Ryuichi Sakamoto -- Blu

 

Happy Monday! The last time that I wrote about the great Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）was through his 1978 masterpiece album "Sen no Knife"（千のナイフ）when he was happily experimenting and incorporating all of those synthesizers and other forms of technology into music. Of course, in that decade and the 1980s, I would see him as one of the major technopop guys for his own group, Yellow Magic Orchestra, as well as for other singers such as his frequent collaborator in the early part of the 80s, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Mari Iijima（飯島真理）. It has gotten to the point that my own SOP is to check out any 1980s song composed by The Professor.

Even though Sakamoto brought some of those electronic bleeps and bloops into the 1990s, I found that by the time that I had started living in Japan again from the middle of that decade, The Professor was beginning to shift into a more easy listening period or as they have said in Japan, healing music. One example could be his 1997 "The Other Side of Love" with his daughter, singer Miu Sakamoto（坂本美雨）.

Sakamoto's fame is such that I'm positive that whenever news gets out that he will be collaborating with a company on some project, everyone in the company gets all googly-eyed and excited. Perhaps that was indeed the case with Aoyama Shouji（青山商事）which is a famous menswear company, specializing in suits. Although I've never worn one of their designs, I've probably seen some of their wares hanging about in department stores such as Daiei (one branch is about ten minutes' walk away from my old apartment).

Indeed, Aoyama Shouji did collaborate with the famous musician and composer for a commercial above which has him talking at length about suits, I'm assuming, near Tokyo Station. Finally at about 2:30 of the video, his "Blu" finally makes its brief aural appearance. I'm guessing that he came up with the title from the colour of the typical navy blue businessman garb.

Thankfully, we can get the whole thing on his January 2015 album "Year Book 2005-2014", and for the most part, "Blu" is a fairly quiet and contemplative piece although halfway through it, the intensity on all fronts increases before in its final minute, the song hits its peak before making a quick denouement. My imagination may be running a little wild here, but I think that Sakamoto was trying to describe a day in the life of the average worker right from the post-alarm clock wake-up through the early quiet commute into the busy schedule of company hustle-and-bustle. Things seem to get a little goofy at the end with the so-called drunken trombones so I'm wondering if Sakamoto had wanted to throw in his take on the nighttime hijinks at the izakaya before the final subway home.

In a way, "Blu" might be a spiritual cousin to YMO's "Perspective" which was created more than two decades prior. The song was also a track on Sakamoto's 2-CD "Playing the Orchestra 2014" released just a couple of months following "Year Book 2005-2014".