Beauty by Ryuichi Sakamoto

Beauty

Available from Amazon
Usually ships in 5 to 10 days

Beauty

Features

Audio CD (June 29, 1992)

Number of Discs: 1

Label: Virgin Records

Catalog Number: 86132

Reader Reviews
The spirit of this album is closest, among his large body of works, to that of 'Neo Geo' and 'Heartbeat', in which Ryuichi tried to deconstruct the barriers among various types of music, such as pop, classical, world (ethnic), etc. 'Neo Geo' was an intelligent avant-gardist album which still sounds fresh like its two immediate predecessors `Esperanto' and `A Futurist Guy' as well as YMO's `Technodelic'. But `Beauty' on the face of it sounds more like mainstream pop (maybe obligingly for his contract with Virgin!) still with his characteristic style of a residual avant-gardist flavour mixed with ethnic music. Surprisingly as it was at the time of its release, most pieces turned out to be vocal music, and he started singing himself often quite unlike him until that point in his career. He once categorically refused to admit, perhaps light-heartedly in an interview ('skmt', a book published in Japan) conducted in Japanese, that the album was then fashionable (e.g. through Peter Gabriel's works) so-called world music. But it is perhaps safe to say that one of the greatest sources of inspiration for the album was that genre, when you find Youssou N'Dour ('Diabaram') and several little-known local Japanese singers (Y. Ganeko, M. Koja, and K. Tamaki who all sang in 'Neo Geo') all singing in non-English, and arguably Arto Lindsay ('Futique' and reading in non-English in `Rose'). What you'd particularly notice is his effort to exploit ethnic resources which are more accessible to the Japanese ('Asadoya Yunta', 'Romance', and 'Chinsagu no hana', the last one of which has been recycled memorably in his opera 'Life' as 'Evolution of Life'), just as B. Bartok did, as a Hungarian composer, in Eastern Europe. I don't think what he did in this album comes naturally from any Japanese artist, but only with very conscious highly artistic intention beyond the national norm.

Back To Top