Ryuichi Sakamoto is an internationally-renowned Japanese music composer, record producer, pianist, activist, and writer. Over the last four decades, he has worked on numerous collaborative, solo and film albums, winning numerous awards for his contributions to the world music industry. He began his career whilst a university student as a session musician, producer, and arranger in the 1970s, first gaining major success in 1978 as one third of the electronic music group Yellow Magic Orchestra - YMO which played a pioneering role in the development of the synthpop, techno and house genres. He concurrently pursued a solo career, releasing the experimental electronic fusion album Thousand Knives in 1978, and later released the pioneering album B-2 Unit in1980, from which "Riot in Lagos" influenced the development of electro and hip hop music. He went on to produce more solo records, collaborate with many international artists such as David Sylvian, Carsten Nicolai, Youssou N'Dour, and Fennesz, and pursue a wide variety of projects, in different genres ranging from electronic to classical and world music. Sakamoto composed music for the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and his composition "Energy Flow" in 1999 was the first instrumental number-one single in Japan's Oricon charts history.

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