Bleep

Ryoji Ikeda’s first solo work for NOTON in a decade is nothing short of enthralling. With material spanning 1989 to 2022, ultratronics is a beacon of electronic music exploring the science of sound and data. Minimal yet far from sparse, these tracks run from spatial ambience to techno obliteration. Explosive glitches tear through ‘ultratronics 01’, alongside slams of bass and ethereal waves, flowing into the lilting, stuttering microbeats on ‘04’ where sonified data is made danceable, and flipping to the drilling pulses of rhythm and noise on ‘05’ and the heavy, visceral, and intense pairing of ‘07’ and ‘08’.