Ryuichi Sakamoto returns with a new studio album after six years of silence, during which time the legendary composer has been involved in the fight against this damn cancer that he has suffered since 2014. The return of the former Yellow Magic Orchestra is confirmed in ‘12’, an extremely delicate and minimalist work into which the search for beauty becomes is an undertaking as prevailing as it is reflective, as well as (and above all) extremely patient in the nature and development of the compositions.
Some qualities that the Japanese kindly suggest gently in twelve new creations, materialized from sketches by Sakamoto himself in that period of fight against the disease. A collection named with dates (from “20210310” a “20220307”) and perpetrated through the latent pulse in very specific keys, which grant equal importance (if not more) to silences than to those notes that draw or insinuate emotions in the air. Fragments of very different durations that have their main (if not the only) component in the synthesizer or the piano, capable of motivating both hope and pain, both wearing almost phantasmagorical alterations through the author’s current line.
‘12’ is a sound diary converted into an album between 2021 and 2022 (and completed in its physical version with illustrations by Lee Ufan), in which the Asian puts organic and highly pure passages to music. On his return to the scene, Sakamoto masterfully handles spaces, muteness and times, creating textures close to ambient from perfectly chosen and worked wickers. What otherwise could have been an inert sequence is, in the inspired hands of the Asian, the moving triumph of subtlety based on twelve evocative and fragile postcards, impeccable in appearance and decked out with the usual class.