Ryuichi Sakamoto - 左うでの夢

℗ 2015 Midi Inc. © 1981 By Yano Music Publ. Co. Ltd.

DSD Remastered.

Housed in a twin pocket gatefold card sleeve. Includes a booklet.

Recorded at Studio 'A', Tokyo, July - August 1981. The album is titled "Left Handed Dream" in English.

All tracks on Disc 2 are alternate mixes (including the instrumentals).

The Japanese liner notes by Susumu Kunisaki (Editor of Sound & Recording Magazine) translate as follows:
[i]"Left Handed Dream" is Ryuichi Sakamoto's third solo album, it was released on October 5, 1981. That year, with "BGM" released in March, and "Technodelic" in November, two highly regarded masterpieces by YMO, it was a special year in Sakamoto's long career, we can say that. Created in 1978, almost at the same time as YMO started out, his 1st solo album "Thousand Knives" has a strong correlation with that, but in 1980, after YMO had exploded, the 2nd solo album "B-2 UNIT" has a completely different sound. These last two solo albums were both positive and negative for YMO. Compared to them, "Left Handed Dream", sandwiched between YMO's two masterpieces, takes a different approach. According to Sakamoto, it was a work related to "B-2 UNIT" rather than to "Thousand Knives" which is close to YMO.
'I do not think "B-2UNIT" is related to "Thousand Knives". They're not linked. So, although "B-2 UNIT" and "Left Handed Dream" are quite different in sound, they do have a paradoxical relationship...... In "B2-UNIT" I think the energy is rather on the decrease. On the contrary, in "Left Handed Dream" I tried to make music with an upward energy. If the music had energy, the last time I tried to make it as close to 0 (zero) as possible so that it would no longer be music, but this time I wanted to increase the energy'.
(Hereafter, all of Sakamoto's remarks are quoted from the interview in the first issue of Sound & Recording Magazine 1981)
Although "B-2 UNIT" contains a catchy song called "Riot in Lagos" also featured in YMO's live performances, overall it was a work with a strong tendency to the avant-garde. As a reaction to that, I think he switched to pop in this work. Of course, the pop element was originally part of Sakamoto. It's an element he was aware of when he was a student, working on music for free theaters, and noticing that the audience was very happy to accept it.
'I cannot hide the fact that I have a pop side. I used to think I didn't like it, but nowadays I don't think so, rather it's there for certain, so I just put it out'.
Robin Scott was called up from London to further emphasize and expand that pop side. In 1979, he released a single called "ポップ・ミューヂック" under the name "M" (the original title was "Pop Muzik", so the Japanese title was conscious of that), it was a big hit all over the world. He has made the so-called techno-pop style widely known to the general public, for example basing it on synths with resonance and sequence parts with delay. Sakamoto valued "Pop Music" highly as a very good single, and Robin also liked Sakamoto's "B-2 UNIT", so initially this work started out as involving two people. However, as the recording progressed, the differences in their approach became clear and, in the end, Sakamoto's solo album "Left Handed Dream" and 4 songs under the name of RIUICHI SAKAMOTO & ROBIN SCOTT resulted. The mini-album "The Arrangement" was released a year after "Left Handed Dream".
Perhaps more than the difference in approach, Robin's seldom playing any musical instrument was also the reason why at some point he was no longer co-producer. This is because the recording of "Left Handed Dream" was an improvisational process. The recording was done at Alpha A Studio in Shibaura, Tokyo, for almost a month from July 16th to August 18th, 1981. The songs were not prepared in advance, but were the result of stacking various musical instrument parts on the spot.
'For example, if you only have an idea for a song, and on that basis record the bass riff, the guitar riff, etc., if there is any element that seems to be interesting, I put it in more and more. I put in what I hear is inspired, not only in my performance, but also from the artist who plays for me. Because I want to gather good things that are based more on ideas than on calculations, and want to move away from calculated music'.
Sakamoto played many instruments such as drums, bass, and marimba in addition to the keyboard, and as guest musicians his buddies Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono, as well as guitarist Adrian Belew who had played so effectively with Talking Heads, and even Robin Thompson (2), who played sax under Karlheinz Stockhausen, and then studied traditional Japanese music in Japan, and Kiyohiko Semba, the father of Japanese music Semba style. Quality people were gathered. Adrian's animal guitar, Robin Thompson's sho and hichiriki, and Kiyohiko Senba's small and large drums are far removed from Western music and were well-suited to realizing Sakamoto's intention to "get away from calculated music". As a result, the sound they constructed became the dominant sound on "Left Handed Dream".

