ALBUM COVER – Ryuichi Sakamoto – Travesía

TRAVESÍA Music By Ryuichi Sakamoto

TRAVESÍA, an album of music by the late composer RYUICHI SAKAMOTO curated by award-winning filmmaker ALEJANDRO G. IÑÁRRITU. Featuring selections from Sakamoto’s prolific catalogue handpicked by Iñárritu, who famously collaborated with the composer on his Oscar-winning film The Revenant. Originally conceived as a surprise project celebrating Sakamoto’s 70^thbirthday, the album is the result of nearly two years of planning and six months of meticulous curation by Iñárritu. Now arriving in the wake of the iconic musician’s passing, Travesía, meaning “journey” in Spanish, takes listeners on a one-of-a-kind trip through the last four decades of Sakamoto’s musicmaking career, showcasing his immeasurable influence and lasting legacy.

Of the project, ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU says:

When Jean Christophe Chamboredon from Milan Records, and Norika Sora, Ryuichi’s manager, invited me to this project, my first instinct was to resist. Sakamoto’s musical universe is so vast that the responsibility to honor him by choosing only 20 stars from his complex galaxy would be practically impossible. But after finding out that they were planning this as a surprise present for him, I had no other choice but to accept the challenge.

Even now, I keep discovering new elements in Ryuichi’s pieces that I’ve listened to for decades. The perception of his music becomes a mutable cloud, which is always and never the same.

Millenary musical tradition breathing through his relentless innovation. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s music will be fully alive even when the rest of us are gone.

I hope that, by listening to this selection, you’ll be able to experience that eternal emotional waterfall.

Given full access to Sakamoto’s extensive catalogue of solo releases, collaborations, scores and live performances, Iñárritu enlisted the help of collaborators Martin Hernandez and Martin Delgado for the album’s curation process. Over the course of the next six months, the trio listened to more than a thousand pieces of music from Sakamoto, eventually focusing on the composer’s lesser-known solo tracks to appeal to both existing fans as well as a new generation of listeners. Opening with “Thousand Knives,” the title track of Sakamoto’s 1978 debut album, and eventually covering releases as recent as his 2017 full-length async, the compilation offers a truly unique and intimate retrospective of the composer’s career from his peer, collaborator, and friend.

TRAVESÍA

ALBUM TRACKLISTING –