Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yellow Magic Orchestra


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Yellow Magic Orchestra (1978), 6/10
Solid State Survivor (1979), 7/10
Xoo Multiplies (1980), 6/10
BGM (1981), 5/10
Technodelic (1981), 6.5/10
Service (1982), 5/10
After Service (1983), 7/10 (compilation)
People With Nice Smiles (1983), 5/10
Naughty Boys (1984), 5/10
Sakamoto: One Thousand Knives (1978), 6/10
Sakamoto: Summer Nerves (1979), 5/10
Sakamoto: B-2 Unit (1980), 6/10
Sakamoto: Left Handed Dream (1981), 6/10
Sakamoto: End Of Asia (1983), 4.5/10
Sakamoto: Esperanto (1985), 6/10
Sakamoto: Ongakuzukan (1984), 7/10
Sakamoto: Mirai-ha Yaro (1985), 5/10
Sakamoto: The Last Emperor (1986), 6/10
Sakamoto: Aile De Honneamise (1987), 5/10
Sakamoto: Neo Geo (1987) (1988), 7/10
Sakamoto: Coda (1988), 5/10
Sakamoto: Asian Games (1988), 5/10
Sakamoto: Playing The Orchestra (1989), 5/10
Sakamoto: Beauty (1990), 7/10
Sakamoto: Heartbeat (1992) **
Sakamoto: Sweet Revenge (1994), 5/10
Sakamoto: Smoochy (1995), 5/10
Sakamoto: 1996 (1996), 5/10
Sakamoto: Discord (1997), 6.5/10
Sakamoto: Back To the Basics (1999), 6/10
Sakamoto: Piano Pieces (2004), 6/10
Sakamoto: Out of Noise (2009), 6/10
Sakamoto: Async (2017), 5.5/10
Links:

(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.


(Original text by Piero Scaruffi) (Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)

Back To the Basics (1999) is a solo piano album.

Mototronic (Sony, 2003) is a career retrospective.

Piano Pieces (Propiano, 2004) collects his neoclassical piano compositions.

The marriage of Alva Noto's alien electronic soundscapes and Ryuichi Sakamoto's ambient piano vignettes yielded Vrioon (Raster Noton, 2003) and Insen (Asphodel, 2005).

Finally, after a long hiatus, Sakamoto released a new solo album, Chasm (Ka, 2005), but it only proved that he is a much better performer than composer.

The 20-minute ambient EP Sala Santa Cecilia (Touch, 2005) was the product of a laptop-based collaboration between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto, which was followed by Cendre (Touch, 2007) and the double-disc Flumina (2011).

Summvs (Raster-Noton, 2011) is another collaboration between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Flumina (2011) was a new double-disc collaboration between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz, with Sakamoto composing the piano melodies and Fennesz "arranging" them electronically.

Ocean Fire (2008) and Ancient Future (Ghostly, 2012) were collaborations with multi-instrumentist Christopher Willits.

Sakamoto's most prominent work of the new century was the soundtrack for Alejandro Inarritu's film The Revenant (2015).

Ryuichi Sakamoto returned to a more austere form of ambient music on Out of Noise (2009), that employs field recordings. This was his first solo album in five years, and it was therefore disappointing that he couldn't come up with better material. The nine-minute Hibari is repetition for the sake of repetition. However, the ten-minute Glacier is one of his most dramatic and cryptic compositions, where the sound of gurgling water becomes unnerving instead of relaxing given the alarming noise that rise and fall nearby.

Playing the Piano (2009) is a tribute to himself, a revision of some of his most popular motifs.

Async (Commmons, 2017), the first solo album of new material in eight years, boasts the fake church music of Andata, the sinister limping polyrhythms Disintegration and the voluptuous drones of Ff. Alas, the spoken-word samples are a really bad idea and several pieces are too facile.

Both Ryuichi Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi died in 2023.

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