This is Ryuichi Sakamoto's 2004 album CHASM and the remix album Bricolages (2006) which contains various reinterpretations of the CHASM material.
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"[CHASM] is an album that boasts an exquisite matching of live instrumentation and electronic textures in a minimal setting. While its repetitive, deceptively simple motifs might not make this album groundbreaking, this release will appeal to a wider range of music lovers than just fans looking for an album that essentially has Sakamoto written all over it.
In the press release for Chasm, Sakamoto talks of the need to match his live and electronic, or classical and nonclassical currents. He wanted to have a better go at blending these two parts of his musical identity into something that worked in its own right.And he believes he has come pretty close to achieving it on this occasion.
Some of the tunes on Chasm will be familiar already to a certain extent (although in different versions), such as the J-Wave 15th-anniversary theme song "World Citizen," featuring David Sylvian; "Ngo," a TV ad theme for New Balance; and to a lesser extent "Seven Samurai," music for a PlayStation 2 game.
Sakamoto describes "Seven Samurai" as one of those tracks that come along once every 10 years. That this track should be part of a computer game goes to show how seriously the making of music for software has become these days. The track is a beautiful, slow-paced movie score-like number with a simple piano motif played by Sakamoto accompanied by atmospheric Oriental instrumentation such as the enigmatic shakuhachi, the goose-voiced hichiriki pipes used in Japanese court music and the Chinese niko played by Jiang Jian Hua, who performed on Sakamoto's Oscar-winning soundtrack for The Last Emperor.
Representing what at first seems like the other side of a musical chasm is "Coro," a seemingly out-of-control exploration of electronic distortion that is the most indulgent part of the album and an apparent attempt to kick in the shins anyone who might wish to classify Sakamoto's music as "safe."
Occupying some more interesting middle ground is the single "Undercooled," which again features Oriental stylings--but this time combined with the lyrics of South Korean rapper MC Sniper and some commercially acceptable hip-hop beats and bass. Few could pull off such a proposition of incongruous elements as convincingly as Sakamoto. Other moments of genius bordering on apparent madness include "+pantonal," a track that started out as a cover of James Brown's "The Payback" and ended up with swirling samples of Thai monks chanting.
Some will view such touches as a little on the gimmicky side, but there's plenty here to satisfy those with an interest in a varied assortment of electronic minimalism, ethnic instrumentation and unlikely combinations of ideas." - Paul Jackson/Daily Yomiuri
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"Ryuichi Sakamoto's latest album, Chasm, exhibits a musical aesthetic that seamlessly blends classical composition, modern electronic and traditional Asian instrumentation with a Zen-like philosophy, all in a rather overt effort to lull the listener into a state of ecstatic contemplation.
Virtually all of Chasm has a dreamy, sci-fi patterning that suffuses a quietly provocative sonic landscape. And no track embodies this more than the beautiful final cut. It borrows from all continents and all styles, yet somehow manages to remain anchored in an Asian mystique, recalling the ethereal martial-arts films of Zhang Yimou. To an extent, this track embodies an inclusiveness that, once again, most musicians can barely even imagine, let alone achieve." - Kevin Capp/Las Vegas CityLife
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"Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the entertainment industry's renaissance men; he's composed film scores and operas, pop songs and cross-cultural collaborations, and done each with a such a distinctive stamp that they sounds unique even within his own eclectic discography. His latest album, Chasm, seems to directly address this schizophrenic but undeniably appealing approach to tunesmithing; referencing everything from his earliest work with Yellow Magic Orchestra to his recent minimalist collaborations with Alva Noto, Sakamoto creates an album of stunning diversity that proves to be an early front-runner for one of the year's best albums." - Todd Gilchrist/IGN
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"Bricolages — a collection of remixes of tracks from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2005 album Chasm — succeeds where most other remixes don’t. It isn’t necessarily that the material here betters the originals, as Chasm was a fine return to Sakamoto’s electro-pop roots. Rather, because Sakamoto’s work has always been diverse and stylistically varied, Bricolages doesn’t require that it be judged against the original work. Sakamoto has worked in acoustic, electronic, and classical genres extensively, and so a remix album is par for the course. Putting together a diverse set of remixers to tackle his material seems far less out of place for Sakamoto than it does for most other artists because he takes these same approaches to his own music already.
