Tag Archives: #Sakamoto

Sakamoto – Opus

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Live concert films are mostly formulaic. The audience filing into the venue. The performers warming up backstage. The band close ups, the cutaways to the wings, then zooming out to the ecstatic crowd. The sweaty and exhausted atmosphere in the dressing room afterwards. Sometimes the live footage is inter-cut with interviews, location footage, and the “making of” narrative. Occasionally, there will be scenes shot on the road, revealing the inevitable tedium and monotony of live touring.

A few notable exceptions have tried to break with this format, to present something more dramatic, more mystical, even mythical – think of Pink Floyd’s “Live in Pompeii” (knowingly echoed by Melbourne’s own Mildlife), Talking Head’s “Stop Making Sense”, and David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars”.

Often, the concert film becomes a souvenir. For those who were there, it enables them to relive the experience. For those who weren’t, they may get some vicarious thrill, but they won’t get to experience the performance as it was fully intended. These films can make us feel we missed out on an historic event, but they can also remind us why we are glad not to have been there at all (the Rolling Stones at Altamont?).

Many concerts these days (and the accompanying Blu-Ray discs) are all about the spectacle, sometimes at the expense of the actual music. Choreographed to within an inch of their lives, these shows leave very little to chance or the unexpected, with their troupes of dancers, video backdrops, somersaults and acrobatics, multiple costume changes, “forced” audience participation, and the “surprise” guest appearances during the encores….

So the footage of the final live performance by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto goes against this trend. Filmed alone, on piano, in stark black and white, and with no audience, no voice-overs and no talking heads, “Opus” is not strictly speaking a concert. Due to his failing health, Sakamoto was unable either to withstand the rigours of touring or to perform a single concert. Instead, these performances were shot in stages, and edited together to form a seamless programme, with nothing but Sakamoto, a piano, and the music, plus some very subtle lighting and framing. The sound recording is brilliant, and the content covers most aspects of Sakamoto’s illustrious and prolific career. It’s a fitting tribute, and a perfect counterpoint to “Coda”, the documentary he made when he had just come through an earlier health scare.

Sometimes, less is more.

Next week: Severance….

Ageing Rockers

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A few years ago, I mentioned the phenomena of ageing pop stars, that bunch of musicians from the 60s and 70s still recording and touring in their 70s and 80s – retrospective proof that for some, rock was a viable career move after all. Since their professional longevity has extended way beyond anyone’s original expectations, it does mean for us music fans we should make an effort to go and see their live shows, especially as more of these artists shuffle off this mortal coil – because we may never get the opportunity again.

Michael Rother – a sprightly 73-year old continues to record and tour (picture sourced from Melbourne Recital Centre)

A case in point is Kraftwerk, who visited Melbourne last December. The only original member, Ralf Hütter is now in his late 70s, but he stood and led his team of younger musicians for a 2-hour performance that was almost like a tribute show to themselves. Kraftwerk has not released any new music for more than 20 years, but continue to harvest their legacy via regular live shows and careful curation of their back catalogue. I hope they do continue touring but I suspect the chance to see them again in Melbourne may have passed (at least in human form, and not as resurrected VR projections or avatars, although Kraftwerk clearly anticipated this many, many years ago… ).

Last week, a one-time member of Kraftwerk, Michael Rother performed at the Melbourne Recital Centre, to celebrate 50 years of his old band Neu! A fit and sprightly-looking 73-year old, he looks like he still enjoys touring, and seemed very happy to be back in Melbourne. However, this concert was re-scheduled from a couple of years ago, when Rother experienced some health issues that prevented him from travelling to Australia. And the last time he was here, in 2012, he was joined by another stalwart of the German music scene of the 70s and 80s, Dieter Moebius (of Cluster and Harmonia) – who passed away in 2015. Given Rother’s connection to Kraftwerk and his key role in forming the sound of “kosmische Musik” (plus his work with Brian Eno, and the tantalising prospect that he might have played on David Bowie’s “Heroes” album if things had gone differently…) his continued presence on the live circuit is most welcome, especially as very few of his German contemporaries are still with us as going concerns.

Later this month, I’m going to see Laraaji, octogenarian jazz, ambient and new age musician who is coming to Melbourne to perform for the first time in his career (I believe). Another former collaborator of Brian Eno, this promises to be a very special concert.

Meanwhile, Eno himself still shies away from live performance, but an interesting documentary about him has started touring the world – and which, in typical Eno-esque fashion, is never the same film twice. And another documentary showing this month in Melbourne is “Opus”, the final recorded performances of the late Ryuichi Sakamoto (whom I was fortunate to see on his last visit to Melbourne in 2018).

The moral of the story? Get ’em while you can….

Next week: The Grey Ceiling

 

Sakamoto – Coda and Muzak

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Contemporary music documentaries tend to fall into one of two categories: the track-by-track “making of” account, in support of a new album; and the “behind the scenes” artifact of a live concert tour (often in support of that new album).* Both can be fine in their own way, but ultimately they are there to plug product. The recent documentary “Coda”, featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto clearly bucks that trend.As a recording artist, Sakamoto is one of the most prolific composers of his era. As a performer, he has maintained a regular schedule of live concerts and collaborations. That is until he was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and was forced to temporarily abandon his work. Fortunately, he has come through that recent health scare, even completing a major film score for “The Revenant” before he had fully recovered.

“Coda” started out as an account of Sakamoto’s anti-nuclear activism, but ended up providing an insight into his creative process, an examination of the role of sound and music in film, and a discourse on the aesthetics of minimalism.

There are two images in the film which provide a link between the “craft” of the composer and the “art” inherent in any form of creativity. The first is a close-up of Sakamoto’s working tools – the pencils he uses to write out his scores. The second is a shot of some immaculate cooking utensils – arranged in a similar fashion to his perfectly sharpened pencils. This is someone for whom both process and form serve the purpose of creativity, and which combine to determine the artistic outcome of the resulting content.

As a regular soundtrack composer, Sakamoto has been likened to a film-maker, although he is neither director nor cinematographer. He has an acute sense of the use of sound (not just music) in film, and in fact for his most recent album, “Async”, Sakamoto invited film-makers to submit short films to accompanying each of the tracks. An astounding 675 films were considered for the competition.

Ever sensitive to his environment, it was perhaps no surprise that Sakamoto chose to change the music played at one of his favourite restaurants, rather than eat elsewhere. And ever the non-egoist, none of the tracks on his restaurant playlist was his own.

The forthcoming performance by Sakamoto and long-time collaborator Alva Noto at the Melbourne International Arts Festival promises to be something special.

Next week: Revolving Doors At The Lodge

* An honourable exception in recent years was “The Go-Betweens: Right Here”