Ryuichi Sakamoto has died
clashmusic.com
clashmusic.com
- Ryuichi Sakamoto
After all, if everything humanity does is pollution, why single any specific acts out?
How we see nature plays little role, in after-the-fact justifications or condemnations. In fact pollution could be justified under either view:
Humanity is different than nature: all we do is pollution, in the sense that is outside of nature. So why single any specific act out? Or other potential arguments: "We are better than nature, and we'll eventually just sort pollution out with our technology".
Humanitity is "just" nature: so what we do is natural, including pollution. No need to do something else, we just keep doing what comes natural to us, including polluting. Why consider huge heaps of human garbage any worse that we consider other animals creating their own waste?
This is a dogmatic statement influenced by religions that put humanity as a separate creation.
Humanity is part of nature. Fixing the world requires accepting that.
If you yourself can cut a tree down and do whatever else to make a piano, there's no world created by humans. It'll take you a while but in the end there's only you and your shiny new piano and nature.
If there is a distributed process with countless people and organizations using intricate mechanisms to build components of mechanisms that build mechanisms that extract natural resources for building mechanisms for preparing different parts that are eventually put together as a piano (which itself is almost a side effect, a minor detail almost no participant of the process sees or even knows about)... that's a world. If you click a button and have this thing show up at your house and not know a bit about what goes into it much less do it yourself... that's a world.
And then someone will go on being pedantic and bring forward bees and ant colonies and the like. Let's call it "a matter of degree/scale/breadth" this might shut them up!
There's so many modifiers to 'reading' that I, along with probably many readers, are unsure what your trying to express.
None the less, his music is great and can be enjoyed, like any other artists, without listening to the political and culture drivel that artists sadly often produce. They are easily captured and swayed by instinct tautological ideologies.
Just because it feels right does not mean it to be true.
My favorite rendition of his "My love wears forbidden colors"
Or maybe it is a bit more complex. And the story maybe begins with civilized people who explicitly wanted to conquer nature. To make it bow to mens will. And quite some still want to exactly this. They were the ones creating that artificial distinction.
The romanticism of nature that you are criticize, is more of a counter movement to that philosophy, that we are in fact part of nature and we have to find our balance within the greater cycles.
Ivory is also typically only used for the keys, and doesn't actually impact the tuning of the instrument.
They exist, but they are notoriously difficult to tune and keep in tune compared to iron framed pianos. I think they have stopped making them for quite a while. I find it hard to imagine a high school using an instrument requiring so much maintenance.
If it was indeed a wooden framed piano, it was probably more of an antique than a practical instrument, and so, maybe with ivory keys, though again I doubt it.
That also made them pretty finicky, changing moisture and temperature would have a significant effect on the pitch of the piano. At that time 'standard pitch' was about A4@423 Hz, considerably below what it is today (A4@440), which lessened the problems somewhat but if you wanted to have your instrument well tuned you had better learn how to tune it yourself.
For harpsichord players (the predecessor to the piano) today self tuning is still the standard.
Piano history is fascinating, if you are interested in the subject I'd recommend reading 'Of men, women and pianos' by Arthur Loesser. It's an old book but a fantastic source of historical information about the development of the piano/grand piano.
What's the difference between the honey created by bees and the nuclear waste of a nuclear reactor?
If you get rid of the pro-not-human narrative there is none.
Plastic is another unbelievably horrible man made concoction which is absolutely destroying the natural world due to poor handling.
Since plastic waste and nuclear waste aren't food for other organisms, or don't naturally break down, they're not materials that belong in the natural environment. The is the same environment from which you come from, owe everything too, and which you're still totally and utterly dependent on for your survival.
Hopefully that's a good answer...
By the way, I used to share your beliefs, that it's all the same, it's all "natural", but I just can't keep up the mental charades anymore. Our intellect and creativity is an important part of our short-term survival, but thus far it's been massively destructive and I can't see that changing anytime soon.
I was lucky enough to see them play together a couple of times and it was spellbinding. His album “async” is a favourite too. I’ll have to dig more into his back catalogue.
—
After the concert, we started talking, and he complained that I played much slower than the original songs or pieces. He asked, "Why?" That made me think, "Why do I want to play much slower than before?" Because I wanted to hear the resonance. want to have less notes and more spaces. Spaces, not silence. Space is resonant, is still ringing. I want to enjoy that resonance, to hear it growing, then the next sound, and the next note or harmony can come. That's exactly what I want
Async was solid. He was next level in writing and producing.
Sakamoto’s music will be missed. He was one of the greats.
