I was strolling through Ikebukuro the other night, and stumbled across a night market selling CDs for the princely sum of 20 (!) yen each. Even more miraculously, I managed to come up with the CD single released last year to coincide with the Appleseed Ex Machina anime – the great thing is that the CD is a product of HASYMO, the group formed by one of my musical heroes, the effortlessly cool Ryuichi Sakamoto. Rather than the (interesting, but not really my thing) title track, RESCUE, I was bowled over by Rydeen 79/07 (see above for a live performance of the tune in Yokohama) – a rework of the 1979 Yellow Magic Orchestra original.

I’ve only once had the pleasure of witnessing Sakamoto live (with Carsten Nicolai/Alva Noto in London), and it would be something else to catch HASYMO here in Tokyo (or Yokohama, even). He’s quite an inspiration, that’s for sure.