Ryuichi Sakamoto featuring Thomas Dolby -- Field Work

 

Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful! 

When I did my ROY article on Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science", I highlighted that exhortation from the lyrics of the song. And indeed Dolby may have been complimenting Ryuichi Sakamoto's（坂本龍一）wife at the time, singer-songwriter Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）. Both Yano and Dolby had collaborated on the latter's 1982 song "Radio Silence".

Perhaps then, I gather that Dolby's lyrical pass at his wife was the invitation for both him and Sakamoto to collaborate on their own single, the February 1985 "Field Work". The guy who looked like a daffy professor and the guy who was nicknamed The Professor worked on words and music with some additional help by Hajime Tachibana（立花ハジメ）from New Wave band Plastics in the arranging department. A dramatic tempest of a technopop tune that starts off like a melodic tornado, "Field Work" overall comes across as the ideal theme for a sci-fi thriller movie and judging from the lyrics, the sci-fi is epic and era-spanning. I'm not sure but I think Dolby was channeling a bit of his inner Bowie in the delivery.

The actual music video for "Field Work" starring Sakamoto and Dolby though takes things into another direction using the tropes of the unwelcome stalker and that WWII Japanese soldier who wasn't unaware that the war had been over for decades. Mind you, there's a bit of X-Men or X-Files sci-fi with Sakamoto's vet. 

I've heard that there are various remixes of "Field Work", and up to this point, I've enjoyed this Long London version at a shade over six minutes.