Of course, as with any remix album, the finished product is only as good as the remixers you enlist, and Sakamoto has signed up a most interesting combination. There’s fellow Japanese artists AOKI Takamasa and Cornelius taking on “War & Peace” from two decidedly different angles (glitchy and skittering versus loose and fun, respectively). There’s micromeisters Fennesz, Alva Noto, and snd. There’s twitchy technohead Richard Devine, noted soundtrack composer Craig Armstrong, Rob Da Bank & Mr. Dan, and the pride of Hefty Records, Slicker. There’s even a fantastic take on “Break With” from former Japan (the band) drummer Steve Jansen, with whom Sakamoto has worked the longest out of those assembled. The fact that he turns in perhaps the best and most unexpected work here is illustrative of why the whole project works. This isn’t so much a break from the norm for Sakamoto as it is a logical next step.
Sakamoto’s best work is all about combining disparate elements from his myriad musical tastes into a new whole. The selections here cross cultural and generational boundaries, making them not all the different from a standard Sakamoto LP. And if I were told nothing more before hearing Bricolages for the first time than, “This is the new Ryuichi Sakamoto album,” it wouldn’t sound the least bit odd to me. In fact, it would sound like his best album in years. Conveniently enough, the word “bricolage” roughly translated means “construction achieved by whatever comes to hand.” He couldn’t have found a better title for this project." - Todd Hutlock/Stylus Magazine
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artist: Ryuichi Sakamoto
title: CHASM
type: album
label: Warner Music
release date: 2004
length: 72:14
genre: ambient/experimental/hip-hop/pop
country: Japan
language: Korean/English/Portuguese
format: mp3
bitrate: 320kbps
credits:
Produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto & Arto Lindsay
Ryuichi Sakamoto - piano, keyboards
Sketch Show (Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi) - sound programming (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7)
David Sylvian - vocals, lyrics (tracks 5, 13)
Keigo Oyamada (Cornelius) - guitar (tracks 1, 13), CDJ-800 (track 5)
Luiz Brasil - guitar (tracks 1, 3)
Amadeo Pace - guitar (track 5)
Jaques Morelenbaum - cello (tracks 1, 3)
MC Sniper - vocals (track 1)
Maucha Adnet - vocals (track 7)
Haruomi Hosono - medicine drum (track 3)
Ryoji Ikeda - processing (track 13)
Marcelo Costa - percussion (track 3)
Cao Xue Jing - erhu (track 1)
Jiang Jian Hua - erhu (tracks 8, 14)
Jan Xiao-Qing - gu zheng (track 14)
Aya Motohashi - hichiriki (tracks 10, 14)
Dozan Fujiwara - shakuhachi (track 14)
Carlos Núñez - whistle (track 10)
tracklist:
1. Undercooled
2. Coro
3. War & Peace
4. CHASM
5. World Citizen - I Won't Be Disappointed / Looped Piano
6. Only Love Can Conquer Hate
7. Ngo / Bitmix
8. Break With
9. +Pantonal
10. The Land Song - Music For Intelligent City (One Winter Day mix)
11. 20 msec
12. Lamento
13. World Citizen (Re-cycled)
14. Seven Samurai - Ending Theme
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artist: Ryuichi Sakamoto/various
title: Bricolages
type: remix album
label: Warner Music
release date: 2006
length: 76:45
genre: various
country: Japan
language: Korean/English/Portuguese
format: mp3
bitrate: 320kbps
codec: lame 3.96
credits:
MC Sniper - vocals (tracks 2, 5)
David Sylvian - vocals, lyrics (track 6)
Maucha Adnet - vocals (track 11)
tracklist:
1. War & Peace (Aoki Takamasa Remix)
2. Undercooled (Skuli Sverrisson Remix)
3. War & Peace (Cornelius Remix)
4. 20 msec (Fennesz Remix)
5. Undercooled (Alva Noto Remodel)
6. World Citizen (Taylor Deupree Remix)
7. Only Love Can Conquer Hate (SND. Remix)
8. Seven Samurai (Richard Devine Remix)
9. Word (Rob Da Bank & Mr. Dan Remix)
10. 20 msec (Craig Armstrong Remix)
11. Ngo / Bitmix (Slicker Remix)
12. Break With (Steve Jansen Remix)
13. Motopiate (Thomas Knak Remix)
14. Lamento (Haruomi Hosono Remix)
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"[CHASM] is an album that boasts an exquisite matching of live instrumentation and electronic textures in a minimal setting. While its repetitive, deceptively simple motifs might not make this album groundbreaking, this release will appeal to a wider range of music lovers than just fans looking for an album that essentially has Sakamoto written all over it.
In the press release for Chasm, Sakamoto talks of the need to match his live and electronic, or classical and nonclassical currents. He wanted to have a better go at blending these two parts of his musical identity into something that worked in its own right.And he believes he has come pretty close to achieving it on this occasion.
Some of the tunes on Chasm will be familiar already to a certain extent (although in different versions), such as the J-Wave 15th-anniversary theme song "World Citizen," featuring David Sylvian; "Ngo," a TV ad theme for New Balance; and to a lesser extent "Seven Samurai," music for a PlayStation 2 game.
Sakamoto describes "Seven Samurai" as one of those tracks that come along once every 10 years. That this track should be part of a computer game goes to show how seriously the making of music for software has become these days. The track is a beautiful, slow-paced movie score-like number with a simple piano motif played by Sakamoto accompanied by atmospheric Oriental instrumentation such as the enigmatic shakuhachi, the goose-voiced hichiriki pipes used in Japanese court music and the Chinese niko played by Jiang Jian Hua, who performed on Sakamoto's Oscar-winning soundtrack for The Last Emperor.
Representing what at first seems like the other side of a musical chasm is "Coro," a seemingly out-of-control exploration of electronic distortion that is the most indulgent part of the album and an apparent attempt to kick in the shins anyone who might wish to classify Sakamoto's music as "safe."
Occupying some more interesting middle ground is the single "Undercooled," which again features Oriental stylings--but this time combined with the lyrics of South Korean rapper MC Sniper and some commercially acceptable hip-hop beats and bass. Few could pull off such a proposition of incongruous elements as convincingly as Sakamoto. Other moments of genius bordering on apparent madness include "+pantonal," a track that started out as a cover of James Brown's "The Payback" and ended up with swirling samples of Thai monks chanting.
Some will view such touches as a little on the gimmicky side, but there's plenty here to satisfy those with an interest in a varied assortment of electronic minimalism, ethnic instrumentation and unlikely combinations of ideas." - Paul Jackson/Daily Yomiuri
---
"Ryuichi Sakamoto's latest album, Chasm, exhibits a musical aesthetic that seamlessly blends classical composition, modern electronic and traditional Asian instrumentation with a Zen-like philosophy, all in a rather overt effort to lull the listener into a state of ecstatic contemplation.
Virtually all of Chasm has a dreamy, sci-fi patterning that suffuses a quietly provocative sonic landscape. And no track embodies this more than the beautiful final cut. It borrows from all continents and all styles, yet somehow manages to remain anchored in an Asian mystique, recalling the ethereal martial-arts films of Zhang Yimou. To an extent, this track embodies an inclusiveness that, once again, most musicians can barely even imagine, let alone achieve." - Kevin Capp/Las Vegas CityLife
---
"Ryuichi Sakamoto is one of the entertainment industry's renaissance men; he's composed film scores and operas, pop songs and cross-cultural collaborations, and done each with a such a distinctive stamp that they sounds unique even within his own eclectic discography. His latest album, Chasm, seems to directly address this schizophrenic but undeniably appealing approach to tunesmithing; referencing everything from his earliest work with Yellow Magic Orchestra to his recent minimalist collaborations with Alva Noto, Sakamoto creates an album of stunning diversity that proves to be an early front-runner for one of the year's best albums." - Todd Gilchrist/IGN
---
"Bricolages — a collection of remixes of tracks from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2005 album Chasm — succeeds where most other remixes don’t. It isn’t necessarily that the material here betters the originals, as Chasm was a fine return to Sakamoto’s electro-pop roots. Rather, because Sakamoto’s work has always been diverse and stylistically varied, Bricolages doesn’t require that it be judged against the original work. Sakamoto has worked in acoustic, electronic, and classical genres extensively, and so a remix album is par for the course. Putting together a diverse set of remixers to tackle his material seems far less out of place for Sakamoto than it does for most other artists because he takes these same approaches to his own music already.
