This, in itself, is fine, though it is quite obvious that many of these songs lose much of their power when stripped of the context of an album like Chasm. The mere existence of a remix album takes the emphasis off of the words and ideas presented in the album and puts all of the weight on the music itself. All of it featured an open, spacious soundtrack courtesy of Sakamoto, resulting in an album with a clear common theme, if not a concept album per se. “War & Peace” is a track that finds footing in the rhetorical, asking us via sampled dialogue to think about the two titular concepts from a number of different angles “Undercooled” is hip-hop (with guest rapper MC Sniper) with a message imploring us to chill out already and “World Citizen” finds David Sylvian wishing for a harmonious breakdown of cultural and geographic boundaries. Sakamoto has dabbled in jazz, classical, hip-hop, glitch, synthpop, and rock over the course of a career that spans nearly 30 years, and on his most recent solo work (2004’s Chasm), he merged every single one of those genres into an album that sounds effortless in its freedom.īricolages, then, is the remix album for Chasm, and with all due respect to Sakamoto, it’s difficult to find the point of its release.Ĭhasm was Sakamoto’s statement on the perils of the world we live in, an uneasy mixture of love and frustration - love for the beauty in the world and its many inhabitants, but frustration over what’s being done to and with it. Less known but just as well-respected is his album-oriented music, which tends to treat genre boundaries as challenges. His renowned score for The Last Emperor won an Academy Award in the year of its release, and he has worked with other filmmakers such as Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone in the years since. Primarily, he is known for his work in film. There seems to be plenty of respect to go around when speaking of Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto.
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