Ryuichi Sakamoto

Ryuichi Sakamoto
Ryuichi Sakamoto June 2007
Spouse	Akiko Yano (1982-2006)

Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本 龍一 Sakamoto Ryūichi, born January 17, 1952, Nakano, Tokyo, Japan) is an Academy Awards-winning, Grammy-winning, Golden Globe-winning Japanese musician, composer, producer and actor, based in New York and Tokyo.

Biography

Early years and Yellow Magic Orchestra

Sakamoto attended the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he earned a B.A. in music composition and an M.A. with special emphasis on both electronic and ethnic music.

After working as a session musician, he formed the internationally successful Japanese synth techno trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi. The band charted a British top 20 hit with "Firecracker" in the late 1970s (along with other favorites "Technopolis" and "Behind the Mask"), and was a seminal influence on the acid house and techno movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Solo career

Sakamoto released his first solo album in 1978, which included the songs "Thousand Knives" and "The End of Asia".

Following the disbanding of Yellow Magic Orchestra, Sakamoto released a number of solo albums in the 1980s. While primarily focused on the piano and synthesizer, this series of albums boasted a roster of collaborators that included David Sylvian, David Byrne, Thomas Dolby, Nam June Paik, and Iggy Pop, among others. Sakamoto would alternate between exploring a variety of musical styles, ideas, and genres - captured most notably in his groundbreaking 1983 album Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia - and focusing on a specific subject or theme, such as the Italian Futurism movement in Futurista (1986). At times, Sakamoto would also present varying interpretations of technology's intersection with music: he would present some pieces, such as "Replica", with Kraftwerkian rigidity and order, while he would infuse humanity and humor into others - "Broadway Boogie Woogie", for example, liberally lifts samples from Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner, pairing them against a raucous, sax-driven techno-pop backdrop.

As his solo career began to extend outside Japan in the late 1980s, Sakamoto's explorations, influences, and collaborators followed suit. Beauty (1989) boasted a tracklist that combined pop and traditional Japanese and Okinawan songs, yet featured guest appearances by Jill Jones, Brian Wilson, and Robbie Robertson. Heartbeat (1991) and Sweet Revenge (1994), meanwhile, looked to international horizons and drew from a global range of artists such as Dee Dee Brave, French rapper Marco Prince, Arto Lindsay, Youssou N'Dour, David Sylvian, and Ingrid Chavez. 1996 saw the appearance of two notable albums: Smoochy, which fused pop and electronica with bossanova and other South American forms, and 1996, which featured a number of previously released pieces arranged for solo piano, accompanied with violin and cello.

Following 1996, Sakamoto simultaneously delved into the classical and "post-techno" genres with Discord (1998), an hour-long orchestral work in four parts. Here he evoked the melodic qualities of his film score work, imbued with the influence of 20th century classical composers and spoken word. The Sony Classical release also featured an interactive CD-ROM component and website that complemented the work. Shortly thereafter, the Ninja Tune record label released a series of remixes of various sections, produced by a number of prominent electronica artists, including Amon Tobin, Talvin Singh and DJ Spooky.

The next album, BTTB (1998) - an acronym for "Back to the Basics" - was a fairly opaque reaction to the prior year's multilayered, lushly orchestrated Discord. The album comprised of a series of original pieces on solo piano, including "Energy Flow" (a minor hit in Japan) and a frenetic, 4-hand arrangement of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic "Tong Poo".

Sakamoto later teamed with cellist Jaques Morelenbaum (a member of his 1996 trio), and Morelenbaum's wife, Paula, on a pair of albums celebrating the work of jazz pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. They recorded their first album, Casa (2001), mostly in Jobim's home studio in Rio de Janeiro, with Sakamoto performing on the late Jobim's grand piano. The album was well received, having been included in the list of New York Times's top albums of 2002.

Recently, Sakamoto collaborated with Alva Noto (an alias of Carsten Nicolai) to release Vrioon, an album of Sakamoto's piano clusters treated by Nicolai's unique style of digital manipulation, involving the creation of "micro-loops" and minimal percussion. The two produced this work by passing the pieces back and forth until both were satisfied with the result. This debut, released on German label Raster-Noton, was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by British magazine The Wire. They later released Insen (2005) - while produced in a similar manner to Vrioon, this album is somewhat more restrained and minimalist. The method of composition remains highly mathematical, influenced by Olivier Messiaen and Iannis Xenakis, using graph theory and mathematical logic.

