Here’s a fun one
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Especially loved those scenes with the Fairlight. Had to laugh at food being consumed while the Fairlight floppy disk whined away in the background while loading something!
Might as well make productive use of those loading times 
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Silence…
One of my all time favorite songs:
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Another banger with Thomas Dolby:
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I’m listening to all his stuff now. It’s a magic brew of modern, abstract, classic and electronic music.
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Coda, the 2017 documentary about Sakamoto, was the film of the day yesterday on MUBI, the curated streaming network (it is up for 30 days). I watched it with good headphones. I particularly enjoyed his improvisations, and the scenes of his sound-hunting in places like the North Pole (lowering a microphone into running meltwater) and Fukushima (playing a piano that had been floated by the tsunami, some of whose keys he had to manually raise after striking), followed by excerpts of the finished pieces using those sounds. Recommended.
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CDM wrote this and it encapsulates him perfectly:
“Ryuichi Sakamoto was the rare musician who could consistently look into the future, past, and present with his music.”
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@christianlukegates Just watched this movie last night based off of your post. It’s a great film, and David Bowie kills that role! The soundtrack is mesmerizing, and seriously adds so much to the story RIP to a legend.
As I started getting into synthesizers and learning how to make electronic music it was inevitable that I would be exposed to a bevy of Rydeen covers. The theme was so strong and positive sounding.
My favorite version being this chill get together:
YMO quickly became a landmark act in my mind. Rest easy, Sakamoto San.
I’ll be listening to many of the tracks you all have shared here to widen my appreciation of their music. It’s nice to see all the love people have for them.
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808 State’s remix of YMO from back in the day, still a banger
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Also had the pleasure of seeing him with Noto, once at the Roundhouse in London and once in Barcelona as part of Sonar. It was incredible but now I wish I’d paid even more attention knowing I’ll never see it again
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A tribute mix from Low Light Mixes:
Great, I noticed that it just came on Mubi - prob watch this again later. I loved all the reflective studio workflow scenes, and the snapshots of his process - especially the field recording.
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I’m doing a slow listening marathon compiling and listening to every album he’s released. He’s gone through a lot of different phases of focus but I keep coming back to his earliest focus on the idea of “Asia”, or what it means to be “Asian”. Frequent references to Mao on his first EP, reimagining different Asian cultural songs, the shift from islands and jungles to becoming a technological powerhouse, struggling with the looming influence from the colonizing west.
It’s awesome that one of his biggest hits with YMO was borrowed from Martin Denny, who himself was just trying to write vaguely Asian sounding “exotica”. It’s as if Jiro Ono started serving Panda Express dishes in his Sushi restaurant (and also made them delicious). A great example of reclaiming if I ever saw one!
Just bought and listened to async, beautiful album.
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This is really good -
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