Kraftwerk pay tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto with cover
During a recent festival appearance, German electronic pioneers Kraftwek paid tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto with a cover of one of his classic songs.
Kraftwerk played a headline slot last night at Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba Ski Resort, Japan, rounding out a string of festival appearances. The electronic outfit played at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland earlier this month. Their show at Fuji Rock marks their final festival slot of the summer.
Amidst a setlist of electronic classics like ‘The Model’ and ‘Tour de France’, they took a moment to pay tribute to Sakamoto, who passed away in the spring of last year, with a rendition of ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’.
The cover pairs powerful piano with ethereal synths in a tribute to the late composer. Sakamoto first composed the track for Nagisa Ōshima’s film of the same name and released it as a single back in 1983. Sakamoto also starred in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, alongside art rock aficionado David Bowie.
This was one of Sakamoto’s earliest ventures into the world of soundtracking, an area in which he quickly made a name for himself. Over the course of his career, he composed music for a range of films, television shows and video games ranging from The Last Emperor to The Revenant. He took home an Academy Award for the former.
The Japanese composer was also known for his contributions to electronic outfit Yellow Magic Orchestra, who forged exciting new forms of electronic music in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Sakamoto passed away from cancer on March 28th last year at 71. A number of artists paid tribute to the composer at the time of his death, including trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack, former The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr and fellow electronic giant Jean-Michel Jarre.
Last autumn, Sakamoto’s son, Neo Sora, unveiled a film which documented his father’s final concert. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus premiered at the Venice Film Festival last September.
Far Out spoke with Neo Sara earlier this year about the experience of directing the film, who shared, “I was working on a separate film at the time. I was quite busy preparing for that, but then they asked me to do this, and obviously, you don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think his health was heavily deteriorating, so I think there was a possibility that it would be the final performance he would ever do. So, I said, of course, I’ll do anything. My goal and intention throughout was just to do as good as I could.”
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