It was no problem," because the music was compelling. But when I started listening to music like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I didn't speak English. Yet Sakamoto also professes to not really like songs, especially ones with lyrics. "But the influence of rock music is still there." "When I write sort of classical music, of course there are classical influences," he says. He divides his time between Tokyo, where he still has children in school, and New York, while his music includes compositions rooted in pop as well as classical styles. "I can only bring two boxes."īoth Sakamoto's life and art straddle two worlds. I try to be very spontaneous each night," limited simply by the number of records and CDs he can take on the road. "I play all kinds of music, except regular dance music," he says. So when Sakamoto opens his 9:30 performance with a half-hour DJ set, he will not drop the usual beats. "There are some bands I like, like Pan Sonic and Oval. "I didn't like the techno music of the late '90s. He still collaborates with electronic musicians, but has become dubious about the genre. 1."Īlmost 20 years before Miu's first hit, Sakamoto came to prominence in Japan as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, a group sometimes described as Japan's answer to Kraftwerk. I just asked her to try singing it and it sounded great.
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"When she was 15, I was working on a single, the theme music of a TV drama, and I was looking for a young, kind of amateurish singer. His daughter's singing career began by accident, Sakamoto recalls. And two of the tracks are instrumental versions of pop songs written for Miu. If this sounds rather highbrow, the album begins with "Energy Flow," a rippling tune that became a hit in Japan after an abbreviated version of it was used in a TV commercial for one of the "sports drinks" so popular in that country. An instrument "prepared" by inserting various objects into the piano's strings to alter the sound will be one of the two pianos Sakamoto plays on this tour. The influence of such late-19th-century and early-20th century French composers as Ravel, Satie and Poulenc is strong on "BTTB," which stands for "back to the basics." Yet Sakamoto also cites Brian Eno as an inspiration, and three of the album's tracks employ prepared piano, which is usually identified with John Cage. I get old ladies wearing furs, but also children lying on the floor." "They come from different cultural backgrounds. "Audiences are mixed," the soft-spoken 48-year-old admits with a chuckle. Playing such quiet music in a rock club may be a challenge, but mixing things up is part of his strategy, as Sakamoto explains by phone from Tokyo. "BTTB," for example, is an album of solo piano music, which is what he's performing on the tour that includes a show tonight at the 9:30 club. Two new albums of his music, "Cinemage" and "BTTB," just begin to showcase his range. He's written scores for more than a dozen films, including "The Last Emperor," "Little Buddha," "Snake Eyes" and "Love Is the Devil." In his native Japan, however, Sakamoto is accepted simultaneously as a rock star, a serious composer and a pop svengali-for his 19-year-old daughter Miu. IN THE United States, Ryuichi Sakamoto is best known as a soundtrack composer.