Heartbeat Exclusive Review from "CMJ New Music Report"

What Brian Eno was to the `70s, Ryuichi Sakamoto may well become for the `90s: master of ambience and mood, globe-trotting musical spokesman and thinker, someone with the distinctive style and flair of an auteur or master painter, uniting different rhythms, textures, samples and found sounds to create a vivid, new kind of music. Imagine the result as architecture, as environment, conceived to fill a space in modern life with something more than just wallpaper, just as a mural does more than merely cover a wall. As a composer and performer (and founding member of Yellow Magic Orchestra), Ryuichi Sakamoto creates music that exists in its own discrete space, a place where ragamuffin hip-hop, jazzy piano, disco glitz and even B-movie soundtrack schtick is seamlessly melded and transformed into something unique and virtually unprecedented. Not only does it stand on the verge of new forms and hint at a thousand new permutations yet unheard, but Heartbeat also successfully crystallizes Sakamoto's many talents into a manageable, fully realized whole, with prominent cameos from David Sylvian, Youssou N'Dour, the Deee-lite set and many more. Check out "Heartbeat," "Tainai Kaiki II" (with Sylvian), the sample-delic Hendrix swirl of "Rap The World," the happy-jazz of "Triste," "Borom Gal," the irresistible "Sayonara" and the aptly titled "Cloud 9."

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