About

“Async is Sakamoto’s first solo album in eight years, without counting his 2015 score of Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant. 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. This is a somewhat minimalist feast of keyboard beds mixed with field recordings and “found sounds” that are equally jarring and soothing. It would only be considered “new age” if your idea of new age is the revolutionary prepared piano pieces of John Cage, for example.

During 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. But using the idea of a film score makes sense as the music creates a lush yet unsettling background ambiance.” – PopMatters

“The Japanese composer's first solo album after eight years and a battle with throat cancer is marvelous, using a bounty of textures, moods, and ambience from his esteemed four-decade-long career.

Ambient as restorative comes to mind with async, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s sixteenth solo album. In June of 2014, the legendary Japanese composer was diagnosed with throat cancer and underwent rigorous radiology treatment to combat it. Three years after that diagnosis, Sakamoto returns with an album bearing a sense of mortality surrounding its every sound. Unlike his ’80s heyday where Sakamoto fearlessly embraced pop and found himself in the studio with Iggy Pop, David Byrne, or Maceo Parker, async is more closely aligned with his 21st-century experimental side and his ongoing collaborations with the likes of Christian Fennesz, Alva Noto, and Christopher Willits. But there’s a warmth and fragility to the album here that makes it stand apart from these works.

A careful piano melody opens the album, with just enough space between the notes for a noisy chord to rise up and consume it all, shifting from white noise to solemn organ line, revealing both Sakamoto’s penchant for melody and texture and the gap between each. The copious reverb that surrounds each restrained note on “ZURE” would slot right in with Kompakt’s Pop Ambient series. In conceiving the album, the press release states that async was a soundtrack for an imaginary Andrei Tarkovsky film and the stately theme of “solari” does bring to mind Tarkovsky’s 1972 masterwork Solaris.” – Pitchfork

Item description: