Ryuichi Sakamoto – Beauty

In 1987, just three years after Yellow Magic Orchestra disbanded, Ryuichi Sakamoto became the first Asian composer to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Last Emperor. Sakamoto’s critically-acclaimed soundtrack would be released on Virgin, leading directly to a deal to also release his solo works. 1989’s Beauty is in many ways an expansion of the worldview of his previous Bill Laswell produced album Neo-Geo, once again featuring an all-star cast of renowned musicians from around the world including: Arto Lindsay, Robbie Robertson, Sly Dunbar, Shankar, Nana Vasconcelos, Sang Won Park, Brian Wilson, Robert Wyatt, and Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, who somehow completely outshines the previous two singers on the gorgeous “Diabaram.” Many of the tracks are covers, including two traditional Okinawan folk songs and The Rolling Stones’ “We Love You.” Sakamoto has spoken about his abstract collage style approach on this album: “I have visions sometimes when I’m writing contemporary music, even when it’s very logical. For example, for one of my songs on the album Beauty, I was always having visions of Amazonian rainforests, a little plane flying very low over the trees. Trees, trees, trees, and some birds. But the title of the song is ‘Calling from Tokyo'”

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