As mentioned at the beginning, YMO's "BGM" was created just before this album, and it is well known that for this recording 3M's D.M.S. was used. D.M.S. is the earliest digital multi-track recorder, introduced in Japan for the first time by Alpha A Studio. It was then transferred to Onkio Haus, where many engineers testified that it was a really good recorder. However, in YMO Hosono disliked its cold texture, and for the next album "Technodelic", except for the track "Taiso", the analog multi-track recorder returned again. However, Sakamoto highly valued D.M.S.
'The S / N (note translator: the Signal/Noise ratio) is better and clearer than with analog. When there is no sound, speaking of noise, the amplifier, effector, and echo are its largest sources, but there is no noise coming from the tape, so when it rises or falls, it's totally different'.
Mitsuo Koike, who was an engineer at Alfa Records at the time, recalls that the rise of the sound was amazing.
'I wasn't used to digital, so I was afraid that the sound would pop up suddenly. It's not like the analog "coming up, coming up"'.
At Alpha A Studio, D.M.S.'s 32tr multi-track recorder and 4tr master recorder were introduced as a set. It looks like a piece of furniture, but it seems that the combined price of these two units was about 70 million yen. I'm writing "set with master recorder" but, according to Mr. Koike, in "Left Handed Dream", the mix was not done on the master recorder, but dropped on the empty track of the multi-track recorder. Sakamoto has been actively involved in mixing work for a long time, but when he produced the previous album "B-2 UNIT", he seemed to have gained more experience by witnessing the work of top-notch engineers Steve Nye and Dennis Bovell in London. On this album, he was fully trying out the newly acquired techniques. However, since tape editing was not possible with D.M.S., for dub-like processing, the effect feed was cut off from the mixing console. Of course, mixing automation was still in the process of development, so the story is that Sakamoto and Koike, as well as assistant Yoshifumi Iio, were doing all the work by hand.
The mixing was finished at the pace of one song or one and a half songs per day, and when all the songs were finished, the stereo sound and control signal were recorded on the 4tr master recorder. The result is the master tape of "Left Handed Dream". Although DA conversion and AD conversion are performed on the way and processing was done in the analog domain, it is a master that was completed using only the digital recorder. At the time, Sakamoto also recognized that it was a "fully digital work".
'If you use an analog master recorder, it's already analog, and the S / N is getting worse. So, this time it's digital to digital, and that kind of noise doesn't get put on, so it just moves to the lacquer on the LP. Therefore, the sound quality when it becomes a record is digital itself. You may not understand that, but the sound is clear'.
1981, when "Left Handed Dream" was released, was the year before the production of CDs began. Therefore, at the time of release, it was not possible to deliver the album to listeners via digital media, and the completed master proceeded to a process called cutting to produce an analog record. The cutting work was done at JVC Cutting Center Aoyama. The 3M master recorder component was taken out of Alpha A Studio and delivered by car, the digital master was played back at a level suitable for making a record, and the story is that the lacquer cut was then created after applying EQ, etc.
Well, unfortunately, this remastered version has not been made from that digital master. At present, there are almost no individuals in the world that are able to work with both D.M.S. multi-track recorders and master recorders. Therefore, remastering work was performed based on the EQ-processed analog tape that was made as a backup when cutting at JVC Cutting Center Aoyama.
'This analog tape was made by cutting engineer Hiroshi Yuasa, who checked all the songs and made it when cutting the actual performance, or it was made after the actual production. I think it was', said Mr. Koike, who explained the origin of the tape. Naturally, the EQ processing was done according to the characteristics of an analog record, and since the level is not so much present in the inner circumference of the record, the A side and B side's levels were each lowered in the last track. Mr. Seigen Ono, who was in charge of the remaster, carefully corrected it and revived the "clear" sound that Sakamoto called for.
While preparing for the remastering, Ono discovered another reel marked "MO" that was stored with the EQ-processed analog tape. When it was played, it turned out to be a version without Sakamoto's vocals.
'The reel also contained a version without vocals and songs that originally did not contain vocals. The number of songs is the same as on the released album, but besides the presence or absence of vocals, before and after the song it was longer and there was a slight difference'.
According to Mr. Koike, "MO" is an American studio term, "Music Minus One"... i.e. karaoke. Unlike today, where parts can be recalled as a matter of course, it was an era when it was not possible to create a version without vocals later, so it was always created when mixing. And this "MO" version was made by Alpha A Studio and has no EQ for cutting. It was a "straight transfer" from the master mix in recent mastering terms.
If you listen to the "MO" version on disc2, you can certainly hear the details of the orchestration more easily than on the vocal version, and you can hear how the various ingredients are combined. At the same time, certainly the absence of vocals makes me feel lonely. With the initial release of "Left Handed Dream", there were pros and cons to the fact it featured full vocals unlike the solo albums so far, and Sakamoto himself was not always satisfied with the results.
'I sang for the first time on 'B-2 UNIT', and after that there was 'Music Plans' on 'BGM' and a single 'Front Line', my singing is rubbish to put it bluntly, I'm singing so hard even though I'm not good at it, but it seems I'm improving little by little (laughs). I think the singing is better than before'.
At the time of its release, this author was also reluctant to sing these songs, and to be honest, I even wished there was a version without the vocals. However, when I listened to this "MO" version that fulfilled the wish of 30 years ago, there was no fuss about anything missing. This album, which was made with the aim of creating pop music, is a reminder that Sakamoto's vocals only work when they come to the fore. While enjoying disc2 like crazy, it seems that disc1 will be the one to really listen to.[/i]