Ryuichi Sakamoto

Squelching sounds and mechanical beats on 'Riot in Lagos', a 1980 track from B-2 Unit, anticipated electro, and early hip-hop figures such as Afrika Bambaataa drew on it. By then he had co-founded Yellow Magic Orchestra with Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, and his debut, Thousand Knives, had blended electronics with traditional Japanese forms.

Raised in Tokyo on Bach and Debussy, whom he called "the door to all 20th century music", he studied ethnomusicology at university while experimenting with Moog, Buchla and ARP synthesisers.

Film became a second home. He acted in and scored Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, whose theme grew into the international hit 'Forbidden Colours', and The Last Emperor won him an Academy Award, the first for a composer from his homeland. Later came spare solo piano on BTTB, featuring 'Energy Flow', plus glitch and ambient work with Fennesz, before his death in 2023.