Last Updated on February 9, 2024
Well, this is a relief after the challenging brute-force attack that preceded it in the Pitchfork Top 50 list. Ryuichi Sakamoto: 12 is so laid back I need to make a strong coffee by the time the first track as ended.
This album is almost entirely solo piano played through a ton of reverb (or in a big room) and some distant noise that reminds me of the shitty 4-track recordings I made in the 90s.
I love piano music, especially the thoughtful, ponderously gentle music created by artists like The Flashbulb. But the first four tracks of this Ryuichi Sakamoto just don’t seem to go anywhere. There’s no journey, and the playing never arrives at any location. I’m not averse to music like this, but this sounds like it could have been played by a stoned cat stumbling around on a piano.
By track 5 the piano is replaced by a synth, but the playing style is the same. I must be missing something with Ryuichi Sakamoto, but I’m halfway through the album, and I’m getting the feeling that albums like ’12’ being lauded as being among the best of the year are a bit ‘hipster emperors new clothes’.
At least I ended up hating Sexyy Red: Hood Hottest Princess, but this album doesn’t have enough about it to even make me indifferent. The phone rang while I was listening to track 5. I usually switch off any music I’m listening to before answering a call, but totally forgot, and it didn’t matter. It’s that inoffensive.
You’ll note that I’ve not called any of the tracks by name, and that’s because each track doesn’t have a name, instead each track is named after a series of numbers. I’m fairly sure these numbers are dates. If the tracks are dated according to when they were recorded, then I can say with some certainty that between the 10th of March 2021 and the 23rd of January 2022, very little developmental work was done.
By the 7th February 2022 Ryuichi Sakamoto started playing the piano with both hands, rather then just plinking around with one hand. Is this the way I’m meant to digest the album?
On the 2nd March 2022, a Wednesday (according to my research), Ryuichi Sakamoto discovered a rudimentary melody and some interesting time signatures.
This album is starting to feel like the strangest diary ever created. Which as a concept is pretty neat, but as a listening activity is not.
The last track on the album is a recording of Ryuichi Sakamoto dropping some porcelain spoons on a kitchen floor, then picking them up and dropping them again. A bit like a cat who knocks one ornament off a shelf, then another to compare results. But with a delay pedal. This continues for one minute and nine seconds until the album ends.
I’m not sure trying to make my way through the Pitchfork to 50 albums of 2023 was a good idea, I think it’s making me hate music.
