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“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