The Fairlight CMI: A Game Changer for Joe Hisaishi and Ryuichi Sakamoto

I recently reread the essay collection "I AM" by Joe Hisaishi, the musician known for his work on Hayao Miyazaki's animated films, published in 1992. Since my local library no longer had it in its collection, I borrowed it through an interlibrary loan. Thanks to this book, I confirmed that Hisaishi had experimented with the groundbreaking synthesizer (or rather, music workstation) Fairlight CMI Series 2—an instrument that Ryuichi Sakamoto had also acquired and extensively used for his 1984 album—for the soundtrack of "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" (1984). In the movie, there are two scenes featuring a young girl’s song, and the Fairlight CMI was used in the accompaniment for those. At that time, Hisaishi did not own the machine; he used one from a friend's studio. Impressed by its high performance and versatility, he purchased his own later that year. It cost 12 million yen back then, roughly equivalent to the price of building a house. Due to the success of "Nausicaä," 1984 saw a surge in job offers for him, especially for composing music for commercials. Using the Fairlight 2, he created various ambitious sounds.

There was another intriguing story. In 1985, while working on the final mix of his own album in a New York studio, both the Celluloid label, co-led by Bill Laswell, and A&M Records approached him with contract offers. A&M had even prepared a contract, and although Hisaishi was thrilled by the offer, his interpreter pointed out that there was a clause requiring him to transfer all his previous works to A&M, which would leave him with nothing. As a result, he did not sign the contract.

Both companies had connections with Ryuichi Sakamoto. YMO's records were released in the U.S. by A&M, and Bill Laswell collaborated with Sakamoto on the 1987 album "Neo Geo."

Speaking of Hisaishi, he extensively used the Fairlight Series 3 for the soundtrack of Miyazaki’s "Castle in the Sky" (1986). Incidentally, since that film, Miyazaki's movies have been produced with multichannel sound instead of mono. The Fairlight 3, with its precise timing capabilities, was well-suited for creating soundtracks for commercials and animated films. Sakamoto, too, was enthusiastic about working on the soundtrack for "Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise" (1987), likely because after using the Fairlight 2 extensively in his commercial music work, he acquired the Fairlight 3 in the middle of 1986, which naturally led to his interest in scoring animated films.

However, their paths diverged sharply afterward. Sakamoto turned away from music for animation, while Hisaishi earned the trust of the brilliant anime master Miyazaki and became world-renowned in this field.