I have to admit that I’m rel­a­tively new to this genre, so my inter­est in it is fun­da­men­tally lack­ing in any his­tor­i­cal con­text. But I knows what I likes, and this is grip­ping stuff. In my flir­ta­tions with this kind of min­i­mal­is­tic, abstract elec­tron­ica, I’ve found that it’s dif­fi­cult to achieve a bal­ance between a com­mit­ment to exper­i­men­tal­ism and sheer lis­ten­abil­ity, but I think Ryoji Ikeda suc­ceeds. Though largely form­less, save for at most skele­tal rhythms, his new album Test Pat­tern is imme­di­ately engag­ing merely through its mono­chro­matic, micro­tonal tex­tures. It skit­ters and pops at a some­times fran­tic pace, crack­ling, buzzing, and ring­ing in enough var­ied ways that I’m truly never bored by it. If you’ve been avoid­ing “amelodic non­sense” like this, here’s an oppor­tu­nity to have your mind changed. I only hope it’ll lead me to more things that sur­prise me in the same way.