"How hard it is to escape stereotypes!", Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto must have thought at some point in the 1980s, prior to the release of this Neo Geo. The album is an affirmation of the national identity of a Japan characterized by much more than raw fish dishes, samurai and sumo wrestlers. In that decade, the country of the rising sun was in direct competition with the United States of America in its economic growth, sustained above all by a cutting-edge technical development that, although it has not yet made the Japanese economy take off to this day, made Japan a mecca of technology. Moreover, the country that was so much talked about in terms of "traditionalism" and "post-war trauma" embraced a multi-ethnic culture, rich in international influences and completely open to culture from all over the world. Sakamoto himself and his music are proof that Japanese could go anywhere, to the pop and techno charts, and even to Hollywood red carpet success in the form of soundtracks.
https://www.deviantart.com/sjovnism/art/The-Dragonfly-Man-Screams-49297896
Neo Geo (1987) is one of the most popular albums in Ryuichi Sakamoto's career, apart from his scores for The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and The Sheltering Sky, among many others. Of course, be forewarned: apart from his taste for keyboards, especially the piano, Sakamoto is not a classical musician as might be inferred from his approaches to film. He is a contemporary composer who likes to experiment with the latest electronic advances and, as in this case, to count on characters as clearly avant-garde as bassist Bill Laswell or the unclassifiable singer Iggy Pop.
All the tracks of Neo Geo are different visions, sound postcards perhaps, of the open-minded and advanced Japan of the eighties, and to turn these visions into music Sakamoto has a whole arsenal of sounds, from synthesizers to rock instruments, including a multitude of samplings that at times remind us of mythical works such as My Life in the Bush of Ghosts or Zoolook.
https://www.deviantart.com/groggamesh/art/Ryuichi-Sakamoto-257763625
The album opens with the meditative and melancholic Before Long, with his unmistakable piano playing. Neo Geo, the central theme of the album, is already a clearly modern piece with obvious western influences, a powerful bass and drums. The Japanese note is provided by the percussion and vocals. Risky, another outstanding track, is a very eighties song in which Iggy Pop plays a bit like David Bowie, with disturbing results. But if there is a theme that stands out above all, that is for me Okinawa Song, a theme with a beautiful melody and a very well planned rhythm that will clearly serve with influence to Eldorado by Jean Michel Jarre, a few years later.
