Shintaro Sakamoto — In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love

A conversation with Shintaro Sakamoto
— as appeared in the Patience issue of Whitelies Magazine

Interview Akio Kunisawa & Nami Kunisawa
Photography Jun Yasui Art Direction Kevin Pfaff

Enjoying sound, surrendering to it, and playing with it. For example, overturning the concept of staff notation and the sense of harmony. To play sound with something that is not a musical instrument. To make music out of complete silence. Or children innocently singing their favorite songs whenever they want. When enjoying sound, the creator does not give too much meaning to the music. The music itself enters the listener’s body and acts like an enzyme, training the senses, fostering imagination, bringing unknown colors into the field of vision. It brings up an image that is not there.

This is the impression I get from the music of Shintaro Sakamoto — the music is so clear that children can sing along, and so pop that it invites dancing, but at the same time, it has a certain unknowability to it. It seems to live in our memories but it doesn’t really exist. The more I listen to the music, the more attracted I am to my own (pleasant) sense of discomfort. I wantet to figure out where the inexplicability and essence of his music came from, and this time I had the opportunity to talk to him directly.

1 — In-Between

“I want the music I make to be a little unbalanced between notes, but at the same time, I want each one to stand out and fit together.”

“I think that an “In-Between” is one of the most advanced senses that we have when we enjoy things. In the garden of Kyoto, “Karesansui” expresses the universe with stones. It can also be seen in “Haiku”. I think it is interesting to see the high level of sensitivity that human beings display when they feel something looking at an empty space; a place where nothing is expressed.”

According to Sakamoto, “the sense of unbalanced in-between notes and tension” is exquisite. He pursues these things — “sound”, “timing of the sound”, “words” — and whether there is any sense of discomfort when he sings and plays with his physical senses, he goes through trial and error until he is satisfied.

As a concept, “In-Between” refers to “blank in images”, also encompassing “blank in time” and “blank in space”.

I would like to trace it in detail.



Haiku

Natsukusa-ya Tsuwamono-domo-ga Yume-no-ato.

The summer grass, ‘Tis all that’s left, Of Ancient warrior’s dream.

— Trans. Inazo Nitobe


The ephemeral dreams of the lord who hoped for the glory of his families. The courage and regret of the loyal retainers who fought and scattered to protect their lord.

In 17 syllables, the author portrays an act of history that rushes by and the feelings that well up in the heart with tears.

— This is a haiku poem written by Basho Matsuo, known as the Saint of Haiku, during his travels in the Tohoku region of Japan.

The light of summer is pouring down.

In the ruins of a mansion that has now lost its shape and become an uninhabited field. Only the bright green grass that covers the ground is lush and vibrant.

As he gazes at it, the rise and fall of ancient warriors seems to loom like some phantom.

— The scene spreads in front of our eyes — a timespan of hundreds of years.

As we sharpen our senses and swim in the sea of words, we are gathering condensed pearls of expression and culling certain sounds.

The sound is placed on the rhythm of 5-7-5.

17 syllables filtered through meditation, transcend thousands of words and depict seasons, scenes, and thoughts.

Then, in the unspoken blank — “In-Between” — the expansion of the image is surrendered and thus becomes complete.

— Haiku poems written hundreds of years ago still reflect vivid visions and emotional movements.



Ryoanji

In Kyoto there are several temples that are composed of “In-Between”.

Karesansui is a garden in which the thoughts of a vast scale converge on landscaped pebbles, rocks and moss.

Spring light, wind, rain, snow... the changing nature is captured, viewed with a mindset of impermanence.

This is the garden of Ryoanji Temple, built in the 15th century.

Entsuji Temple, built in the 17th century, was designed to capture the majestic beauty of nature and the four seasons like a canvas and blend them into the room — “borrowed landscape” techniques. In a space where dynamism and profundity coexist, your body and mind are enveloped in a clear tranquility.

Katsura Rikyu, which was built in the same period, has an outline made up of shoji screens that can be opened and closed, creating a mosaic-like combination of interior, garden, moon, sense of perspective, light and shadow.

— As in haiku, these are completed by “In-Between”.

The music that Sakamoto pursues and creates also has an structural framework consisting of “In-Between” that leaves the expansion of images to the listener.

2 — Mood

“A simple definition of “mood” is a change in the atmosphere when I play a single note. It can make you picture the scenery, or remind you of a situation or scene from the past. There is a situation that rises up just by playing a sound. It’s not just sonic — it also changes the atmosphere of the place. I think of the lyrics as part of the mood. When sound and words come together, the atmosphere changes.”

Take a look back at the mood created by each of Sakamoto’s works.



1st Album: How To Live With A Phantom

Trailing guitar phrases like a metallic reverberation echo are flickers, like a reminiscence that belongs to no one. The deep rhythm of the congas echoes like a distant heartbeat behind Sakamoto’s modest voice.

The song is colored by a refreshing female chorus and light wind instruments. I thought it was going to be like a pop song of the past, however, what this nostalgia holds is not simple sentimentality.

It is the story of a man who sleeps under anesthesia on an operating table, and who has a bird’s eye view of this world through astral projection, seemingly able to stare at things like human thought processes, memories, impulses, and emptiness from the past to the present until all become bones.



2nd Album: Let’s Dance Raw

It’s a lithograph of an apocalyptic scene as depicted by an out-of-place song that seems to be playing in a local recreational facility where biological reactions have disappeared.

