It’s the sound of a dark, subterranean beast slowly coming to life.
Soon we’re in the territory of the aforementioned John Cage with “disintegration”, which combines sparse, industrial-sounding low, blunt piano notes, seemingly struck at random, while a pulse is eventually generated with instruments of a higher register and low, humming synthesizers. The stark, reflective piano that runs through the opening track, “andata”, recalls the simple yet moving notes of Erik Satie but is eventually thrown into a darker hole with the addition of funereal organ chords and unusual white-noise effects. But using the idea of a film score makes sense as the music creates a lush yet unsettling background ambiance. It would only be considered “new age” if your idea of new age is the revolutionary prepared piano pieces of John Cage, for example.ĭuring the creation of async, Sakamoto came upon the concept of creating a soundtrack for a nonexistent film by the late director Andrei Tarkovsky ( Solaris, Andrei Rublev, Stalker), which is an odd way to approach a music project - even someone like Sakamoto, who won an Oscar for his score of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. This is a somewhat minimalist feast of keyboard beds mixed with field recordings and “found sounds” that are equally jarring and soothing. Judging by the tone of this brilliant new album, Sakamoto is not intent on flooding his fans’ ears with a rushed barrage of multiple sonic ideas. It wouldn’t be surprising for a musical artist to release a sunny, life-affirming album after staring into the abyss with a deadly disease only to come out of it with a second chance.įor Oscar- and Grammy-winning composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, his 2014 cancer diagnosis - and subsequent recovery - likely inspired a great deal of soul-searching, although what you find on his latest album, async, is a dark, sparse work that, while gorgeous, is a collection of very deliberate moves that are highly creative but not necessarily celebratory.Īsync is Sakamoto’s first solo album in eight years, without counting his 2015 score of Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant. People react to the subject of mortality in different ways.