Ryoji Ikeda EP

Ryoji Ikeda needs little introduction, but for the uninitiated he is the Japanese composer and artist whose work sits at the intersection of electronic music and data — the man behind the databending experiments, the datamatics and data.anatomy projects, and two decades of music built from pure sine tones, noise and mathematical precision. His new EP arrives on Finnish institution Sähkö Recordings, a label with which he has history stretching back to 1996’s +/–, and carries freshly re-mixed material from his ’90s catalogue: the first-ever release of Luxus 1-3, plus a 2020 re-mix of Space made specifically for this record.

Luxus 1-3 opens the release and immediately establishes the terms: sixteen minutes and twenty seconds of near-total restraint, in which tiny percussive clicks and high, piercing sine tones punctuate long stretches of silence. It’s the kind of piece that makes you check your speakers are working before slowly rewarding the patience, each isolated sound landing with a crystalline precision that feels almost sculptural. Its ’90s origins are audible in the raw, unhurried treatment — there’s no attempt to update or prettify, just the archival unveiling of a sparse, exacting work that has waited over two decades to be heard.

Space - Altered Version is the more immediately musical of the two pieces, a sixteen-minute drift in which a low, pulsing bassline anchors clicking percussion and slow washes of tone. The re-mix treatment is subtle but transformative: sounds that might once have felt distant and isolated now move through more open, reverberant space, and the gentle rhythmic momentum of this version makes it feel less like a revision than a live performance of the original idea. It’s the closest Ikeda comes here to a groove, and the record is stronger for it.

Taken together, the two long pieces form a patient, exacting document from one of minimal electronic music’s most influential figures — over half an hour of music in which every sound earns its place. It won’t be to everyone’s taste; this is a record that demands attention rather than inviting it. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, the Ryoji Ikeda EP is a reminder that nobody does more with less.

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