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This involved a wide variety of musicians including the Icelandic cellist/improviser Hildur Gudnadottir and the Japanese instrumentalist Motoko Oya. Much of the orchestration was arranged by Sakamoto. “When you are working on a film that has few moments without composed sound, you can really go deep inside the music.” Noto says he learned a great deal from the film-maker: “His memory for sound and detail is amazing,” he says. This made new proposals from our side challenging, but not impossible.” “ was sometimes attached to only one specific sound. “Between the timeframe, the film’s topic and Alejandro himself, the work was intensive,” says Noto. “When you are working on a film that has few moments without composed sound, you can really go deep inside the music,” Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto, musician Noto travelled to Los Angeles, where The Revenant was being edited. He decided to enlist the help of Berlin-based visual artist and musician Carsten Nicolai - also known as Alva Noto - with whom Sakamoto has collaborated on five albums and 30 live shows in the past 10 years. “I have never worked on two films at the same time. To begin with the composer worked from Tokyo, both for health reasons and because of a previous commitment to Yoji Yamada’s Living With My Mother. “When I heard his temp score, I knew it would be difficult to satisfy him.” “He has this extraordinary sensibility for sound and music,” says Sakamoto. The director wanted the score to have a profusion of electronic and acoustic layers to create a minimal yet emotional tone. Known for working quickly, and with specific ideas, Inarritu had already compiled an extensive list of temp music, including some of Sakamoto’s songs. “But instinctually, I knew that it may only happen once in my lifetime, so I decided to go.” “I was still recovering so I wasn’t sure whether I should accept or not,” says Sakamoto. The two had worked together on Inarritu’s Babel in 2006, and the Mexican director wanted Sakamoto to come to Los Angeles to talk about an upcoming project, The Revenant. Seminal Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto was taking a year-long break to recuperate from throat cancer - listening to French composer and pianist Gabriel Fauré, something he credits with “leading him back to the world” - when he received a call from Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.