A decade after the release of ‘supercodex,’ NOTON is thrilled to welcome back Japanese artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda with his latest long-player, ‘ultratronics,’ out on December 2nd 2022.

Featuring audio material recorded between 1989 and 1999 and compositions created between 2013 and 2022, ’ultratronics’ explores sound's arithmetical and computational essence and renders them into the propulsive auditory experience that constitutes Ikeda's sound signature.

Ryoji Ikeda has created numerous immersive works that dynamically combine technology, light, and sound to electrify the audience’s senses. Since 2000 Ikeda has pursued the theme of data, with a particular interest in the fields of genetics, quantum physics, and astronomy, which he has incorporated into works that present new ways of perceiving the world in numerical terms. To be experienced visually and aurally, the album transports the listeners in a world composed of large amounts of data that usually go unnoticed.

‘ultratronics’ will be available worldwide on CD and digitally. A Japanese edition of the CD will be available on Ryoji Ikeda’s codex | edition. Pre-orders of both editions will start on October 7th, 2022.

‘ultratronics [live set]’ will premiere at Tokyo’s WWW X in Shibuya on October 15, and will be presented as part of MUTEK.JP 2022 at Line Cube Shibuya (渋谷公会堂) on December 7th.

Born in 1966 in Gifu, Ikeda currently lives and works in Paris and Kyoto. While rooted in electronic music, the internationally active composer and artist also produces art as experimentation. Ikeda’s immersive live performances and installations employ elaborate orchestration of sounds, visuals, maler, physical phenomena, and mathematical concepts. In 2022, Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art presented his first major solo exhibi^on in Japan since 2009. Ikeda has received the Prix Ars Electronica Collide at CERN in 2014, and the 70th Japanese Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts, Media Arts Division in 2020.

Album art designed by Ryoji Ikeda Studio

NOTON is pleased to announce the release of Subterraneans, a collaborative EP featuring Alva Noto, Depeche Mode's Martin L. Gore and Willian Basinski's cover of David Bowie's homonymous song.

Recorded in 1975, Subterraneans is the closing song of David Bowie's 1977 album Low. The composition was initially intended for the soundtrack to the 1976 science fiction drama film The Man Who Fell to Earth. 

This song has a personal meaning to me. It was partly recorded in West Berlin at the Hansa Studio. According to Bowie, "Subterraneans" refers to the people who remained in East Berlin and lived in East Germany after the wall was built. In 1977 I was twelve years old and among the "Subterraneans" the song evoked. It still resonates within me, forty-five years after its original release." — Carsten Nicolai

A tribute of the three artists to Bowie's work, the EP features an instrumental version and an edit by Alva Noto on electronics with Depeche Mode's Martin L. Gore on the vocal and William Basinski on the saxophone.

Cover art designed by Carsten Nicolai
Mastering by Bo @ Calyx