The composer spoke of his encounter with Arca during an interview with Gilles Peterson on Worldwide FM.
In a recent radio interview featuring Peterson in conversation with Sakamoto, the Japanese composer recalls the time he first met Venezuelan producer and former Crack Magazine cover star Arca.
He says, “I saw [and] met him at one of the Björk concerts in New York and really liked his voice and his synth. Since then I’ve been listening to Arca.” He also mentions that he’s played Arca’s material on his radio show, Radio Sakamoto. The pair have also gone on to work together, with Arca contributing a remix of the track async to Sakamoto’s 2017 LP Async Remodels.
Elsewhere in the interview, the pair’s topics of conversation range from the Sakamoto documentary Coda, to the musician’s experiences in New York following 9/11. Sakamoto also discusses capturing underwater sounds in Greenland, describing recordings from the excursion as “the purest sound I ever heard”. These field recordings later formed the basis for the track Glacier from 2009’s Playing the Piano.
Furthermore, Sakamoto reveals that the first track he ever bought was The Rolling Stones’ Tell Me, purchased at the age of 10. Fittingly, Peterson’s first buy was Firecracker by Yellow Magic Orchestra.
Listen to the full interview below. Read the Crack Magazine feature: Ryuichi Sakamoto walks us through Async Remodels track by track.
