1) One of my pet peeves is extra-musical descriptions used to explain music. That is, words that act almost as a crutch (sometimes an apology) in instances where music isn't immediately digestible or incomplete — not to naïve, untrained family members, but to peers and those with a ground floor familiarity with your genre (I went to school for this stuff and saw people squirm while presenting their half-baked demos a hundred times). Other than in circumstances of pedagogy, showing the complicated math problems or "this note represents blah and it's a tribute to blah" should not be your introduction. Your music should be good enough to speak for itself.

2) The thing about art installations: to appreciate them, you usually need to experience all parts (the space, the sound, the visual), hence why only one side of the cube is generally a let-down.

Ryoji Ikeda's work is often created from equations and diagrams and involves multifaceted sound system set-ups, 40-foot screen of projections, theaters with tuned acoustics, all things lost on your speakers or ear buds. However, he is also a deft sound sculptor with a penchant for dissected, tinny-to-juicy digital materials that foster intimate musical relationships (think early Oval minus the warmth)

Beginning with the highest audible frequencies, Ikeda works through the first ten (of twenty nameless) tracks from ceiling to basement*, "01" with its rapid-fire, constant blips being almost painful at great volume; as with most of the psychoacoustic works here, the basis of each piece is either a single sound or many, depending on where you stand in the room. By "03", the octaves are lowered and a growling saw-ish wave nearly takes over before Ikeda's arpeggiator fails and single tones slowly descend in a pattern, like a '50s TV robot powering off.

From here Ikeda engages in hyper-percussive patterns that echo certain idiosyncrasies in various danceable electronica genres (i.e. Gabber, micro-house). But the resemblance is curious, as if Ikeda has taken a photograph of music, pulled away the negative and further processed the colors. "05" rages like some kind of inverted breakcore where the chopped breaks and Alec Empire's voice are only implied; "08" is head nodding and shoulder swaying at 120 with the "ensemble" acting in various strata (thumping pulse, a kind-of snare, semi-melody); "06" and "07" are merely scraps of, say, the loudest bits squeaking through a brutal noise gate plugin, and then further engineered. For the tenth track, Ikeda replicates a big frequency sweep of polyrhythmic bass lines, the type that DJ's employ in the middle of a set to turn the party up to eleven.

The remainder of the disc oscillates between these two worlds of non-representational and semi-representational, Ikeda getting a lot of mileage out of subtle tweaks, beat placement, panning and a sprinkling of silence to stunt his full swing into the "noise" realm; that is, your stereo might not be happy by the deep rumble and hurried clicks of "19" — and there is a warning that the data on "20" may overload some CD player's zeroes and ones — but this isn't a fetishist world just for those who make this stuff (i.e. Merzbow). Ikeda knows and controls what he's doing, and despite his intricate process, the results stand alone as listenable, enjoyable and impressive — even without a laser show accompaniment.

* A composition professor once told me that it's impossible to be successful with a piece that begins in a high register; avoid piccolos, start low and work your way up (see Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta). Of course, I spent a lot of wasted effort trying to prove him wrong. I will throw Supercodex in his face the next time I see him.