I started this one a week or so ago when the mornings were pretty frosty here in Scotland, with days where the bright winter sun leaves long shadows and doesn’t really rise to high in the horizon, only to disappear and leave the city landscapes of Glasgow in darkness from around four in the afternoon onwards. Now it’s just sort of warmer and a bit rainy as I pick this entry up again. If anything I just haven’t really been spending the time on a computer to write these things. They just happen when they happen.
As mentioned, this winter sun we’ve had on certain days leaves the days frosty and brisk and making indoor activities more of an attractive proposition. Recently while drinking coffee one morning looking out the front bay window, the 1982 track “Bamboo Houses” drifted into my head with it’s glassy and icy percussive synth work — a track that was one of numerous collaborations between David Sylvian (who recently had left his band Japan that same year) and Japanese musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, who unfortunately passed away in the spring of 2023.
Japan broke up in 1982 after a personal split in the band, which I won’t go into here. Sylvian then teamed up with Sakamoto, whom he had met in Japan while touring with, um, Japan I think. Probably the most well-known track from the start of these collaborations was the track “Forbidden Colours” (see clip below) — which actually came out a year later in 1983 — that was the feature track in the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (also from 1983, see trailer below) by the Japanese director Nagisa Ōshima and is a film about a Japanese POW camp in Japanese-occupied Java during World War 2, starring a number of acting talents, including David Bowie as one of the POWs, the already-mentioned Ryuchi Sakamoto as one of the Japanese military running the camp and Scottish-Italian actor Tom Conti as the titular Mr. Lawrence.
Any recap of this film would probably better suited for the Film Klub section of this site, but in reality I haven’t seen the film for a good fifteen years so a possible re-watch might be in the cards soon as I’d need a serious refresher on the film to write anything about it anyway.
Where “Forbidden Colours” is very lush and sentimental, “Bamboo Houses” in its own way carries over the same feeling but into something more rhythmic and spritely, and with the synthesizer sound design leaning towards emulations of instruments that would be associated with “Asian” traditional instrumentation. Sylvian’s brother Steven Jansen provides some solid and syncopated drums on this one, opting for a very dry and tight tone — at odds with the lush, gated reverb drum sounds that were starting to emerge around this time period.
If anything for me this track continues on with some of the stylistic themes of the final studio album by Japan, Tin Drum, although perhaps I say that with hestition as to not overshadow Sakamoto’s contribution, but I think both artists had some mutual influence on each other’s music before these collaborations started coming about starting about in 1982. Included below is the track “Still Life In Mobile Homes” from the Tin Drum album.
So a rather short entry here, as overall I’m more feeling the mood of this one lately rather than deep insight on this track, for as said this time of year I do feel the thick of winter, as I had waxed on about a year ago today for another track I posted here, and that being “Dark River” by Coil.
Unfortunately there’s not a retailer online that I’d support that stocks any sort of digital download of this track, so I’ve reluctantly put in the Spotify link before for those that still use that platform.