* En anglais uniquement
The former leader of Japanese psych rockers
Yura Yura Teikoku,
Shintaro Sakamoto struck out on his own in 2010 almost immediately after the group disbanded. Inspired by breezy '70s pop from around the world, ranging from bossa nova to folk-rock to sounds popular in his homeland,
Sakamoto began recording a set of songs almost completely by himself -- except for female backing vocals, percussion, and woodwinds. The results,
How to Live with a Phantom, were released in 2012. Early in 2014,
Sakamoto collaborated with
Mayer Hawthorne on a split single for that year's Record Store Day.
Let's Dance Raw, which incorporated slack key guitar, Latin percussion, vocal effects, and more, arrived that September. In 2016, a version of the song "Disco Is" featuring vocals by Synsuke Ono preceded
Sakamoto's third album, Love If Possible. The album was released in Japan that July and received a wider release in 2017. That year,
Sakamoto wrote two songs on
Cornelius' album
Mellow Waves and collaborated with
Devendra Banhart on "Another Planet," a split single released that October to commemorate both artists' appearances at Cologne, Germany's WEEK-END Festival. In 2018, Sketches for Music, a book of Sakamoto's visual artwork spanning 1993 to 2018, was published in Japan (it was made available internationally the following year).
Sakamoto and
Banhart collaborated with the Brazilian rock band O Terno in 2019 on the single "Volta E Meia;" that year,
Sakamoto also remixed songs by
Chitose Hajime and released the single "Boat/Dear Future Person," a collaboration with Eddie Marcon singer
Eddie Corman. Later in 2019,
Sakamoto toured Japan and embarked on his first solo tour of the U.S.
Early in 2020,
Sakamoto contributed the lyrics to “Rakuen wo Futari de." The theme song to the film My Tyrano, it was co-produced by
Ryuichi Sakamoto and Kotoringo. Later in the year,
Sakamoto's label Zelone released Formula, the solo debut album by You Ishihara, a member of the bands
White Heaven and the Stars as well as the producer of several
Yura Yura Teikoku albums. As 2020 came to a close,
Sakamoto issued a pair of singles, "The Feeling of Love" and "By Swallow Season," that were collected as
The Feeling of Love EP in 2021. In addition, he appeared on the
Allen Ginsberg tribute album The Fall of America: Poems of These States, which also featured
Yo La Tengo,
Angelique Kidjo, and
Bill Frisell. In April 2022, he wrote and produced
Hajime's single "Fune wo Matsu." That June,
Sakamoto released
Like a Fable. His first album in six years found him leaning into the pop side of his music on songs inspired by everyday life during the COVID-19 global pandemic.~ Heather Phares