 |
| commmons | |
|---|---|
| Parent company | Avex Group |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder | Ryuichi Sakamoto, Max Matsuura |
| Status | Active |
| Distributor(s) | Rhythm Zone (via Avex Marketing) |
| Genre | J-pop, electropop, new-age |
| Country of origin | Japan |
| Location | Aoyama, Tokyo |
| Official website | http://www.commmons.com/index.html |
commmons is a Japanese record label founded by Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. Avex Group, Japan's biggest independent record label, is its official parent company.
Commmons was founded in 2006 by Sakamoto with the help of Avex and its founder and president, Max Matsuura. The word commmons has three M's because the third 'M' stands for music. On the initiative's "About" page, the label is described as a project that "aims to find new possibilities for music, while making meaningful contribution to culture and society." [1]
It is distributed by Rhythm Zone, Avex's urban and R&B record label, and uses the catalog code "RZCM-4****". It also serves as a distributing label for Thrill Jockey and Raster-Noton in Japan.
Commmons' official slogan is Think Global, Act Local.
Ryuichi Sakamoto was a Japanese composer, pianist, record producer, and actor who pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto influenced and pioneered a number of electronic music genres.
Christian Fennesz is an Austrian producer and guitarist active in electronic music since the 1990s, often credited mononymously as Fennesz. His work utilizes guitar and laptop computers to blend melody with treated samples and glitch production. He lives and works in Vienna, and currently records on the UK label Touch.
Yellow Magic Orchestra was a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music. They were pioneers in their use of synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, drum machines, computers, and digital recording technology, and effectively anticipated the "electropop boom" of the 1980s. They are credited with playing a key role in the development of several electronic genres, including synthpop, J-pop, electro, and techno, while exploring subversive sociopolitical themes throughout their career.
async is the nineteenth solo studio album of Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and his first one in eight years since Out of Noise (2009). It is also his first full-length solo record since recovering from throat cancer in 2015. Consisting of a combination of bizarre interpretations of familiar musical instruments, unusual textures both acoustic and electronically made, samples of recordings of people such as David Sylvian and Paul Bowles doing readings, and everyday sounds borrowed from field recordings of city streets, async has underlying themes of the worries of the end of life and the interaction of differing viewpoints in humanity.
Haruomi Hosono, sometimes credited as Harry Hosono, is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is considered to be one of the most influential musicians in Japanese pop music history, credited with shaping the sound of Japanese pop for decades as well as pop music outside of Japan. He also inspired genres such as city pop and Shibuya-kei, and as the leader of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, contributed to the development and pioneering of numerous electronic genres.
BGM is the fourth studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released on March 21, 1981. The title stands for "Background music", though Japanese TV and press advertising alternately used "Beautiful Grotesque Music". This album was produced by Haruomi Hosono. Recording started on January 15, 1981, in an effort to release the album by March 21, 1981. The album was the first of any kind to feature the Roland TR-808, one of the earliest programmable drum machines; YMO had already been the first band to use the device, featuring it on-stage as early as 1980. In addition to the TR-808, this was also their first studio album recorded with the Roland MC-4 Microcomposer.
Christopher Willits is a San Francisco-based guitarist, electronic music composer and producer, visual artist and scholar. His music is electroacoustic in nature, in that both analogue and digital sounds are meshed into one singular sound.
Avex Inc. is a Japanese entertainment conglomerate led by founder Max Matsuura and headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1988, the company manages J-pop talents like Ayumi Hamasaki, TVXQ! and internet sensation PikoTaro. It has also shifted into other business domains like anime, video games and live music events, partnering with Ultra Music Festival and hosting the annual A-nation. The company is a member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) keiretsu.
Luna Sea is the debut studio album by Japanese rock band Luna Sea, released on April 21, 1991, by Extasy Records. It sold over 30,000 copies by July 1992. After reuniting in 2010, Luna Sea re-recorded the whole album and released it on March 16, 2011, through HPQ.
"Forbidden Colours" is a 1983 song by David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The song is the vocal version of the theme from the Nagisa Oshima film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It appears on the film's soundtrack album and was released as a single on Virgin Records in 1983.
Avex Trax is a record label owned by Japanese entertainment conglomerate Avex Inc. The label was launched in September 1990, and was the first label by the Group.
S2S Pte. Ltd. was a Japanese record label founded by Ken Suzuki.
Denon Records was a Japanese audiophile record label owned by Denon and distributed by A&M Records from 1990 through 1992. This was a reissue program that included 390 jazz and classical music titles that were issued on compact disc.
Avex Taiwan Inc is an entertainment and record label based in Taiwan. It was founded in July 1998 and is a foreign consolidated subsidiary of parent company Avex Group, based in Japan. As of 2015, Avex Taiwan is managed by Avex International Holdings (Singapore) Proprietary Ltd. Its main businesses are planning, creation, and sales of music (CDs) and video (DVDs). Apart from producing music for artists based in Taiwan, it also distributes for other Avex and foreign artists, such as Kumi Koda and Super Junior.
"Behind the Mask" is a 1979 song by the Japanese synth-pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra. The composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, wrote the first version for a television commercial. A new version with lyrics by Chris Mosdell was released on the 1979 Yellow Magic Orchestra album Solid State Survivor. In the US and the UK, "Behind the Mask" was released as a single from the 1980 album X∞Multiplies.
Shiro Takatani is a Japanese artist. He currently lives and works in Kyoto. Co-founder and visual creator of the group Dumb Type since 1984, he also became artistic director of the group from 1995 and also started an active solo career in 1998.
Async – Remodels is an album of "reconstructions" of tracks from Japanese producer Ryuichi Sakamoto's nineteenth solo studio album async (2017). The album includes eleven reworks by producers such as Jóhann Jóhannsson, Fennesz, Cornelius, Oneohtrix Point Never, Electric Youth, and Arca. Released in Japan in December 2017 by Commmons and in February 2018 in other countries by Milan Records, Async – Remodels garnered generally positive critical reviews and peaked at number 15 on the Billboard American Top Classical Albums chart.
Miho Hazama is a Tokyo-born composer and jazz musician, based in New York City.
12 is the fifteenth and final solo studio album by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It was released on January 17, 2023, two months before his death from cancer, through Milan Records and commmons.
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