One thing you notice working in a record shop and filing through the large number of reissues we receive every week is not only how much great music there is, but how much of it has been disregarded. I'm not just talking about single press obscurities from artists who only released one flexi-disc at a loft party in Tokyo in 1984 (though that too), but bonafide career artists with near-endless catalogues. Sakamoto is on a parallel with Eno, and yet when i tried to play 'Riot in Lagos', one of the best songs of its era to a friend the other week, i realised it, and the album from which its taken, isn't commercially available on any streaming services, like vast swathes of his music. I don't know how Sakamoto isn't regarded as canon. Why it isn't everywhere. I guess you could describe it as a whitewashing of music history. Same as it ever was.
Well, anyway, this new-to-vinyl collection of a range of his filmscore work recorded with the Brusssels Philharmonic is both a reminder of that injustice, and an opportunity to reacquaint one's self with some of his more eloquent and verbose compositions rendered in their most dramatic form. Grand, opulent, even monolithic in places, this is coldwar romantic waltz round the room while the walls come tumbling down theatre.