Of course, as with any remix album, the finished product is only as good as the remixers you enlist, and Sakamoto has signed up a most interesting combination. There’s fellow Japanese artists AOKI Takamasa and Cornelius taking on “War & Peace” from two decidedly different angles (glitchy and skittering versus loose and fun, respectively). There’s micromeisters Fennesz, Alva Noto, and snd. There’s twitchy technohead Richard Devine, noted soundtrack composer Craig Armstrong, Rob Da Bank & Mr. Dan, and the pride of Hefty Records, Slicker. There’s even a fantastic take on “Break With” from former Japan (the band) drummer Steve Jansen, with whom Sakamoto has worked the longest out of those assembled. The fact that he turns in perhaps the best and most unexpected work here is illustrative of why the whole project works. This isn’t so much a break from the norm for Sakamoto as it is a logical next step.
Sakamoto’s best work is all about combining disparate elements from his myriad musical tastes into a new whole. The selections here cross cultural and generational boundaries, making them not all the different from a standard Sakamoto LP. And if I were told nothing more before hearing Bricolages for the first time than, “This is the new Ryuichi Sakamoto album,” it wouldn’t sound the least bit odd to me. In fact, it would sound like his best album in years. Conveniently enough, the word “bricolage” roughly translated means “construction achieved by whatever comes to hand.” He couldn’t have found a better title for this project." - Todd Hutlock/Stylus Magazine
---
artist: Ryuichi Sakamoto
title: CHASM
type: album
label: Warner Music
release date: 2004
length: 72:14
genre: ambient/experimental/hip-hop/pop
country: Japan
language: Korean/English/Portuguese
format: mp3
bitrate: 320kbps
credits:
Produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto & Arto Lindsay
Ryuichi Sakamoto - piano, keyboards
Sketch Show (Haruomi Hosono & Yukihiro Takahashi) - sound programming (tracks 1, 3, 5, 7)
David Sylvian - vocals, lyrics (tracks 5, 13)
Keigo Oyamada (Cornelius) - guitar (tracks 1, 13), CDJ-800 (track 5)
Luiz Brasil - guitar (tracks 1, 3)
Amadeo Pace - guitar (track 5)
Jaques Morelenbaum - cello (tracks 1, 3)
MC Sniper - vocals (track 1)
Maucha Adnet - vocals (track 7)
Haruomi Hosono - medicine drum (track 3)
Ryoji Ikeda - processing (track 13)
Marcelo Costa - percussion (track 3)
Cao Xue Jing - erhu (track 1)
Jiang Jian Hua - erhu (tracks 8, 14)
Jan Xiao-Qing - gu zheng (track 14)
Aya Motohashi - hichiriki (tracks 10, 14)
Dozan Fujiwara - shakuhachi (track 14)
Carlos Núñez - whistle (track 10)
tracklist:
1. Undercooled
2. Coro
3. War & Peace
4. CHASM
5. World Citizen - I Won't Be Disappointed / Looped Piano
6. Only Love Can Conquer Hate
7. Ngo / Bitmix
8. Break With
9. +Pantonal
10. The Land Song - Music For Intelligent City (One Winter Day mix)
11. 20 msec
12. Lamento
13. World Citizen (Re-cycled)
14. Seven Samurai - Ending Theme
---
artist: Ryuichi Sakamoto/various
title: Bricolages
type: remix album
label: Warner Music
release date: 2006
length: 76:45
genre: various
country: Japan
language: Korean/English/Portuguese
format: mp3
bitrate: 320kbps
codec: lame 3.96
credits:
MC Sniper - vocals (tracks 2, 5)
David Sylvian - vocals, lyrics (track 6)
Maucha Adnet - vocals (track 11)
tracklist:
1. War & Peace (Aoki Takamasa Remix)
2. Undercooled (Skuli Sverrisson Remix)
3. War & Peace (Cornelius Remix)
4. 20 msec (Fennesz Remix)
5. Undercooled (Alva Noto Remodel)
6. World Citizen (Taylor Deupree Remix)
7. Only Love Can Conquer Hate (SND. Remix)
8. Seven Samurai (Richard Devine Remix)
9. Word (Rob Da Bank & Mr. Dan Remix)
10. 20 msec (Craig Armstrong Remix)
11. Ngo / Bitmix (Slicker Remix)
12. Break With (Steve Jansen Remix)
13. Motopiate (Thomas Knak Remix)
14. Lamento (Haruomi Hosono Remix)