30-Day Song Challenge: Day 19 – Asks the question what musician best captures the essence of digital music?

30-Day Song Challenge: Day 19 – Asks the question what musician best captures the essence of digital music?

The Music of Ryoji Ikeda

Ryoji Ikeda - NODE Festival

Ryoji Ikeda – Data. Matrix – Live at Sonair 2010

http://youtu.be/k3J4d4RbeWc

Ryoji Ikeda – THE TRANSFINITE at Park Avenue Armory, New York City

http://youtu.be/Y5NpIuEKtSU

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” ~ John Cage

I have always had a love for electronic music since the mid 1970’s. This fascination originated with the sounds of analog space music by such artists as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream. Over the years the evolution of electronic music has been quite innovative and exploratory, while simultaneously producing various styles, and sub-genres. I purposely have sought out, over the years, the artists that were on the edge of the new technology–believing in, and embracing the influence–as a source for my own artistic creativity.

The transition to digital technology has opened the door to a multitude of creative possibilities for musicians and visual artists.

Ryoji Ikeda, my featured artist, is an experimental musician who utilizes a multitude of sound sources to create strange but beautiful musical soundscapes.

Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966 in Gifu, Japan) is a Japanese sound artist who lives and works in Paris. Ikeda’s music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of “raw” states, such as sine tones and noise, often using frequencies at the edges of the range of human hearing. The conclusion of his album +/- features just such a tone; of it, Ikeda says “a high frequency sound is used that the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance” (from the CD booklet). Rhythmically, Ikeda’s music is highly imaginative, exploiting beat patterns and, at times, using a variety of discrete tones and noise to create the semblance of a drum machine. His work also encroaches on the world of ambient music; many tracks on his albums are concerned with slowly evolving soundscapes, with little or no sense of pulse.

“If there were one style of music I wish I had the ability to produce it would be the music of Ryoji Ikeda” – Walter Smith

Ryoji Ikeda – Barbican 2011

http://youtu.be/QHUWvvYDb4c

Ryoji Ikeda – “Per Se”

http://youtu.be/wUYpLrTqzb8

Ryoji Ikeda - datatron-8k-enhan