Documentary film from French director Elizabeth Lennard, showcasing 1984 interviews with Sakamoto mixed with Tokyo street life imagery and studio segments during the recording of 音楽図鑑 (aka Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia).
Features the Sakamoto and/or YMO songs "Behind the Mask", "マ・メール・ロワ (Ma Mère l'Oye)", "M.A.Y. in the Backyard", "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", "Tong Poo", and "Self Portrait".
Very cool, atmospheric documentary with philosophical musings on the state of music in 1984, drawing inspiration from French composer Claude Debussy, and how Sakamoto approached film scoring for Nagisa Ōshima's 1983 war drama "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence". Musical gear enthusiasts will be fascinated by the scenes with Sakamoto demonstrating how he works with the Fairlight CMI keyboard and its audio sample banks stored on large 8-inch floppy disks.
Most of the talking is in Japanese, with brief sections of French and English. Large, white English subtitles are present throughout. Picture quality is nice in spite of the numerous film scratches from the well-worn print.
This is the original analog-only release with no barcode and no chapter encoding. Features a "Pony Videodisc Laser" logo at the top of the obi strip, compared to the "Pony Canyon LD" logo found on the 1993 digital audio reissue [PCLA-00014].
Includes mail-in questionnaire postcard and a single-sided insert sheet with song list and liner notes. |