Merry Christmas Lawrence

One of the world's biggest classical stars, Lang Lang, returns with his brand new solo album 'Piano Book' – a collection of pieces which first inspired him to play the piano and led him on his path to international stardom.

David recently completed work on a compilation cd featuring some of the best of his collaborative work of the last decade or so. Entitled 'Sleepwalkers' it contains fresh remixes by David and a new composition with classical composer Dai Fujikura entitled 'Five Lines'.
A number of the tracks have been given a subtle remix by David to bring them in line with his personal requirements while others have been given more obvious updates and changes. All the material has been completely remastered.

The two albums, playing the piano and out of noise, present a wide ranging view into the world of this composer, musician, producer, actor, and environmental activist.

In celebration of composer Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 70th birthday, Milan Records announced A Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto: To the Moon and Back, a collection of songs from Sakamoto’s vast catalogue newly reworked and remodeled by contemporary artists and collaborators.

Due likely to his other careers as a pop artist, producer, classical composer, actor, and fashion model, Ryuichi Sakamoto the film scorer has averaged less than one film a year since his delightfully melodic debut, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence in 1983. But the Academy Award winner (The Last Emperor) has clearly eschewed quantity for quality, and his often-chilling music for Love Is the Devil (the first feature by vidoegrapher John Maybury–a disturbing portrait of artist Francis Bacon and his dark, obsessive relationship with his model/lover, George Dyer) is no exception. Sakamoto has long resisted composing mere musical narration for his film assignments; here he gets inside the characters by using the diverse palette and electronic techniques gleaned from his often cutting-edge pop work. This masterful melange of samples, treated piano, electronics, and white noise plays like a modern horror masterpiece, an eerie techno-concerto that owes more to Sakamoto's days as a student of electronic music and the avant-garde than to his sunny turn as leader of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Think Bernard Herrmann displaced by an ocean and half-a-century of technology.

Because this set features some of Sakamoto's most famous film scores, it doesn't delve into the ethereal and experimental nature of some of his more esoteric work. It's pretty conventional by comparison (it's actually billed as an album of pieces composed to accompany visual events), which might make it a good starting point for novices. The textured and atmospheric pieces here - taken from such films as Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and "visual events" like the opening ceremonies of the 1992 summer Olympics - lean toward the spiritual, preventing the album from ever grounding itself as a thematic whole.