Earlier this year Ryuichi Sakamoto released async, his first solo album in eight years. It was an excellent, beguiling record that featured amongst our favourites of 2017 at the year’s halfway mark, and marked his first since receiving treatment following a throat cancer diagnosis.
Now he’s preparing to follow the release of async with a remix album titled async Remodels. Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca, Alva Noto, Motion Graphs and Yves Tumor are amongst the artists who have contributed their interpretations of tracks on async to this new remix album, and premiering above is a rework by Fennesz of Sakamoto’s ‘Solari’.
Fennesz’ interpretations of the track maintains the original’s lead melody, adding brooding, tense tape hiss-like atmosphere to the track. It also ramps up the cinematic qualities in Sakamoto’s work on async, something which was no doubt influenced by the former Yellow Magic Orchestra member’s recent soundtrack work on The Revenant.
async Remodels is set for release on December 1 via Milan Records, with a new remix coming out every other week leading up to the release. Remixes from Oneohtrix Point Never and Arca have already seen release with the series of releases having kicked off in July. You can pre-order the remix album here.
Ahead of the release of async Remodels, Sakamoto’s score for the Japanese film Akari will be released via Milan Records on October 27.
