(For context, read In the Aftermath first)

I first listened to Async two summers ago (as of writing this) in 2023. It wasn’t the first time I had heard anything by Sakamoto- but I think it was the first time I felt called to dive deeper into his works, and into who he was as a person. The first thing I saw upon researching him was that he had died in March that same year. 

I was becoming increasingly frustrated with music as a whole. Something I didn’t think could ever be possible. I was in southern Vermont, one of the few times I had ever ventured outside of my comfort zone, working at a music festival. Every morning, or at least every morning I was able to summon the strength to do so, I would walk out on the trails that surrounded the campus.

Having grown up in rural North Carolina, I felt this strange sense of familiarity, and dread, being in a place so lush and vibrant with nature, but so foreign, as well. It was my first summer without heat, without the sun boring into my skin and eyes and mind and acting as scapegoat for the delirious thoughts that ran through my head. Without that heat, I had nothing to blame. 

One morning I was particularly anxious to silence my mind- I wasn’t able to sleep that night, for one reason or another. I stared outside my window as repetitious rain pattered endlessly. It was pretty out of character for me. I always say there’s two things I’m good at no matter what- sleeping, and eating. But there I was, awake.

When the sun wasn’t up just yet, but the rain had stopped, I pulled myself out of bed for a walk on the trails. Everything was tinted with a faint shade of blue as I walked around the campus. New life seeped through the soil and the wildflowers and dripped from the large trees that marked my path. I wanted so badly to appreciate its beauty, but discomfort pinched at my nerves.

As I said, at the time music was more of a frustration than anything else. Maybe I still hadn’t gotten over abandoning my pursuit of a career in performance, maybe it was because the injury in my shoulders had been acting up, or maybe it was just something I could never understand. When I scrolled through my playlists and albums to provide some kind of noise drown everything out and support me through my walk, I got to an album a friend had shared with me, one I never did get around listening to. 

The album was Async. I began to play it, and entered the trail. My senses danced around to the music, finding some sort of parallels to the somber, rich music and the rainy woodland I trudged through. Stepping over damp logs and avoiding the slugs and snails and newts that moseyed out of my way, I began to fall in with the rhythm of the album. It was weird, how quickly my mind began to buzz with this feeling I couldn’t quite place, this fascination I couldn’t quite understand. I felt, somehow, I was being harmonized with, that I, in that moment, walking through the damp woods on a chilly Vermont morning, had somehow entered a mirrored version of reality that came to life through the music I was listening to.

Of course, eventually I left the woods, and the album was over. I spent the rest of the day working, and remembering all the things that I had shut out of my mind, all the pain that had seemingly evaporated from my joints, all the dissonance I felt amongst the “real” world. But I knew, I would go back to that other world, that sound world that so perfectly resonated with myself back then, I just had to wait until the next morning. 

I listened to that album a lot- and eventually began to go back to my typical listening as well. Slowly, my frustration with music began to lessen until even my practice sessions felt less like a battle, and more like an extension of that state of harmonization I had felt. There was something special about it. 

Of course, like I said, the first thing I found out about upon looking into the album was that Sakamoto had died only four months earlier. My heart did sour a bit, but I continued to dive into the meaning and unique circumstances that made the album what it was- Sakamoto’s cancer, the tsunami piano, thoughts of sound and noise and life and death- and the seeds for making thie website began being planted, then and there.

-CM