I hope to record the perfect album, my masterpiece, before I die.
— Ryuichi Sakamoto
I want to be lazier. This is the luxurious dream I have: Doing nothing all day, just watching the clouds and DVDs.
The world is full of sounds. We just don't usually hear them as music.
Playing jazz in restaurants is too stereotypical.
The piano is the instrument I can play the most.
For me, change doesn't happen on a linear basis; it zig-zags back and forth.
In the old days, people shared music; they didn't care who made it. A song would be owned by a village, and anyone could sing it, change the words, whatever. That is how humans treated music until the late 19th century. Now, with the Internet, we are going back to having tribal attitudes towards music.
For making music for myself, I just need to be happy. I'm the producer, the director, and the listener.
I always think about music horizontally and vertically at the same time.
I'm trying to relax, but it's hard.
Looking back at my early career, I had a positive view of technology and its potential. It was a happy time, that's for sure.
It's a very intimate, closed universe, doing my own music. It's just me, basically. I have to inspire myself; I have to do everything by myself.
We musicians often get inspiration from films and books or photographs, not only by music.
Asian music influenced Debussy, who influenced me - it's all a huge circle.
Time is the main subject for any musicians, music writers, composers.
Music is like nuclear plants. In a way, it's true! Music is totally artificial. Still using some material from nature, a piano is assembled with wood and iron. Nuclear power uses material from nature, but it's been manipulated by humans, and it produces something unnatural.
It was a very rare moment in Japan after the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. Ordinary people went out to the streets to speak anti-nuclear sentiments.
I'm just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree.
I'm fascinated by the notion of a perpetual sound: a sound that won't dissipate over time. Essentially, the opposite of a piano, because the notes never fade. I suppose, in literary terms, it would be like a metaphor for eternity.
Japanese people can feel some attachment in what they are making, whether it is a car or a TV or a computer.
I know Brazilian music. I have worked with Brazilians many times.
I'm a terrible drummer; I almost cannot play the guitar nor sax nor trumpet.
Playing in London in 1979 was exciting: it was at the start of new wave, the transition period after punk, and there were a lot of radical, fashionable young people on the streets and in the venues.
Piano symbolizes interiority.
Our body is part of nature. Our creations, they're not natural. We build things that aren't natural, but our bodies, they're part of that system.
The first music I got really into was Bach.
I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, 'Nature tuned it.'
I've realised that if it is to remain relevant, contemporary music needs to change.
Each time I work on a film, I say to myself, 'This is it. This is the end.' Because it is so stressful, it's like torture.
I have a longing for violin or organ. Is it too simple to say those sustaining sounds symbolise immortality?
I was aware of that theme of mortality in my music since around 2009. The decaying and the disappearance of the piano sound is very much symbolic of life and mortality. It's not sad. I just meditate about it.
Although I don't understand Russian, I like the sound.
I easily fall asleep during a movie.
A young musician needs a powerful laptop and a good analogue synthesiser.
To record the perfect album. That is my dearest wish.
I used to know things intellectually, but now I feel them. Now I feel that my body is part of nature, so being sick is just a process of nature, and death is a process of nature, and being reborn through the soil is a process of nature.
Japan used to be an animistic society before Shinto imperialism was established. But most of us still have an animistic sense.
I honestly like any sound. Birds. I have a very broad space to accept or enjoy anything except quiet.
When I imagine some music in my mind, almost automatically, I imagine the piano keys.
My concept when making music is that there is no border between music and noise.
Without the knowledge of music, it would be very hard to write film music. There are so many films, and each one has a different historical background and everything.
My main interest in synthesizers when I was an older teenager was to escape from the spell of the 12-tone system or, in a more broad sense, the spell of the European modern-music system. That led me to explore towards electronic music and ethnic music.
I have been a long time fan of Jean-Luc Godard. It's my dream to work with him.
I wanted to hear sounds of everyday objects - even musical instruments - as things.
Ever since I was 18 or 19, I've wanted to question the sound, tones, and scale associated with the piano as an instrument symbolic of modern European music.
I don't get so much inspiration from other musicians. Especially alive musicians. Late musicians are good - Bach, Beethoven - yes, good.
I was working with the computer at university and playing jazz in the daytime, buying west-coast psychedelic and early Kraftwerk records in the afternoon, and playing folk at night. I was quite busy!
Time in our universe is always one way: no going back, no reverse. In music, you can reverse it!
Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'
I'm very shy about seeing my own face on the screen.
