坂本龍一 Ryuichi Sakamoto - 天命の城 Original Soundtrack The Fortress

This epic from director Hwang Dong-hyuk marked Sakamoto’s first foray into South Korean film. Shot entirely on location, the film vividly depicts the extreme conditions faced by a King and his retainers who seek refuge in a fortress during a siege, only to grow increasingly desperate amid bitter cold and starvation. Sakamoto’s nuanced soundtrack adds another layer of depth to the film, elevating it from a mere historical drama to another epic dimension altogether. From the sub-bass rumbling and incidental noise of Vacant Throne, the chords of an analog synthesizer and deep bass of The Fortress Title, the prepared piano and deep reverb of Dispute, and the noise effects created by a modular synthesizer of Yong’s Threat, the score explored a range of sounds that resonated with Sakamoto’s solo album async toward the end of his life. When listening to these impressive pieces, it’s easy to forget they were composed for a film soundtrack. Of course, the sumptuously elegant strings of the main theme, King’s March Strings Version, are quintessentially Sakamoto in how the sound seemingly envelops the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the tracks accompanying the action in the battle scenes deploy orchestration and rhythmic structures reminiscent of Stravinsky. In this way, Sakamoto is mindful of drawing on elements from traditional film scores. King’s March reappears in a number of iterations. Beyond the aforementioned String Version, the Spinet Version stands out for its extraordinary beauty. An old instrument from the same family as the harpsichord, the spinet produces a fine and delicate sound. However, the sound dies out quickly once the musician takes their finger off the key. By playing the spinet at an unhurried tempo, disregarding the metronome’s strict beat, Sakamoto opens an interstitial space between when one sound dissipates and the next sound emerges. In these intervals, he expresses the distension of time and the profound depth of space, akin to looking into an abyss. From the intimate quiet of the spinet to the thunderous sound of an orchestra and synthesizers, this soundtrack runs the full gamut from the ultra-low to the ultra-high ends of the sound spectrum, calibrating its volume and frequency to suit each scene. The Fortress stands as one of Sakamoto’s crowning achievements, the rightful heir descended from his work on The Revenant and async.