Ryuichi Sakamoto

"Travesía" is an album of music by prolific composer, producer, and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto curated by five-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu. The compilation album features twenty tracks handpicked by Iñárritu, who famously collaborated with Sakamoto on his Best Picture-winning film, The Revenant. Taking it's name from the Spanish term for "journey," Travesía spans nearly four decades of Sakamoto's solo work and scores, with Iñárritu taking listeners on a one-of-a-kind trip through the iconic musician's career Travesía is the result of six months' work by Iñárritu, who listened to over a thousand pieces by Sakamoto in order to curate the album's 20-song tracklist. Focusing primarily on the musician's solo work, Iñárritu deliberately chose some of Sakamoto's lesser-known tracks in an attempt to appeal to both frequent listeners as well as a new generation of fans.

ASYNC – REMODELS is an album of "reconstructions" of tracks from Japanese producer Ryuichi Sakamoto's nineteenth solo studio album async (2017). The album includes eleven reworks (twelve on the Japanese release) by producers such as Jóhann Jóhannsson, Fennesz, Cornelius, Oneohtrix Point Never, Electric Youth, and Arca. Released in Japan in December 2017 by Commmons and in February 2018 in other countries by Milan Records, ASYNC – REMODELS garnered generally positive critical reviews and peaked at number 15 on the Billboard American Top Classical Albums chart.

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.

Longtime friends and collaborators David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto released their work via David's Samadhi Sound label. Sylvian and Sakamoto worked together for the first time in 1982 when they wrote the double A side "Bamboo Music/Bamboo Houses". "World Citizen" was created as part of a project called 'Chain Music' instigated by Ryuichi. "Its skewed pop recalls Bowie's Hunky Dory, and pinpoints the human cost of superpower recklessness, prompting a standing ovation for pop music's most mercurial refusenik-turned-prodigal son" - The Guardian (on a live performance of World Citizen). Sylvian and Sakamoto have not released a record together for 21 years, which makes this a very special release.