Having finished a series of collaborative works with Alva Noto (the final piece being “Summvs” on Raster-Noton, 2011), Japanese master Ryuichi Sakamoto has returned to his relationship with the tireless, always positive American experimenter Christopher Willits. “Ocean Fire”, their first joint album, arrived at the end of 2007 on the Japanese label Commmons (a short time later it came out all over the world via 12k). Now the two are back, on Ghostly, with “Ancient Future”, an entirely instrumental album, constructed from the piano pieces that Sakamoto got to Willits shortly after having finished that first collaboration.
According to the label, the album as a whole operates as a cycle of six calm movements “about the creation, acceptance and completion of one's fate and all of life's experiences, following a trajectory through inner conflict, resolution and, ultimately, acceptance”. Despite having sought conceptual coherence, they warn that the music is not free of tensions between opposites and contradictions, “perhaps reflecting the way that we are all the sum of our experiences, both light and dark, positive and negative”. For the moment, the first advance, "Completion", falls on the side of light.
“Ancient Future” will be available from the 30th July.
