A third of the way into his 2017 comeback album, async—Ryuichi Sakamoto’s first solo album in eight years and his first since recovering from throat cancer—a rustling noise arises on “Walker.” It’s a hushed, uncanny piece, full of faraway electric drones mixed with a much closer and more personal sound, of leaves crunching underfoot. It’s a sound that Sakamoto recorded while strolling the grounds of the 20th-century American architect Philip Johnson’s iconic Glass House before a duo performance with Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) back in September 2016. Noto and Sakamoto’s musical dialogue stretches back to the beginning of the 21st century, when the duo began trading the files that ultimately became 2002’s Vrioon. They most recently collaborated on the soundtrack to Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant. Their work there made the frozen wilderness of the film feel all the more bitter, and Glass, the live recording of that 2016 performance, pushes deeper into chilly abstraction.
After decades of making groundbreaking synth-pop as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra and working with artists such as Brian Wilson, Iggy Pop, and David Sylvian on his own solo albums, Sakamoto pivoted away from pop music. But collaborating with one of the most austere electronic producers of the clicks ‘n’ cuts generation marked a return of sorts. He has said that making experimental music led him back to the music of his youth, working under the influence of artists like Nam June Paik and the Fluxus movement.
There’s a resonant center to Noto and Sakamoto’s work together in which stark timbres and abstract electronics ultimately turn heart-stirring. That sense slowly arises on Glass, a site-specific performance that utilizes Johnson’s building as an instrument itself. The music’s drifting forms scan as ambient, but rather than imbue a sense of calm, Glass evokes an intensifying sense of unease it evolves. Glass bowls are rubbed with a mallet and digitally processed; ghostly tones from Sakamoto’s Sequential Circuits synthesizer waft about in space; and crotales (small tuned disks) are struck so that their high frequencies seem to hover like flying saucers. When Noto and Sakamoto introduce an even higher sound it evokes a physical sensation akin to freezing rain suddenly turning to ice, brittle and crystalline.