Logic moon:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BTaAs8OdvX4
Solari:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Okyb-2jLo
& some moog ad where his off the cuff work sounds huge and both discordant and melodic simultaneously. He’s a legend.
https://youtu.be/wdhzVFZlKsM?t=886
Rip
Edit: last one
Monomom from Two where they played in Sydney
1. https://youtu.be/_CQXI01usj0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rtdR9WkOOY
And his early synth-y stuff is just so hip. Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto (1978) is some badass stuff.
Here's the full album ("Casa") for those interested: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kD_LK3RoPwL6UNzGT2...
RIP Sakamoto.
- Ryuichi Sakamoto, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/ryuichi-sakamoto-o...
A fly on the wall video of the 1st album [1] recording sessions was posted couple of years ago [2] which includes bits where you can see Sylvian/Sakamoto working together.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Trees
2: The Berlin Sessions - https://youtu.be/v-X36Xi8i58
I really think it's one of his best!
Well, Sakamoto-san didn't exactly live a traditional Japanese life. Three marriages, playing in a band in the '70s (so disreputable!), jet-setting around the world... Shit takes its toll (unless you're Mick Jagger, of course).
What is the connection between nuclear power and Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
It's perhaps particularly relevant with Japan; they are the nation probably most often used as an example of a country that could develop nuclear weapons almost overnight, should the political will materialize. They have the know-how, industry, missiles, and because of the nuclear power program, both stockpiles of, and the ability to produce, both enriched uranium and plutonium.
Edit: Did I hit a nerve or something folks?
For the record I personally strongly support nuclear power. Parent asked a question. It's obvious to me why anti-nuclear activists link weapons and power reactors. It's not (necessarily) lack of scientific understanding -- power reactors produce the material for nuclear bombs. Some people think that is unacceptable as a proliferation risk. Don't shoot the messenger? Was just trying to contribute to the discussion positively.
If one attributes the U.S. stepping back from nuclear power to the anti-proliferation scare of the mid-1970s (good heavens, brown people are making plutonium!) you might then consider the alternate path where the U.S. had stayed the course, built the 500 reactors it had planned to build by 2000, and we'd be talking about some other crisis than the "climate crisis."
The constant drumbeat about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is part of a larger syndrome where Japan never reconciled with its neighbors after WWII the way Germany did and now is stuck with a pacifist constitution that seems more of a problem than a solution year after year as that part of the word becomes increasingly dangerous.
I doubt that. Perhaps it'd be slightly less acute, that's all.
While nuclear power and weapons use similar technology, their purpose is diametrically opposed.
Many of the early designs like Magnox and RBMK were for producing plutonium first, and power second. Nuclear power was a public relations project more than anything else, at least initially. The UK and Russia continue dual use with their power reactors today.
> their purpose is diametrically opposed
The purpose is decided by those who control the reactors. For example, the power reactors used in Canada produce plutonium, from natural uranium. Canada built a small heavy water research reactor in India; the material for their first nuclear bomb was made in that reactor. This was expressly not the intent of Canada.
But this is a plain naive argument to make. At this point saying "destroying all nuclear bombs means no more nuclear bombs" is also technically correct, but even if, let's say, civil nuclear energy was impossible to manage, there would still be uranium enrichment facilities designed with the sole purpose of creating nuclear weapons, because they give such a significant strategic advantage to superpowers; they just wouldn't allow not to have it when others can.
So even without nuclear power plants you would still have nuclear weapons, I really never understood the argument of causation civilian and military nuclear energy, on can exist without the other.
"There is general agreement that the bombing of Nagasaki did little in the way of changing the hearts and minds of the Japanese military. By blaming their surrender on the atomic bombs, Japan avoided the Soviet Union having a hand in the post-war reconstruction process. Japan was afraid that the Soviet Union might try to push a communist regime onto the country. It was also very convenient for the U.S. that Japan attributed their surrender to the atomic bombings."
https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/japans-surrend...
EDIT: incidentally
I always identified with his taste, an eclectic mix of pop, art music, classical and electronic. A true original, I will miss him greatly.
tidbit: he had rather large hand with long fingers for someone who is 171cm. I went a museum that had a cast of his hands and I was surprised at how large they were.
Sakamoto had a way of doing and thinking through things better than many, but still with some sort of simplicity. I mean, he was in a class of his own even for something as mundane as washing hands: https://youtu.be/VnV4GGXIhfM (of course, this hits differently now than when it first came out)
RIP Ryuichi
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085933/
More and more of my musical heroes are dying and I'm well aware of the fact that they aren't all that far ahead of me.
Played live on the piano by Sakamoto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwhYiHJq16c
Orchestral version from Babel soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsKlf_x9zRE
NY Times article: https://nyti.ms/3zmI4XD
Sans Paywall: https://archive.is/9knVL
The songs listed, as Spotify Playlist: https://spoti.fi/3znZ4fY
I will miss him.