Sakamoto releases new album as ‘imaginary soundtrack’

PARIS: Ryuichi Sakamoto, the pioneering Japanese electronic composer, has announced his first studio album in eight years which is inspired by the Russian film master Andrei Tarkovsky. The 65-year- old artist — who has scored films including The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and more recently The Revenant — will release the album, async, on Apr 28. Sakamoto said in a statement by his label that he had been working for several months on the music until, one day in August, he decided that the work would be “the original soundtrack to an imaginary film by Andrei Tarkovsky.”

The composer set the music, composed on an analogue synthesizer, to some of his favourite scenes from the Russian director’s films including Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Solaris and Mirror.

The album also pays tribute to the director’s father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, with his verses recited by David Sylvian, frontman of the British art rock band Japan.

The album took in natural sounds that Sakamoto recorded in ruins and in gardens including rain, wind and footsteps over dry grass, as well as the shamisen, the Japanese three- stringed instrument.

Sakamoto, who lives in New York, said he also went to a museum to work with sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia, the groundbreaking furniture designer.

“It is like climbing a mountain without a path and without a map,” Sakamoto said of the album. “Once you reach the summit, another appears and there is never an end on the horizon.”

Sakamoto, who has broadly explored music from around the world, gained an international following with his Yellow Magic Orchestra.

His fusion of electronic instruments, Japanese and Western classical form and rhythms of West Africa helped shape the basis for synthpop in the 1980s and later house music and hip-hop.

He announced in 2014 that he had been diagnosed with cancer and last year he was shaken by the death of his friend David Bowie, with whom he costarred in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

On a visit to Paris last year, Sakamoto said that he wanted just one thing before death: “To record the perfect album.” — AFP