Field Work

A gleaming one-off pairing between Sakamoto and fellow synthesizer mad wizard (and “Blinded Me with Science” MTV icon) Thomas Dolby. One side is an elegant ‘80s ditty by two suave gents imagining “getting my fingers dirty,” while clean chimes, digital strums, and flanged drums bounce around them. It’s synth-pop from an immaculate parallel universe and the video –featuring streetpunk Dolby with triple mohawk– is a very peculiar ‘80s artifact. Yet “Exhibition,” which fills the entire B-side, has proved most visionary: a giddy 15-minute bob (or blob for that matter) in fluttering, cooing, amniotic fluid. It’s an ambient electronic lodestar that’s beckoned to producers from the early ‘90s into the present day.