Reference to Difference was made when Ken Ishii’s musical ability was beginning to take root and bloom, a time when music was shifting into something new and unheard. A release of the annals of electronic music history, lovingly, and thankfully, revived.
The six tracks on offer turn back the clock
“They wrote me back straightaway showing their interest in my music. I sent them more music and they sent me a contract for a double 12” by Fedex. That’s how everything started.”
Ken Ishii describing the beginnings of his relationship with Belgium’s R&S Records in the early 1990s. The above is taken from the notes that accompany the vinyl edition of Ishii’s 1994 album, Reference to Difference, a first ever LP pressing and remaster that is celebrating the release’s thirty-year birthday.
Ishii first began experimenting with electronics in the late 1980s. While at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, a Korg M1 was bought with the express purpose of making music. Still in his teens, pioneers like Yellow Magic Orchestra and Kraftwerk were the first audio educators. That schooling began to expand into EBM and new wave before Ishii discovered the burgeoning movements of techno in the UK and US. The hubs of Detroit and Sheffield gave a new direction, one that would be followed by a budding musician in far off Japan.
“Into the Inside” opens. Methodical, the palette is selective. A minimal melody of strings is supported by earthen drum patterns. Circuitry is left aside in this composition, organic tones and natural shades are the terrain on this spacious introduction. “Fading Sky” comes from a completely different place. Ruffled rhythms are draped in layers of haze while bleeps of melody circle. A recognisable form begins to take shape, noodling keys and texture are accompanied by an orchestral flourish in this work of budding IDM. The machines take centre stage in the moody ruminations of “Non Essentia.” Industrial rumblings are dipped into a syrup, drips and drops creating their own patterns as languid, yet somewhat sinister, harmonies conspire. The aquatic undercurrents flow on into the B-Side with the liquid movements of “Finite Time.” The whimsical wind instruments of the piece are balanced by a steady kick, militaristic bursts of drum beat adding further ballast to the almost weightless work. Ballast and gravity arrive with “Interjection.” Metallic percussion is haunted by spectral keys, an abandoned factory of sounds and distant forms. “Scene One” closes. Echoes of Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence series are immediate, the lightness of touch and the brightness of tone calling to mind the Ishii’s influences such as Speedy J or The Black Dog.
The six tracks on offer turn back the clock. The listener is brought back to the very start of an illustrious career that has included over twenty albums, a litany of EPs, as well as work for both cinema and television. When the album came out, in 1994, Ishii was in his early twenties. The works were created in a world without the web, where inspiration was drawn from within. Reference to Difference was made when Ishii’s musical ability was beginning to take root and bloom, a time when music was shifting into something new and unheard. A release of the annals of electronic music history, lovingly, and thankfully, revived.
Reference To Difference (Remastered 30th Anniversary Edition) is available on Sublime September 6, 2024. [Bandcamp]
