Customer Reviews

Sweet Revenge

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had listened to Mr. Sakamoto since YMO days. I went to see Marry Christmas Mr. Lawrence for him not Bowie. If you are going to rate any of his works on anything else he has done then you completely miss the point. Sakamoto's music is different every album. Heartbeat and Sweet Revenge are similar but not the same. Sweet Revenge took the culture of the world and compressed it down into some of the smoothest beats the world had ever heard. This album is a pinnacle of the time and one of my favorite CDs from the 90s. Sakamoto left this style behind and went on to make some more fabulous albums. He knows that genius cannot be repeated.

It's hard to believe anyone worth their words would consider this piece of work by Sakamoto the 'one to skip'. It is also considerably puzzling that anyone would rate 'Smoochy' or 'Soundbytes' higher than 'Sweet Revenge'. 'Sweet Revenge' is truly sweet indeed. Intelligent, inventive; Sakamoto takes advantage of using a musical style that is both complex and approachable at the same time. It wouldn't be hard for anyone to enjoy simply as background music but with Sakamoto, the surface is just the beginning. Lyrically, he slides in weighty concepts and spiritual enlightenment into this package that is at first just a pretty face. 'Same dream, same destination' is such an example. If you don't spend time with this piece, you won't get all that it offers.

'SR' is possibly Sakamoto's finest hour in this genre of exploration.

Sweet Revenge is an amazingly sophisticated album in which Sakamoto sets the distinctive and heart-rending chordal and harmonic ideas of his soundtrack work to trip-hop and neo-bossa-nova beats. The songs are fronted by a succession of guest vocalists who each contribute lyrics which add up to an amazingly coherent whole--a mature meditation on love, longing, conflict, revenge and regret. As usual, Sakamoto was ahead of his time. By spotlighting the deep poetry of J-ME and Latasha Natasha Diggs, this 1994 album anticipated by years the introspective hip-hop diva trend popularized by Lauryn Hill.

This is a moody album, by turns dark and sublime. It seems to age better than his equally brilliant 80s pop efforts like Neo-Geo, which can sound pretty dated in spots. With this in mind, I'll venture that this is Sakamoto's best pop album since YMO. Another reviewer here seems put off by the slow tempos, but there are far too many musical and lyrical ideas at work in this CD for it to be dismissed as mere mood music.

3/1/06: Okay, so I bought it when it first came out because hey, it's Ryui. Wrong turn for The Maestro; setting his music to off-key chant/singing taken from teenage girl's diaries. Not that they don't deserve their own music, but that's why God created Alanis Morissette. If one of your nieces was performing this stuff for you in her living room, you'd be sitting on the couch thinking "try not to look at your watch, it's gotta be over soon & you can get the hell out of here". So back it went. But I was haunted by the songs Pounding At My Heart and especially Water's Edge, which share at least musically, a more mature outlook. I wanted to use those tunes on some custom CD gifts, so back to the store for a used copy. Then I was lucky enough to acquire the Complete Index of GUT box set which included Sweet Revenge along with some more rewarding releases. So back it went again. I finally got around to listening to my new version of Water's Edge only to discover that the Japanese version had lyrics performed in Japanese! Now don't get me wrong, it's beautiful but so are the English lyrics & that's my mother tongue. Yep, you guessed it. Back to the store for American release copy #3. The life of a record collector.
Update: I had this disc on Random the other day and if you can get away without having to hear Moving On (particularly as tone setting track #2 after Ryui's short intro) this isn't half bad. I'm sticking with 2 stars though.

This is a timeless CD. I bought it in 1995 and it still sounds as wonderful as ever. Just lovely in a most simple form

A very good album! I bought this in Japan in 1994, and it's still one of my best favorites. It sounds very contemporary. Everybody asks whose album this is when I play the CD, and they all want one. I highly recommend this album.

Sakamoto slows things down with this 1994 release.Almost too slow...After listening to his highly eclectic and sophisti- pop accessible releases like Neo Geo and Beauty, this is their more sedate version...While the music is still very much in keeping with Sakamoto's everchanging and experimental musical machinations, Revenge fails to excite or thrill...At times it feels as though the artist literally designed this album to play as background lounge music in an avant garde cafe or even bookstore (eclectic lounge music comes to mind)...The laid back , yet somewhat catchy trip hop track Moving On is crafty but not clever...While the track Sentimental is soothing in a soft jazz outfit, it's still lounge fodder...I could go on and on, but to make my point, Revenge is somewhat likeable, passable, but not a revelation ...Track 6 entitled Love and Hate begins to barely spark things up with it's soft techno vibe then the rest of the tracks dive back into the mundane and mellow...Even for Ryuichi Sakamoto, this is unacceptable for an artist who is a master genius at creating some of the most brilliant innovative musical/movie scores and highly eclectic global pop music of today.Of all the Sakamoto projects, skip this one !...

I suppose every artist is entitled to a dismissible, dismal failure and this one is it for even the undeniable genius of Mr Sakamoto. As a follow up to the sublime Heartbeat, this album tries to follow up with protégé Towa Tei's also fantastic solo debut 'Techinova', using many of the same collaborators featured on that album, but here something gets lost. It certainly is slick in production terms, but I can not grasp what Sakamoto was trying to achieve here. There's no cohesion, and the listener is left grasping for more. Fortunately, Sakamoto found himself again by the time he moved on to make 'Smoochy'. This is one to skip. Even the most ardent of Sakamoto fans would not be at a loss without this disc.