Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence

"... on the heels of the YMO's breakup in 1983, Sakamoto jumped right into the fray with this soundtrack to director Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Sakamoto also co-starred along with David Bowie). While not as sophisticated as the music he wrote for The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor (a collaboration with David Byrne), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence does sport one of Sakamoto's most fetching pieces, "ForbiddenColours" (given many treatments, including a fine David Sylvian vocal version), and a few successful Asian and Western classical hybrids".

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