A ventriloquist’s puppet voice sings emotionlessly over a slow tempo like a slow-moving computer from another era.

But then, the tempo becomes smooth and speedy like the flow of blood. The guitar melody draws a streamlined shape and melts into it.

The steel guitar echoes throughout — like a signal from the brain.

The sounds of comical toys are scattered here and there.

It reminds me of a video arcade in an abandoned building that continues to operate even though there are no visitors.

Emptiness, relief, loss, amusement, helplessness, exuberance, infancy, decay, enthusiasm, indifference.

“I think it is normal for people to have two or more conflicting emotions at the same time, in their daily lives. I also think it is possible to express these contradictory states through music itself, or through simple combinations of sound and words. That’s what I’m aiming for.”



3rd Album: Love if Possible

The color of the rhythm is accentuated by the blank space created by inserting a pause in the melody.

Like a statue of a bodhisattva with an archaic smile in the serene space of Koryuji Temple, or a female mask worn by a Noh actor, the music looks at the world with a more neutral expression and captures it. It permeates the physical body with a variety of speeds and resonant rhythms.

Since long ago, people have danced to music. The rain falls. The sun shines. The wind blows. The trees rustle. Hunting animals. Eating foods. Mourning the dead.

The ongoing lives of human beings are filled with sounds.

If you put an orderly rhythm to it, music is born.

Music creates a “situation”.

It gives a new meaning to time. It gives power to people.

Music connects life and death. It connects nature and people. It connects humans to humans.

A spirit festival in Papua New Guinea, where men and women of all ages dance around a fire.

In Japan, there is the Bon Festival dance to welcome the spirits of ancestors. Adults, children, the elderly, the living, and the dead all dance to the music.

They do as they please.

The song “Disco Is” on the album is one that evokes such memories in body and soul.

Numbers of dense moods emerge from Sakamotoʼs music are created by something itself that comes from within himself, not by a pre-packaged worldview or narrative.

Hear the process of his music creation.

“I take some fragments of a melody floating in my head, and then I make demo tapes by connecting a rhythm machine and instruments to a MTR and playing them. Demo tapes have been accumulating, at a certain point, they are going to become a song.”

“The sound comes first, and then I put the lyrics on it. I empty my head and try not to think about anything else. Let the words come out naturally.”

“I try to figure out what I’m singing about from the words that come out, and then lyrics are going to be ready. It’s like singing what I think about every day, using the words left by the process of elimination.”

“Due to their structure, sounds and words inevitably have different speeds. I try to match them and also care to match the tension of the words itself with my mood when I sing.”

“I try to make adjustments so that everything fits together without stress, then it reaches a sublimity. I believe that when this is done, the mood will be established.”

Shintaro Sakamoto also examines the effects of the mood.

“I make music with the idea of how it will make people feel when they listen to it. Rather than trying to convey a message with words, I try to think of how the sound and words will come across when combined.”

“I’m conscious of the fact that it’s like the same feeling one has when watching a film.”

3 — Crush: In the Mood for Love

Signs suggested by the mood.

A factor that is invisible to the eye, but definitely exists. As if to cover up the core, a feverish vapor envelops it. The countless spores that someone has released into the space, some will enter and germinate in anyone else.

Touching your skin, the temperature of the premonition. Being pushed a switch of activity in your mind — “Crush”.

“The records that I’m always pursuing are the music that I know and I’ve listened to before, but also never listened to. The whole time I’m doing this, I don’t know what it is or which way the vectors are going. It’s like drifting at the middle point of joy, anger, sadness and sorrow, with questions that remain unanswered.”

“I want to make music that is reminiscent of commercial songs with melodies and rhythms everyone can sing along to, but no one has ever listened to before. I believe that even if you don’t understand the meaning of a language, something can be conveyed through quality of voice, performance, and instruments. I listen to music in the same way. I am particular about conveying sound rather than words. It’s like a nursery rhyme, where the sound and the words become one, and you listen without thinking about the meaning.”

“I think the coolest music is the kind that doesn’t make the listener aware of what it is saying, but leaves some trace of meaning behind when the listener thinks about it later.”

“Music is completed by the listener, so I hope my music can be like a device that triggers this. Even if the lyrics don’t say anything inspiring... even if the song is only about a desk, for example, if its music can push a switch in the listener’s mind so they feel the emotion, I think that’s fine.”

Music fills the space with “mood” and “crush”, and evokes the movement of the listener’s heart — love, unidentifiable emotions, etc. and makes you see a view that doesn’t exist there. Swaying as the music beckons.

The musician John Cage, in the 1992 documentary film Écoute, he quotes the philosopher Immanuel Kant as saying: “There are two things that don’t have to mean anything: music and laughter. Don’t have to mean anything; that is, in order to give us very deep pleasure.”

He goes to a record store in search of music that he has never listened to before. As he rummages through the shelves, he is drawn as if by magnetic force and his hand stops. He pulls out a record. He stares at the cover, front and back.

Using the demo tape as a substitute, he gradually manifests the melody playing in his head. Polishing the sounds and words on the grindstone of the senses, he creates music that radiates a mood. In order to bring someone a crush one day.

It has been, it will be, it always has been, it always will be. Shintaro Sakamoto’s repeated days of music. He seems to stroll seriously while drifting aloof on the endless road of music.