Ryuichi Sakamoto – Async (2017)

By Rafi Mercer

In the opening moments of Async, the sound is hesitant, fractured. A piano note rings, irregular, as though struck in an empty room where the instrument itself is out of breath. Then come textures: wind, hum, fragments of melody that seem both familiar and broken. From the first seconds, you understand that this is not music of polish or completion. It is music of fragility, of mortality, of listening to the world as it unravels.

Released in 2017, Async was Ryuichi Sakamoto’s first album after surviving throat cancer. It carries that weight unmistakably. The record is not a triumphant return, nor a sentimental reflection. It is something far more profound: an artist confronting impermanence, translating fragility into sound. The title itself suggests not synchronised, not aligned, not complete. It is music out of step, deliberately and necessarily so.

Sakamoto had long been a shape-shifter — from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s pioneering electronic pop, to the lush film scores that made him globally recognised, to the minimalist piano works that gave him intimacy. But Async feels different. It is not concerned with genre at all. It is an assemblage of fragments, field recordings, textures, voices. At times it feels like a diary, at others like an installation. Its unity lies not in style but in presence: the sound of one artist listening to the world, and inviting us to do the same.

Tracks such as Andata begin with slow piano figures, irregular in rhythm, the sustain pedal holding notes into blur. The imperfections — the slight dissonances, the uneven timing — are the point. This is not virtuosity but vulnerability. Later, in pieces like Disintegration, the sound itself begins to corrode, electronic tones breaking apart into distortion. Elsewhere, voices emerge: readings of Tarkovsky, fragments of poetry, the murmur of languages. These are not narrative devices. They are reminders that music and life are porous, that sound leaks in from the world around us.

The use of field recordings is central. Rain, footsteps, the hum of machinery — these seep into the record’s fabric, blurring the line between composition and environment. Sakamoto’s interest in sound as material rather than ornament is long-standing, but here it becomes essential. He is not only writing notes but listening to spaces: reverberant rooms, decaying instruments, the atmosphere itself.

One of the album’s most haunting moments is Solari, built on an organ tone that seems to stretch endlessly, shifting only in the faintest increments. The sound is monumental, almost ecclesiastical, yet frayed at the edges, as though the building that houses it is falling apart. In Life, Life, a voice recites poetry over sparse piano, the human presence at once grounding and ghostly. Each track feels like a meditation, not on permanence, but on its absence.

Async also redefines what an album can be. It is not a sequence of songs but a collection of studies, each fragment contributing to a larger portrait. Some pieces are only a minute long, others stretch further, but all carry the same quality: incompleteness, openness. To listen is to move through rooms, each lit differently, some filled with sound, others nearly empty.

The cultural context of Async cannot be ignored. Coming after Sakamoto’s illness, it has often been read as his confrontation with mortality. Yet it is not bleak. There is melancholy, yes, but also light. The music does not despair; it accepts. It acknowledges imperfection, disintegration, misalignment — and finds beauty in them. The album’s patience, its willingness to leave space, its refusal of resolution, all suggest not defeat but grace.

To play Async is to experience time differently. It slows, stretches, stutters. The irregularities keep you alert, but the textures invite stillness. It is not background music. It is atmosphere with gravity, sound that alters the mood of the room. The title’s suggestion — asynchronous — becomes experience. Life rarely runs smoothly, in perfect synchrony. This album reminds us that disjunction can itself be meaningful.

On vinyl, the imperfections feel magnified. The surface noise, the slight warping of tone, the physical act of handling fragile media — all resonate with the album’s themes. This is not music for digital clarity. It is music for imperfection, for analogue warmth, for the recognition that nothing is ever pristine.

The influence of Async has already spread, inspiring younger composers and sound artists to embrace incompleteness, to use silence and texture as material. But its lasting power will not be in influence alone. It lies in its humanity. Sakamoto, confronting his own mortality, made a record that accepts impermanence not as flaw but as fact.

Listening now, after his passing in 2023, the album feels even more like a farewell. Not a grand statement, but a series of fragments, left deliberately incomplete. It is as if he was showing us how to listen to the world when the music stops: patiently, openly, with reverence for the ordinary.

Rafi Mercer writes about the spaces where music matters. For more stories from Tracks & Tales, subscribe, or click here to read more.