Meanwhile, Sakamoto continues to craft music to suit any context: in 2005, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia hired Sakamoto to compose ring and alert tones for their high-end phone, the Nokia 8800.

Film composer and actor

Moviegoers may recognize Sakamoto primarily through his score work on two films: Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), the latter of which earned him the Academy Award with fellow composers David Byrne and Cong Su.

Frequent collaborator David Sylvian contributed lead vocals to "Forbidden Colours" - the main theme to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - which became a minor hit. Sixteen years later, the piece resurfaced as a popular dance track called "Heart of Asia" (by the group Watergate).

Other films scored by Sakamoto include Pedro Almodóvar's Tacones lejanos (1992); Bertolucci's The Little Buddha (1993); Oliver Stone's Wild Palms (1993); John Maybury's Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998); Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes (1998) and Femme Fatale (2002), and Oshima's Gohatto (1999). He also composed the score of the opening ceremony for the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, telecast live to an audience of over a billion viewers.

Several tracks from Sakamoto's earlier solo albums have also appeared in film soundtracks. In particular, variations of "Chinsagu No Hana" (from Beauty) and "Bibo No Aozora" (from 1996) provide the poignant closing pieces for Sue Brooks's Japanese Story (2003) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel (2006), respectively.

Sakamoto has also acted in several films: perhaps his most notable performance was as the conflicted Captain Yonoi in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, alongside Takeshi Kitano and British rock singer David Bowie. He also played small roles in The Last Emperor and Madonna's "Rain" music video.

Selected discography

Solo

• Thousand Knives (1978)
• Summer Nerves (1979)
• B2-Unit (1980)
• Left-Handed Dream (1981)
• Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia (1983)
• Esperanto (1985)
• Futurista (1986)
• Coda (1986)
• Neo Geo (1987)
• Tokyo Joe (1988)
• Beauty (1989)
• Heartbeat (1991)
• Sweet Revenge (1994)
• Smoochy (1995)
• 1996 (1996)
• Discord (1997)
• BTTB (1998)
• Cinemage (1999)
• Intimate (1999, with Keizo Inoue)
• L I F E (2000)
• Zero Landmine (2001)
• Comica (2002)
• Elephantism (2002)
• Love (2003)
• Vrioon (2003, with Alva Noto)
• World Citizen (2003, with David Sylvian)
• Derrida (2003)
• Chasm (2004)
• Moto.tronic (2003, Compilation of tracks recorded between 1983 & 2003)
• Insen (2005, with Alva Noto)
• Cantus omnibus unus; for mixed or equal choir (2005)
• Bricolages (2006)

As Morelenbaum2/Sakamoto

• Casa (2001)
• A Day in New York (2003)

Film and event scores

• Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)
• Ôritsu uchûgun Oneamisu no tsubasa - Royal Air Force (Wings of Honnéamise) (1987)
• The Last Emperor (1988)
• The Sheltering Sky (1990)
• The Handmaid's Tale (1990)
• High Heels (1992)
• Wuthering Heights (1992)
• El Mar Mediterrani - Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony (1992)
• Wild Palms (1993)
• Little Buddha (1993)
• Stalker (1997)
• Snake Eyes (1998)
• Love Is The Devil (1998)
• Gohatto (1999)
• Lack of Love - Dreamcast Game (2000)
• Minha Vida Como Un Filme (2002)
• Femme Fatale (2002)
• Shining Boy & Little Randy (2005)
• Tony Takitani (2005)
• Silk (2007)

Personal life

Sakamoto was married to Japanese pianist and singer Akiko Yano: he collaborated with her on some of her recordings, and she was also a regular touring member of Yellow Magic Orchestra. They finally divorced in August 2006, 14 years after a mutual decision to live separately. They had one daughter, j-pop singer Miu Sakamoto.

In 1998, Italian ethnomusicologist Massimo Milano published Ryuichi Sakamoto. Conversazioni, a collection of essays and conversations.

He is also known as a critic of copyright law, arguing that it is antiquated in the information age.

External links

• The official Ryuichi Sakamoto web site
• Raster-Noton site
• Huge discography on a fan website