Let us celebrate the great man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV8wdoQKKvM
Was a big fan of his for a long time. Made some beautiful scores.
Also, from early in the pandemic: “Playing the Piano for the Isolated”
I relistened to the thousand knives album last night before going to bed after hearing the news. I think the second song Island of Woods is my favorite track on the album. For me, his more abstract music (I think that's a better way of describing it than “experimental” or “soundscape”) resonates with me more than the more YMO poppy/fusiony stuff.
I think my favorite album of his is Esperanto. Here is the song Adelie Penguins from it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGvU5lv_VF0
In terms of the massive amount of stuff he wrote for other people (the majority of his work), I like this song NEO-PLANT (which I should maybe mention as a content warning has a break in it where the singer describes in detail being beaten)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50J5J4PDetY
I'd never cried about a celebrity death before this morning
https://youtu.be/vnFb1ewtvHI
Also since this is a forum populated by weird game freaks, we all have to listen to NEOGEO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUTEGyaVme8
https://open.spotify.com/track/2TrC2NsnehQSuVkKWYm8q9?si=3168fc1c8f1347cf
Likely my favorite artist of all time. RIP.
I don’t know what 2023 is scheming but Hosono Haruomi needs to wear jumpsuits made of bubble wrap and be surrounded by eight bodyguards equipped with airbags 24/7 until the end of the year.
My favorite Sakamoto performance outside YMO is the 1996 Sakamoto Trio:
https://youtu.be/XuD84fZbCec
For once I wish this were actually one of @yeso's Pathologic 2 sale threads. Rest in peace…what an incredible loss 
I've always enjoyed watching those silly boys having some fun together:
https://youtu.be/DUmG1SlR8fs
Just got this record not too long ago, so gorgeous:
https://youtu.be/jHC_yMY9N0I
https://open.spotify.com/track/6rXnP6n3myylS9PV4N53ID?si=71b67292a9c544b7
May his energy flow back into the planet's lifestream peacefully
Over the past few days I‘ve been relistening to a lot of the albums that in the past I’d listened to once or twice before without really carrying much of impression. This time, perhaps because I feel like I really have to listen closely, I've been getting a lot more out of them.
Most recently, I just listened to Futuristic Bastard, which I did not remember as literally being a concept album about Italian Futurism:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjExeymht-s
I wish I knew more about Futurism, and early 20th century art movements in general, because there are lots of echoes of them in Sakamoto and Hosono's music. Well, their music contains echoes of literally every aspect of human culture, so you can't really single any one thing out. To say the least, there's a lot to study if I ever want to get it all.
You get all that in the second half of the album. The first half is very iconic 80s electronic music, perhaps exploring some of the ideas of Futurism in a more 80s context? (Again, I know nothing about Futurism beyond the introduction of the Wikipedia article and random signs I've read in art museum exhibitions). Regardless, you have two overriding tendencies (out of maybe three or four total) of Sakamoto here. In this way, it feels reminiscent of Hosono's album SFX from 1984, two years earlier. I like it!
This is a pretty great piece about Sakamoto and YMO and posits that their work was some of the first Techno.
I‘m really struggling with Sakamoto’s death, a lot like I struggled with Bowie‘s death in 2016 and Florian Schneider’s in 2020, so I‘m only now even figuring out how to talk about it. I can remember heated discussions with my future partner back in the late 90’s about how all of them, along with other folks like Grandmaster Flash, were responsible for the kind of music we particularly appreciated.
I think if I had to pick on album, Solid State Survivor is likely my favourite, but I'm not really sure how to even start with ranking my favourite individual tracks.
