JAZZ
Ryuichi pickings from a French collective
The Japanese pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto died in March after, in his words, “living alongside cancer” for several years. Two months before he passed away he released an album called 12, his 12th solo studio recording, a collection of minimalist etudes poignantly accompanied by the sound of his own occasionally laboured breathing.
Sakamoto once said that the “piano symbolises interiority”. This startlingly intimate record marked the end of a decades-long, mixing modern synths with classical piano, to brushes with funk, afrobeat and hip-hop on 1980’s to his Oscar, BAFTA, Grammy and Golden Globe award-winning scores for films like, , and, in which he starred opposite David Bowie.
