async is a luxurious, picturesque recording. It showcases that Sakamoto's unique ability to create genuine beauty with a varied — at times abrasive — palette.
Unlike other expressions of mortality like David Bowie’s Blackstar or Touché Amore’s Stage Four, Sakamoto isn’t raging against the dying of the light. The tracks on async are more often gentle sighs of relief suffused with a reawakened wonderment at the beauty of simple sounds created by man made instruments and the natural world.
The musical language of Ryuichi Sakamoto is esoteric and also innately relatable. Ultimately, it is beautiful.
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.
What you find on his latest album, async, is a dark, sparse work that, while gorgeous, is a collection of very deliberate moves that are highly creative but not necessarily celebratory.
Async is certainly not one of Sakamoto's most accessible albums, but if the listener is willing to devote several listens until it all makes sense, it ends up being quite powerful.
async is a humble record about appreciating the little things in life and taking in the fullness of sound, even at its most delicate.
Viewed solely as Sakamoto’s homage to an artist he admires—and as an extension of his years of scoring films like The Last Emperor and The Revenant—Async is a beautiful experiment, one that yields its own meditative, cinematic pleasures.
There is a level of mastery here undeniable, and once you look up Ryuichi Sakamoto, it affirms everything heard here.
An acclaimed artist, with a full life, a full discography. You would be a fool to miss this collective piece of art.
Favourite song: full moon (follows the words of writer Paul Bowles) fun fact the book was made into a film called The Sheltering Sky, a film that Ryuichi Sakamoto scored and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score off of. It all comes full circle ... read more
A gently sad and reflective collection of mood pieces that appear to meditate on time and the human condition.
The tracks weave together in such a way as to become far more than the sum of their parts, and the overall effect can be deeply moving if you invest enough of yourself in the experience.
A melancholic yet gentle ambient record, good but unfortunately still feels a bit lacking.
Best Track: solari
Worst Track: fullmoon
It's a fictional Tarkovsky movie score, while also focusing on the sounds that surround life. The experiences of the East Japan Earthquake and the Black Death are naturally projected through instruments and poetry readings, quotes, and field recordings.
When you hear this album when the full moon rises, you'll get a little sentimental. A sad but meditative state.
God, I love ambient. When things and thoughts don't feel right, this genre makes you feel and analyze every small thing around you. But let's be honest, the range this man had in the genre is out of this world. Even though I adore some classic ambient records like Ambient Works Vol. 2 and Harmony In Ultraviolet. Sakomoto just did it so differently. He was just so unique and he had something his contenders in the genre didn't have. And my god, the variety this record brings. Don't get me wrong, ... read more
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