Alva Noto — Xerrox Vol. 5 [29 November 2024]

I think this one even more than the others in the series requires listening on headphones or good speakers. I first had in on in the background on a small speaker and it just faded into the background.

with xerrox 4 and 5 i'm left a little confused about the concept behind this series.....

  On 12/11/2024 at 5:33 PM, dr lopez said:

with xerrox 4 and 5 i'm left a little confused about the concept behind this series.....

yeah same. very difficult to see the through line. 1 is still carsten's best work imo

a somewhat ungenerous reading would be that these last few were scraps from unused/cut film scores and he mildly ginned it up with a few bitcrusher artifacting effects here and there

yeah...

i think the project should have been pursued through the course of a much smaller period to retain some kind of consistency. at this point it def feels like random tracks from unrelated projects. 

  On 12/11/2024 at 5:33 PM, dr lopez said:

with xerrox 4 and 5 i'm left a little confused about the concept behind this series.....

Aye after the first 3 I incorrectly assumed it would be like a palindromic collection, so 4 would be similar to 2, and 5 would crunch its way down to 1

mom: "carsten, have you finished your xerrox project yet? you're not playing xboxx until it's finished!"

carsten, sweating: *puts bit crushed pads over deep bass and lush orchestral strings* "FINSIHED!"

yeahhhh idk i thought this was the best Xerrox 

I respectfully assert that your opinion is incorrect. Love and truth, d-lo

  On 12/30/2024 at 5:53 PM, dr lopez said:

I respectfully assert that your opinion is incorrect. Love and truth, d-lo

I personally think this is one of the best in the series too. Sorry! I just do. But not because it in some way adheres to the project's initial raison d'etre...

I agree it's hard to see the through-line here. If it had taken a Caretaker-esque "Everywhere at the end of time" approach and applied it to the copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy theme, I'm not sure where we'd be now and what on earth it would sound like.

I kind of agree that if these had been created in a much shorter timeframe the concept might have stayed more in-tact. But I also kind of like that it represents Nicolai's evolution as an artist over a long period of time. You can sort of see the influence Ryuichi Sakamoto had on him over the course of these five albums. And while the fad-ish microtonal experiments of Vol. 3 didn't really add anything at all to the mix, and Vol. 4 was a kind of watered down version of this, Vol. 5, divorce it from the "initial concept" and embrace it on those terms and this is... like velvet. I love this one simply because it's an utterly beautiful, melodic ambient album that retains traces of its origins.

You could certainly argue that, conceptually, the series losing its initial concept actually fits in with the xerrox concept... with each album, it's become less and less how it started. I've got no problem with that at all, although I would have liked some more of the original themed material at some point, as I love that degraded sound.

  On 1/6/2025 at 4:11 PM, purlieu said:

You could certainly argue that, conceptually, the series losing its initial concept actually fits in with the xerrox concept... with each album, it's become less and less how it started. I've got no problem with that at all, although I would have liked some more of the original themed material at some point, as I love that degraded sound.

Hah! That's a really good point actually. But yes, I'd have liked to hear more of that degraded sound too. Volumes 1 & 2 are still my favourites in the series.

  On 12/7/2024 at 9:31 AM, kuniklo said:

I think this one even more than the others in the series requires listening on headphones or good speakers. I first had in on in the background on a small speaker and it just faded into the background.

This is great on nice headphones. Really envelopes you, especially the second half of the album. Might be my fav of the series after #1.