Thousand Knives

Overview

This album features performances by guitarist Kazumi Watanabe (two songs from this album were included in the Tokyo Joe compilation) and Yellow Magic Orchestra members (the production techniques that Sakamoto learned while making this album would be later used in YMO recordings). The title track begins with a vocoded Sakamoto reading a poem written during Mao Zedong's visit to a well in the Jinggang Mountains in 1965; the song is performed in a reggae hymn style, inspired by Herbie Hancock's Speak Like a Child album; the song was later performed by YMO in their shows from 1978 to 1980 and was re-recorded for the BGM album. This version was one of the earliest uses of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, for YMO's live performance of "1000 Knives" in 1980 and their BGM album release in 1981.

Sakamoto performed a classical trio version during live shows for the 1996 album and recorded a piano duo version for the /05 album. "Plastic Bamboo" was performed in the earlier YMO shows, however, it was never re-recorded, and the only YMO recording of it is on the live album Live At Kinokuni-ya Hall 1978. "The End of Asia" has the same melody as Haruomi Hosono's "Worry Beads" from Paraiso (though, Sakamoto has claimed that he didn't do it on purpose) and the coda uses the melody of the Chinese national anthem "The East is Red"; the song was performed by YMO until 1980, and its first release as a YMO song was on the live album Public Pressure, a drastically different studio version was included on the X∞Multiplies album.

Track listing

All tracks written by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Personnel