Ryoji Ikeda

Japanese minimalist electronic composer Ryoji Ikeda is a leading figure among the new crop of computer-based musicians exploring the aesthetic possibilities opened up by digital production technologies. Released through his own CCI Recordings, the U.K.-based Touch label, and Staalplaat, among others, Ikeda's music engages the digital recording and production process directly, playing up subtle glitches and interruptions typically edited out of that process and combining them with profoundly complex and disjointed collages of samples, pure-tone electronics, and heavily treated digital noise. More recent releases have added elements of the experimental post-techno subgenre-scape to Ikeda's hard-disk stew, with bits of jungle, dub, and minimal techno cropping up between the crackles and whines. Vaguely related — at least in spirit — to American minimalist and computer composer such as LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, Terre Thaemlitz, and John Bischoff, Ikeda's work is also in close harmony with German and Austrian post-techno artists such as Farmers Manual and Rehberg/Bauer, with whom he has collaborated live. Mostly unknown in Japan, his work as a solo artist and in collaboration with Japanese audio/video troupe Dumb Type has gained him a wider audience in the U.S. and Europe.