Sakamoto‘s passing has been effecting me a lot too, as it seems to have with a lot of you here. I tried explaining to a non-musician friend why this effected me so profoundly, and in trying to understand, she said "It feels bad to know someone like that won’t be making anything new anymore.“ At the time I said ”Yeah," but what devastated me wasn‘t losing the potential of more/new Ryuichi Sakamoto music. I think what’s so devastating is what he as an artist and as a person symbolized – this overflowing passion and love for music and the world – and what it means to lose someone like this. As @Karasu mentions, there have been several recent losses of similar magnitude, but Sakamoto feels like a cultural shift. This tweet by Tsukasa Tawada gets to the heart of what I'm trying to say:
https://twitter.com/TsukasaTawada/status/1642724164426670080?s=20
This particular generation of artists have so profoundly changed the world so immediately within our lifetimes, and while it's only natural that they too would start passing on, losing such a pioneering visionary like Sakamoto feels like a line in the sand that it's really happening now. We're losing some of the most prolific, thoughtful, culture-defining minds of modern history. Maybe part of what freaks me out about this is that it means it's time for my generation of 20-somethings to start stepping up and figuring out how to fill in the massive cultural footprint being left behind. How can we follow up an act like that?
https://twitter.com/FLOOR_BABA/status/1642717911063187457
[Ryuichi Sakamoto had such a genuine love for the world and everything in it.](https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ryuichi-sakamoto-on-how-your-work-changes-as-you-get-older/) It's not just that we lost an incredible musician, it's that we lost one of the premiere musicians that influenced so much of what music is now. In all the music communities I'm in online, it's impossible to find anyone who hasn't been influenced by his work, whether that influence is large or small, deliberate or passive. That kind of influence can't be manufactured or intentionally pursued; it comes from creating with so much love and joy that it resonates with millions of hearts across cultures and generations. What we lost with Ryuichi Sakamoto is a true, genuine love for the world, and that kind of love is in increasingly small supply.
https://youtu.be/-pN1fJOM9yc
casually programming an 808 in the living room with his unreasonably adorable daughter
here are a couple sakamoto (co)productions/arrangments i like, out of a frankly absurd amount of work he did (as well as hosono/takahashi)
youtube's sharing crap is so annoying but you can click thru and listen
taeko ohnuki "carnaval"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbNHFFHt0xU
akiko yano "ashkenazy who?" (shigesato itoi did some lyric writing for the album this is on, ただいま。("tadaima"))
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeepxnPBjwo
yoko oginome "mukokuseki romance" (無国籍ロマンス)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwwwyuiXAgM
and why not some straight up showa-era idol pop?? okada's whole story is tragic and she was a big deal in the 80s and even though i feel like i should probably hate this kind of stuff, i love her whole thing (see also: "first date"). finding out later (and quite recently tbh) that sakamoto wrote this song was a surprise but explained a lot to me
yukiko okada "kuchibiru network" (くちびる network)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBI9piPex-Y
also side note MICHAEL JACKSON did a whole COVER of ymo‘s “behind the mask” which is reaaaally something and it’s so so so wild that this really only was released after his death, i feel like this coulda been a huge hit back in the day?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNaCOGW3PnU
ok just now found this like 7“ ep i'd never heard of before, sakamoto did arragement/keyboard playing on it, and yukihiro takahashi played the drums (his list of contributions are also wildly huge). nice 80s synth pop in an ”easy lover" kind of vein b/w a chill/dramatic ballad-esque thing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6iRaBBx_rQ
I've been pretty messed up twice now both for Yukihiro Takahashi earlier in the year and now Ryuichi Sakamoto. Additionally, the lead drummer for CCB also passed away around December or January.
In any case, as I've mentioned on my twitter with Yukihiro Takahashi's passing, YMO and everyone's individual solo careers spoke to me and influenced me in ways nothing else ever has or ever will again. They're the core to most of the things I love and cherish in music and media in general. It's been a roller coaster going through their work again over this past week, both fun for a while and then suddenly breaking down when a specific song comes up.
Here are a few songs that I regularly think about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkD99LbASWM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_lqAH3wE1A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u6bmagKNfc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiz1dEJ3l7M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSknBvSwcZo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHhksjfg8Ik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzRAfjmoLOg
I don't think I'm ready to listen to 12 yet...
@fortninety ran a memorial stream last week when the news broke, watching Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence again was a treat. Later, another online friend continued the memorial streaming and I got to see the Sakamoto Coda documentary; it was especially moving.
His playfulness and curiosity are evident. He visits the arctic, puts a mic in a small hole in the ice and turns to the camera: “I’m fishing the sound”
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