I just found out today there's a new Ryoji Ikeda release, "Op.", reviewed in this weeks "The Brain" (which also mentions an upcoming Nurse With Wound release - a group I need to catch back up on).
Ikeda is a terrific minimalist composer hailing from Japan. And by Minimalist composer I don't mean this crap that passes for minimalism in the states (Glass...pfeh). Ikeda's recordings to this point have been heavily electronic and precise and stripped absolutely bare - moving about in very pure tones engineered to take advantage of assorted pyschoacoustic effects (yielding markedly different reactions when heard on headphones than on proper speakers, with some pieces engineered to change tone and phase as you moved throughout a room). The new release especially captured my attention as a "no electronics used" piece - Ikeda applies his minimalist structures to strings, yielding new warmth alongside some shrill pitches.
The samples available in the review piece at The Brain sound simply beautiful. The release is ordered and I'm anxious to fit it in with Lech Jankowski's beautiful soundtrack for the equally beautiful Brothers Quay film Institute Benjamenta, John Zorn's Duras: Duchamp (the Duras half being the quieter, more beautiful part here), and perhaps some Gould or even Aranos to round out rainy sit-still-and-don't-move-high-above-the-pavement days.
There was an Eucci CD-R floating around a couple of years ago titled Antechambre, featuing more classical leaning material of my own and of some great composers and players that I knew. We've all scattered across the globe over the past three years, for better or worse... It's a side I've been wanting to get back into, but I haven't found anyone to take their place.