels (1992),
Wuthering Heights (1992),
Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993),
Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993);
John Maybury's Love Is The Devil (1998),
Nagisa Oshima's Gohatto/Taboo (1999);
etc.
Esperanto (Midi, 1985) contiene
musiche per il balletto, probabilmente ispirato da
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts di David Byrne
(Wongga Dance Song,
Adelic Penguins,
A Carved Stone).
Asian Games (Verve, 1988) e` una collaborazione con Bill Laswell.
Playing The Orchestra (Virgin, 1989) e` un doppio dal vivo.
Ormai famoso, Sakamoto si concede il vezzo di arruolare per i suoi dischi
legioni di nomi prestigiosi.
Beauty (Virgin, 1990)
è così ancor più lambiccato nella
realizzazione, anche se le composizioni mancano quasi sempre di spessore.
Qui finisce la storia di
Sakamoto il precursore, poiché quello di
Heartbeat (Elektra, 1991),
immerso nella musica da ballo afro-americana,
Sweet Revenge (Elektra, 1994),
tentato dall'hip hop di Same Dream, dal soul di Moving On, dal
pop orchestrale della title-track, e soprattutto dalla ballad espressionista di Love And Hate,
è un artista che tenta disperatamente di restare al passo con i tempi.
Sakamoto era stato una forza intellettuale del livello di Peter Gabriel
e David Sylvian per l'integrazione della musica etnica nelle concettuose strutture dell'avanguardia
occidentale.
Meanwhile, the Yellow Magic Orchestra returned with Technodon (1993).
Smoochy (1995) e` un'opera piu` leggera, che gioca in modo postmoderno con
i generi di consumo, come in Bibo No Aosora e
Aishiteru, Aishitenai.
1996 (BMG, 1996) is a collection of "hits" reworked for a chamber setting.
Discord (Sony, 1997)
potrebbe essere il disco piu` ambizioso della carriera di Sakamoto.
Contiene soltanto quattro chilometrici brani (oltre a un video e a una
connessione a internet).
Grief e` un misto di musica cerimoniale giapponese e musica sinfonica europea.
Il tono tragico dell'inizio, nel quale sono magicamente mimetizzate dissonanze
e minimalismi, s'incupisce ulteriormente fino a una sequenza tetra e funerea
punteggiata da rintocchi di campane, per poi aprirsi in una sequenza piu`
interlocutoria, ricca di dissonanze, che sembra preludere a qualcosa di meno
lugubre ma prelude soltanto alla fine.
L'altro pezzo forte del disco e` Prayer, composizione piu` complessa che,
dopo un'inizio sottotono con un farfuglio di trombone, si libra in una delicata
melodia di clarinetto che sembra "raccontare" la preghiera del titolo,
per finire con un tenero cincischiare di violini e pianoforte.
Salvation e` il brano piu` debole, una specie di opera-conversazione con
sottofondo di melodie giapponesi eseguito da un'orchestra d'archi.
L'approdo alla dimensione orchestrale non stupisce piu` di tanto, visti i
suoi precedenti nel campo della colonna sonora. Stupisce lo stile a cui
e` pervenuto, uno stile che incrocia Richard Strauss e Kitaro.
Anger Grief e` il disco di remix.
|
