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Stories   >   Milan Records releases the Ryuichi Sakamoto compilation: 'Travesia' / The Quietus

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Milan Records releases the Ryuichi Sakamoto compilation: 'Travesia' / The Quietus

Posted: May 5, 2023

Ryuichi Sakamoto was a composer, producer, artist, and environmental activist born in Tokyo. Making his debut in 1978 with the album Thousand Knives, Sakamoto's diverse résumé includes pioneering electronic works in the legendary techno group Yellow Magic Orchestra, producing globally-inspired pop albums and numerous classical compositions, two operas, and nearly 40 original film scores for directors, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma, and more recently Alejandro González Iñárritu for whom he composed the music of 'The Revenant'. His film soundtracks have won prestigious awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and many more. Sakamoto's activism has spread wide to include various environmental conservation efforts and promoting denuclearization and world peace. After 3/11 in Japan, he became a strong voice of support for the victims of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Fukushima.

Sakamoto had considerable contributions to the art world with both solo and collaborative installations and multi-piece exhibitions presented in galleries and museums worldwide. Most recently, MWOODS (Beijing) presented the largest and most comprehensive collection spanning 30 years devoted to Sakamoto's artworks in various media, centering around 8 large-scale sound installations.

In 2017, the documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA (Stephen Nomura Schible) was released coinciding with the release of his renowned 14th solo album async. Additionally, Sakamoto presented unique performances at the Park Avenue Armory (NYC), later released worldwide as the film Ryuichi Sakamoto: async Live at the Park Avenue Armory. In 2021, with longtime collaborator Shiro Takatani, Sakamoto presented a new theater piece, TIME, which premiered at the Holland Festival. Sakamoto resided in NY since 1990 and unfortunately recently passed on March 23rd of this year.


The Quietus - Christian Eede writes….Milan Records has released a compilation of Ryuichi Sakamoto's solo music, curated by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro Iñárritu.

Titled Travesía (the Spanish word for 'journey), the 20-track release takes in some of the late artist's lesser-known works, with Inárritu having initially been approached to curate the project two years ago after collaborating with Sakamoto on 2015 film The Revenant. You can listen to the compilation just below.


Iñárritu spent six months carefully curating his selections and the collection, which was initially conceived as a celebration of the Japanese composer's 70th birthday, is now being released as a retrospective of his career following his death in March.


In a statement, Iñârritu said: "When Jean Christophe Chamboredon, from Milan Records, and Norika Sora, Ryuichi's manager, invited me to this project, my first instinct was to resist. Sakamoto's musical universe is so vast that the responsibility to honour him by choosing only 20 stars from his complex galaxy would be practically impossible. But after finding out that they were planning this as a surprise present for him, I had no other choice but to accept the challenge.

"Even now, I keep discovering new elements in Ryuichi's pieces that I've listened to for decades. The perception of his music becomes a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same. Millenary musical tradition breathing through his relentless innovation. Ryuichi Sakamoto's music will be fully alive even when the rest of us are gone. I hope that, by listening to this selection, you'll be able to experience that eternal emotional waterfall."


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