Ryuichi Sakamoto, the Japanese musician whose digital compositions influenced generations of techno, hip-hop, and pop producers, died on March 28 in Japan on the age of 71.
His recording firm Avex shared mentioned in a press release that Sakamoto died of most cancers and thanked his US and Japanese medical groups.
“Whereas present process therapy for most cancers found in June 2020, Sakamoto continued to create works in his house studio at any time when his well being would enable him to. He lived with music till the very finish.
The assertion additionally confirmed there was a non-public funeral amongst his shut household that had already taken place.
Sakamoto had a protracted and different profession. His earliest work touched on extra classical and avant-garde influences, however Sakamoto initially discovered success as a member of the techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra, which scored chart hits around the globe and had their work coated by Michael Jackson and Eric Clapton. As a solo artist, his music predicted the sounds of contemporary electro, jungle, and ambient.
Alongside the way in which, Sakamoto collaborated with different artists like Scottish pop group Aztec Digicam and post-punk provocateurs Public Picture Ltd. and composed music for movie, incomes an Oscar for his work on 1987’s The Final Emperor and a Golden Globe for 1990’s The Sheltering Sky. Lately, Sakamoto’s profession has come considerably full circle as his work turned extra summary and experimental, as heard on albums like async and collaborations with the German artist Alva Noto.
“He has a stressed curiosity and may’ve been seen as one thing of a jack-of-all-trades, if it wasn’t for the truth that he’s a grasp of so lots of them,” Sakamoto’s frequent collaborator and good friend David Sylvian informed the New York Instances, in 2017.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was born on January 17, 1952 in Tokyo, Japan to an inventive household. His father was a guide editor who labored with novelists like Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburō Ōe. “On a regular basis these very younger wannabe writers and novelists got here to the home,” he mentioned in a 2018 interview with The Arts Desk. “And many books in the home, which we needed to keep away from so the piles didn’t collapse on us. Very cultural.” His mom, a lifelong music lover, usually took him to see performances of contemporary classical work by John Cage and Iannis Xenakis. As he acquired older, his musical pursuits grew to include British Invasion rock and roll and the work of French composer Claude Debussy.
Sakamoto began dabbling in digital music after getting into Tokyo Nationwide College of Tremendous Arts and Music in 1970, the place he studied composition and ethnomusicology. There, he toyed with early synthesizers just like the Buchla and Moog, and have become conscious of one other main affect: Kraftwerk. “It was conceptual, sort of theoretical, very centered, easy and minimal and powerful,” Sakamoto informed German journal Groove in 2006.
Upon graduating, Sakamoto quickly turned an in-demand studio musician. By that work he met Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi and, with them, shaped Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1978. The intent, mentioned Sakamoto in Groove, was “to make one thing very Japanese… YMO had a mix of every little thing – American music affect, European music affect, classical affect, pop. It’s like a bento field. And we thought that was very Japanese.”
That assemblage may be very a lot current in YMO’s 1978 self-titled debut album. The trio’s enjoyable, frothy tunes had been giddy with the chances of digital instrumentation, displaying off the entire superb sounds that their arsenal of synths might produce. However it was additionally accessible, making it good dance membership fodder.
In Japan, YMO was an prompt smash. Almost the entire seven albums the group recorded in its six years collectively charted within the high 5, and their concert events across the nation repeatedly offered out. “We had been very huge,” Sakamoto mentioned in a 2008 Guardian interview, “that’s why I hated it. We had been at all times adopted by paparazzi.” The group managed to realize some business success exterior of Japan as properly. A bleeping, funky cowl of American pianist Martin Denny’s “Firecracker” turned a shock hit on the US R&B charts in 1980, which earned YMO an invite to carry out on Soul Practice.
Past business accomplishments, YMO went on to develop into a serious affect on Western hip-hop, R&B, and digital music producers. Samples of the group’s work have popped up on tracks by Afrika Bambaata, Jennifer Lopez, and Mariah Carey. “Behind The Masks,” a observe from the group’s 1979 album Stable State Survivor, was coated by Eric Clapton on his 1986 album August and by Michael Jackson within the Thriller classes. YMO has additionally been cited as a key affect on the New Romantic motion of the ‘80s, and up to date producers like Ikonika and 4 Tet.
