Ryuichi Sakamoto has had a long and fascinating career, not just in film composition, but also as an highly influential and prolific ambient and electronic music pioneer, among other things. The documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda by filmmaker Stephen Nomura Schible, was made over five-years and portrays recent key events in Sakamoto’s life including his diagnosis and treatment for stage 3 throat cancer, scoring the 2015 film The Revenant, and his increasing activism against nuclear power in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
This interview was recorded on Wednesday 18 October 2018 and then played on Triple R (3RRR 102.7FM) on Monday 17 December 2018 as an hour long special that included music from Mr Sakamoto’s films. You can listen back to that special via Triple R’s Radio On Demand service and here:
Download link (running time = 1:01:43)
Thank you to Hi Gloss Entertainment for arranging this interview. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda will be screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image from 27 December 2018 until the 16 January 2019, more details here.
Playlist
‘Father Christmas’
Ryuichi Sakamoto
‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’
Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jaques Morelenbaum and Judy Kang
‘The Last Emperor (Theme)’
Ryuichi Sakamoto
‘Bolerisch (From Femme Fatale)’
Ryuichi Sakamoto
‘M-1’
Eduardo Artemyev
‘Deborah’s Theme’
Ennio Morricone
‘Bibo no Aozora / 04’
Ryuichi Sakamoto
Posted by Thomas Caldwell 
