Todd Eckert is explaining, in circuitous yet joyous fashion, how he first fell in love with the work of the Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s a conversation that meanders through Eckert’s teenage visit to Preston, his years as a punk rock kid in Houston, Texas and his time producing the 2007 Joy Division film Control – yet ultimately always returns to Sakamoto’s astonishing songcraft.
“Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence was not the first thing of his that I had heard – it may have been Left Handed Dream – but it was the first thing that I totally understood,” he says, sitting outside a Brooklyn cafe in bright yellow trainers.
