Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tin Drum – Kagami

The Roundhouse
London
15 January 2024

On 17 January, it would have been Ryuichi Sakamoto’s seventy-second birthday and his passing, along with Yukihiro Takahashi’s last year, meant that Japan had lost two of its greatest musical spirits of the last forty-plus years.

I was lucky to see Sakamoto play with the Yellow Magic Orchestra (a band he formed with Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono back in the late ’70s) in the early 1980s and had followed his career since, especially his work with David Sylvian. His passing was a sad moment as his fans thought we would obviously never witness him perform again except on videos and film.

That is until it was revealed that the composer had been working on a virtual reality experience with MR pioneers Tin Drum (a name maybe taken from an album by Japan?) which premiered in both Manchester and New York and had stunning reviews. Now it has a month-long residency at The Roundhouse in London to what appears to be sell-out performances (the one I attended was certainly sold out with people trying to get tickets).

I admit now that I had never done a VR experience before, so had no idea what to really expect. Only ninety people at a time are allowed in to the Roundhouse’s vast space to allow movement as the performance is happening. We were told that you couldn’t take photos through your VR goggles / headsets as it interfere with the signal coming through, so any visual images were already off the table.

First of all though, we are lead up to a space which has large photos of Sakamoto and quotes from the man on the floor about his philosophy on all of this. Ambient music created by him plays in the background and selections from the film Coda are played on a large screen at the back. Eventually, the doors open and we take a seat and are each given a headset and explained how it works; the staff at The Roundhouse were very helpful and patient with people who were having some minor difficulties.

Eventually, the lights dim and the image of Sakamoto sitting at his piano emerges from the gloom and there is an audible gasp from some. He begins to play “Before Long” and as the tune in all its beauty washes over the audience, you already know things are going to get a little emotional. When the piece is finished, people are not sure whether to applaud or not; it’s a strange thing seeing someone perform who is not really there, like you are watching a ghost, so at first the audience don’t know how to interact.

It is during “Aoneko No Torso” that people begin to stand and move around. During the performances there are visual effects that surround you, such as snowflakes slowly drifting down and falling leaves that are caught on a slight breeze. Sometimes branches on a tree stretch out and you are taken into this very Japanese relaxing ambient worldscap,e like you are walking around a Makoto Shinkai movie.

As for Sakamoto himself, you can move up close to him, watch his fingers on the piano and even see the movement of his hair and his foot upon the pedals, and it feels you could almost reach out and touch him. When he begins to play “Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence” there is a cheer and I get goosebumps as the first few notes ring out in the auditorium. As it plays, images of the cosmos spiral around; and if you look down at your feet, you can see that you are floating above the Earth, which is truly a strange experience.

During the performance, Sakamoto talks about a couple of the tracks before he plays them. This adds an extra dimension to the performance as it all suddenly feels somehow more real, but also otherworldly. During some piece,s videos are shown that look like they were taken around Tokyo and give an additional atmosphere to it all.

I personally found the whole thing a moving experience; the music was beautiful and melancholic, and was everything that was magical about Sakamoto’s songwriting craft. The feeling it leaves you is a sense of loss and of time passing, and how we all try to recapture certain moments that are lost in the aether forever. Kagami is emotional and thought-provoking and gives you an appreciation of simply being here and now, and how we should embrace that.

What this does is give Sakamoto’s music another and different way of living on forever and I hope that people who were not aware of his work before go to see Kagami and want to discover more about the man and the wonderful rich legacy he has left us. I hope more cities, including his hometown, get to experience this.

-Gary Parsons-