The closing song’s title, “The End of Asia,” evokes a number of interpretations: Japan had not so long ago been devastated by the atomic bomb. Though exquisitely crafted, it’s silly as hell. “Plastic Bamboo” takes supreme delight in a melody that seems best serves for a farcical chase scene. But it’s a winking kitsch, a garish beauty.
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ALBUMS FULL
YMO’s exotica remains in full effect on Thousand Knives listeners with an allergy to kitsch perhaps need not waste their time. As with Can before him, there’s no friction between dancefloor groove and laboratory explorations. One senses an intuitive bond-Sakamoto works less in contrasts than in connections. What stands out is how well the two songs mesh. A collage of nature sounds, atonal synthesizer squiggles, and new-age flourishes, it answers the ebullient fizz of “Thousand Knives” with a funky take on musique concrete. It’s wonderful.īut then “Island of Woods” changes course. At nearly 10 minutes, his opening salvo is a slo-mo barnburner soaked in guitar solos, breezy melodic flourishes, and gloopy drums. And, perhaps responding to the disco craze well underway, Sakamoto also lets the track run long.
One can imagine the cosmic-disco DJ Daniele Baldelli’s ears perking up-the chugging tempo and twisting atmosphere were a perfect match for the sound he was pioneering in Italy at that time. The mood is somber and yearning, but then the music locks in, and it’s a fusion-tinged instrumental whose main theme is just a little too heavy for an elevator ride. The title track opens with a reading of a poem through a haunting vocoder, drifting with gentle restraint in a field of silence. Each of Thousand Knives’ six pieces swerves with a deft touch through complex arrangements, playful voicings, and cheeky key changes. Nearly a decade into his career as a sideman, Sakamoto’s musical fluency is in full effect here.
Though the record was quickly eclipsed by his band’s smash success, this reissue serves to reintroduce the world to an overlooked gem by a now canonical voice.Īs with all of Sakamoto’s work, there’s no distinction between pop and experimentalism. But before it was released, Sakamoto slipped out an album of his own: Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto. The result was the historic self-titled debut album from Yellow Magic Orchestra. The point was to send up the ridiculous orientalism peddled by artists like Les Baxter, reclaiming a fanciful Western take on the far East. At the time, Ryuichi Sakamoto was a respected session musician in Japan, working his way through the industry, when he was recruited by Haruomi Hosono for a one-off album of electronic exotica. Phuture invented acid house when they stumbled upon design quirks in Roland’s TB-303 hip-hop was born at a block party and, in 1978, one of electronic music’s most distinctive voices got his start in a parody group. Perhaps not seeing it was the point: Many of electronic music’s greatest innovations occurred in the shadows, through misuse, amateurism, or accident. “A lot of these synthesizer groups… Kraftwek did it a lot better a half decade ago.” “I really don’t see it” said Lester Bangs. One could be forgiven, nearing the dawn of the 1980s, for dismissing all the bleeps and bloops as just a fad. Punk rock, meanwhile, was laying waste to prog rock’s noodly, keyboard-augmented excesses.
The Minimoog, released in 1971, no longer sounded so novel, and genre-defining pieces of gear like the TR-808, SP-1200, and DX7 were still a few years off. Switched On Bach had hit shelves a decade earlier, Tangerine Dream had already made their best work, and Kraftwerk had cruised the Trans Europe Express. By the time 1978 rolled around, electronic music was old hat.