Ryuichi Sakamoto

Music has become something different from the past, when it was one hundred per cent live. Throughout the twentieth century, it was…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

To record the perfect album. That is my dearest wish.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I was aware of that theme of mortality in my music since around 2009. The decaying and the disappearance of the piano…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I'm lucky that I have people listening to my music, waiting to see me in North America.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I had never really liked the music by Gabriel Faure, but just by chance, listening to some pieces by him, I got…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I always think about music horizontally and vertically at the same time.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I'm not the ambassador of Japan or Japanese culture.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

You're changing every day, right? Your curiosities and ambitions change, your ear changes, the music you like changes - and the music…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I honestly like any sound. Birds. I have a very broad space to accept or enjoy anything except quiet.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

Music is like nuclear plants. In a way, it's true! Music is totally artificial. Still using some material from nature, a piano…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

For me, Debussy is the door to all 20th-century music.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I have a longing for violin or organ. Is it too simple to say those sustaining sounds symbolise immortality?

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

An artist's initial broad stroke is always most impactful, and obsessively adding layer upon layer of paint to fill in details often…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I'm always looking out for interesting people.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

Somehow, I see music as a garden which has a lot of different styles: contemporary, classic, ethnic, Japanese, rock & roll, and…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

Time in our universe is always one way: no going back, no reverse. In music, you can reverse it!

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

Water is not free anymore. Our resources were free at one time, but now they are not. Everything is getting controlled by…

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

The key concept is to open your ears. Music can be here and there, anywhere surrounding you.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I easily fall asleep during a movie.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

I've worked with the same Prophet 5 Synthesizer by Sequential Circuit synthesiser for 40 years.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto

Time is the main subject for any musicians, music writers, composers.

— Ryuichi Sakamoto