Music
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‘I WANTED TO MAKE SOMETHING MORE LIKE BLACK AND WHITE MUSIC’ Hitlist THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK*
✽✽ Dio Metal pixie, Ronnie James Dio, and his Dungeons and Dragons-inspired rifforama. O2 Academy, Glasgow, Sat 21 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Charity Baw Oxjam night with music from The Real Tuesday Weld, Aberfeldy, The Parsonage, Big Ned and shedloads more. Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Sat 21 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Arctic Monkeys Scruffy indie tykes that have tapped into the zeitgeist with a fine line in heartfelt pathos and rollicking rock licks. SECC, Glasgow, Tue 24 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Alice Cooper Classic metal from the godfather of shock rock complete with outrageous theatrical show. SECC: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Wed 25 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Gary Numan The electro Godhead is enjoying a timely resurgence of late and here plays The Pleasure Principle in full. HMV Picture House, Edinburgh, Thu 26 Nov; ABC, Glasgow, Fri 27 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ The Heavy Dirty blues, hip hop and punk funk brew from this Ninja Tune four-piece. The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, Sat 28 Nov. (Rock & Pop/Jazz) ✽✽ Homecoming Live: The Final Fling Some of Scotland’s greatest musicians (from Deacon Blue to The View to Evelyn Glennie) celebrate the best music north of Hadrian’s Wall. See feature, page 16. SECC, Glasgow, Sat 28 Nov. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra A chance to hear Paul Leonard-Morgan’s evocative score from BBC Scotland’s A History of Scotland live, joined by special guests Eddi Reader, McIntosh Ross and God Help The Girl. Usher Hall, Edinburgh, Sun 29 Nov. (Rock & Pop/Classical) ✽✽ Ryuichi Sakamoto Oscar winning pianist. See preview, left. Queens Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 2 Dec. (Rock & Pop/Classical)
Piano man
He won an Oscar for his score to The Last Emperor but, as Neil Cooper discovers, pianist/composer Ryuichi Sakamoto like to keep things minimal
I t may be a quarter of a century since Ryuichi Sakamoto scored the soundtrack to Nagisa Oshima’s Japanese prisoner of war flick, Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, but it remains the Tokyo- born electronic music pioneer’s best known work. This is partly, one suspects, to do with the film’s pop cultural iconography. David Bowie starred, while Sakamoto’s title theme was released in a vocal version with Japan’s David Sylvian.
By that time Sakamoto had already produced several solo albums in tandem with his tenure in Yellow Magic Orchestra, the synth-pop trio whose state-of-art production values went pan-global. A multitude of soundtracks followed, including an Oscar winning collaboration with Talking Head David Byrne on Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.
All this is a far cry from the 57 year-old composer’s solo date in Edinburgh to coincide with the release of two very different collections. Playing The Piano is an acoustic work, paring some of Sakamoto’s back catalogue (including ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’) down to Satie-esque sketches. The equally evocatively named Out Of Noise broadens its palette with string-led chamber pieces and austere electronica akin to laptop-based artists such as Fennesz and Alva Noto’s Carsten Nicolai, both of which have been recent Sakamoto collaborators. ‘To me it’s a new dawn of music,’ says a softly- spoken, unerringly polite Sakamoto about the pair. ‘They were from a major trend of the 90s, which was boring to me. I didn’t like it. We’d already done 80s techno with YMO, but our traditions were different,
64 THE LIST 19 Nov–3 Dec 2009
and we were much more analogue. Then I discovered these talented musicians from a younger generation who could use technology much easier than we did. So I’ve been catching up, but they use it better.’ Technology is a prime concern to Sakamoto, who has proved a quietly vocal supporter of internet file sharing. ‘Music,’ he says, ‘has become something different from the past, when it was 100 per cent live. Throughout the 20th century it was recorded, and the medium adjusted. Having the internet has made music more live again. It’s like in the 19th century, when a village had many songs, everyone knew who wrote them and nobody wanted copyright. So, while the record industry is declining, the music is heard a lot more than before.’
Live, Sakamoto will utilise two pianos to play what he calls ‘virtual duets’ of works from both albums. ‘I wanted to make something very experimental,’ he says of the Morton Feldman inspired Out of Noise. ‘Something quiet. Something more like black and white music. There is colour there, but it’s maybe more minimalistic. Not just in musical style, but in its sense of expression. In other words, less is more. Not many notes, but lots of space.’ Revisiting works such as ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’ in such a fashion keeps Sakamoto’s canon fresh. ‘It doesn’t feel like going back,’ he says, ‘because I constantly play these pieces. They’re part of my life.’
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Queens Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 2 Dec.