Ryuichi Sakamoto

For me, "Beauty" and also "Heartbeat" if you like the more mainstream Westernised Japanese flavoured material. Otherwise his catalogue is your oyster.

Back To The Basics (BTTB)

This is an album of solo piano pastiches (i.e. there's a take of the styles of Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Poulenc, Cage etc.) but they are beautifully done and the tunes are excellent. Hard to imagine a better chill-out album.

Or there's Insen, one of his works with ambient/glitch person Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai)

You might also want to check out his Yellow Magic Orchestra stuff. I remember him with them in the 70's. Quite liked their first couple of discs. The Kraftwerk of Japan on A & M records.

Two must-haves for Sakamoto fans.

Playing the Orchestra

Opera is just excellent.

Also, Sakamoto *unplugged*.

Just a simple piano, celo and violin acoustic variations of his various composition.

Thanks Guys

I'll check 'em out!

quote:

Playing the Orchestra

Hi Kuma,

If these are "must haves", can you give us a clue as to "what like" and/or "how gets" :-)

There doesn't seem to be a lot of info around and the few sites I've seen list them are charging very silly money.

This is a problem I've come across before - for such a famous man there doesn't seem to be much of a back catalogue available. I've tried to brave Amazon.jp but as you can imagine, it was with somewhat comical results.

Hi Blobdang!
My list:

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Shaw:
[QUOTE]Playing the Orchestra

Hi Gary,

The HMV Japan has English version.
Sakamoto's work
The playing the orchestra was a compilation of Sakamoto conducting his various sound tracks.
Playing the Orchestra
I brought this disc back along with others last time when I was in Japan.