Earlier than YMO’s preliminary break up in 1984, Sakamoto already had three solo albums, together with 1980’s reggae-influenced B-2 Unit and 1981’s Left-Handed Dream, which featured King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew. On each, Sakamoto presaged his future ambient and experimental work, with compositions that had been alternately soothing and spiky. However what set Sakamoto on a wholly new path was an invite by director Nagisa Oshima to star within the 1983 WWII drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence alongside David Bowie.
Sakamoto’s efficiency as Yonoi, a hard-nosed Japanese soldier scuffling with same-sex attraction to a British POW (performed by Bowie), earned acclaim, however he made even larger waves with the movie’s stirring rating. A vocal model of the beautiful Satie-like theme music was a UK pop hit for him and singer-songwriter David Sylvian.
The soundtrack additionally opened up extra alternatives for Sakamoto to jot down music for movie and TV. With David Byrne and Cong Su, he earned an Oscar for his work on Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 epic The Final Emperor. He additionally labored with director Brian DePalma on 1998’s Snake Eyes and 2002’s Femme Fatale, and supplied the music for a 2019 episode of Netflix’s dystopic sequence Black Mirror.
Sakamoto’s solo work within the wake of YMO’s breakup would evolve quickly and incessantly change instructions. Futurista, launched in 1986, was a steely assortment of electro-pop whereas his 1989 album Magnificence explored flamenco, rock, and conventional Japanese music – with the assistance of well-known visitors just like the Seaside Boys’ Brian Wilson and The Band’s Robbie Robertson.
Sakamoto additionally made time for initiatives past his personal artistic purview, like a composition for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony, and appearances on the albums of assorted pals and admirers. Sylvian remained a long-time collaborator who known as on Sakamoto so as to add preparations and keyboards to 1987’s Secrets and techniques of the Beehive and 1999’s Useless Bees on a Cake, which each took synthpop into extra summary, impressionistic territory. Sakamoto additionally labored on Aztec Digicam’s 1993 launch Dreamland, layering synth and piano filigrees atop bandleader Roddy Body’s jangling pop.
“He’s acquired this status as a boffin, a professor of music who sits in entrance of a pc display,” Body informed The Impartial in 1993. “However he’s extra intuitive than that, and he’s at all times making an attempt to deprave what he is aware of. Midway by the day within the studio, he’ll cease and play some hip hop or some home for 10 minutes, after which return to what he was doing. He’s at all times making an attempt to journey himself up like that, and to find new issues.”
Sakamoto labored consistently till 2014 when he was identified with throat most cancers. He spent the subsequent 12 months present process therapy and remedy and needed to forego most of his deliberate artistic initiatives. However after getting into remission he set to work with a renewed vigor, and far of the ensuing materials was extra open and experimental. The 2017 album async was a surprising assortment of lush ambient instrumentals that threaded subject recordings amongst synth hums and plinking piano.
“I truly thought it might be my final one,” he informed the New York Instances that very same 12 months. “I simply wished to place down simply what I wished to listen to. I wished to listen to sounds of on a regular basis objects – even musical devices – as issues.” An acclaimed documentary following Sakamoto’s return to music, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, was additionally launched in 2017. Sadly, in June 2022, Sakamoto introduced that his most cancers had returned.
What stored Sakamoto busy all through his profession, and what drew such a variety of artists into his orbit as collaborator or acolyte, was an inexhaustible curiosity and talent to grasp a number of musical types. He threw all of himself into each venture, whether or not it was a stay efficiency, writing music for stage and display, or experimental collaborations like his 2007 venture with Austrian artist Fennesz.
“I dislike the method of constructing music primarily based on a blueprint or objective or goal,” Sakamoto informed The Inventive Impartial in 2017. “If I used to be an architect, I’d be a foul one, as a result of I don’t like having blueprints…I need to make one thing I don’t know, and that I’ve by no means completed or by no means identified. Hopefully, for me, it’s going to be a shock, and a brand new expertise.”
Sakamoto is survived by his spouse and supervisor Norika Sora, and 4 youngsters. His daughter Miu Sakamoto, from a earlier marriage to musician Akiko Yano, is a celebrated pop singer in Japan.