Between collaborations, group projects and records in his name, the discography of Ryuichi Sakamoto, the most famous Japanese musician in the world who died on Sunday April 2, is infinitely dense and voluminous. Here are five discs to get into, before the big dive into one of the richest musical universes of the end of the 20th century.
A Thousand Knives (1978)
An explosion of everything and more. Jazz rock, concrete music, psychedelic poetry, robotic funk… And yet, the first album under his name by Ryuichi Sakamoto, a genius exiled on his own from the classical world, was only a taste of things to come. First of all his participation in the Yellow Magic Orchestra, formed the same year and of which he would immediately compose the first hymn, Tong Poo.
Service (with YMO, 1983)
Which album should you choose from the wildly perfect discography of the Yellow Magic Orchestra? All of them and why not this one, unknown and formidable, which contains two masterpieces by Sakamoto: Shadows on the Groundon which he sings in chorus with Yukihiro Takahashi, and Perspectivean obsessive refrain about everyday life that stuns and emancipates in one and the same movement.
Koneko no Monogatari (1986)
Furyo, Snake Eyes, High heels… Sakamoto, Oscar winner in 1988 for the last emperor (whose theme Rain is his second best known with Forbidden Colours), was also a great film scorer, an indisputable influence on Joe Hisaishi, the great collaborator of Kitano and Miyazaki. Who also signed the marvelous soundtrack of the animal fable Chatranon the borders of repetitive music and techno pop.
Smoochy (1995)
Great mid-term drive, Smoochy summarizes the worldwide sound experiences of the second half of the eighties while moving towards the electronic avant-garde of the 2000s. Nourished by tango and bossa-nova fountains, it is also one of his rare singer’s records. The classics abound, from Tango To Bibo No Aozourarepeated a thousand times, on the piano or the orchestra, in the decades that followed.
BTTB (1997)
All his life, Sakamoto kept coming back to it: the piano, an instrument stuck to his body since very early childhood, of which he was a master. The discs on which he plays it exclusively are numerous, but none contain as many classics, sonatas or semi-improvisations, as this incredible Back to the Basics from 1998 where he becomes Satie, Rota, himself, inimitable, forever inimitable.