Alva Noto - For 2

Tracklist:

01 garment for a garment (2007)

02 villa aurora for marta feuchtwanger (2003)

03 pax for chain music (2003)

04 argonaut for heiner müller (2007)

05 stalker for andrei tarkovsky (2008)

06 sonolumi for camera lucida (2007)

07 interim for dieter rams (2007)

08 t3 for dieter rams (2007)

09 early winter for phil niblock (2006)

10 anthem berlin for the kingdom of elgaland-vargaland (2006)

11 ans for eugeny murzin (2007)

12 argonaut-version for heiner müller (2007)

buy/samples: http://www.normanrecords.com/records/114838

  Quote

Four years after the release of his dedicatory for record (LINE_026), Carsten Nicolai as alva noto returned to assemble a second recording of compositions devoted to a number of creative figures including industrial designer Dieter Rams, filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and German dramatist Heiner Müller.

 

Opener "garment", inspired by a translucent textile designed in connecting sections, may serve well as a metaphor for this collection of tracks that take as their source of inspiration shifting zones and in-between places, links in chain-letter music, luminous bubbles, fragments of orchestral strings, and slowly decaying resonances. In "anthem berlin" alva noto delivers a national anthem for artists Carl Michael von Hausswolf's and Leif Elggren's fictional land of Elgaland-Vargaland. Rather than relying on traditional orchestration, he snaps off a section of a marching band's snare drum roll and lets the percussive rattle reverberate to a tonal hum. "ans" acknowledges Russian Evgeny Murzin's research into obtaining sound from a visible image and vice versa—a central aspect of Carsten Nicolai's work as a visual artist. For this recording, alva noto was invited to draw onto the glass plate of the ANS synthesizer, producing the modulating sound heard on the composition. "interim" and "t3" were composed for a prize-giving ceremony in honor of designer Dieter Rams. Performed live at the event, the background audio layers of "interim" recalled the alva noto xerrox project in which peripheral sounds are elevated to a conscious composition. In "villa aurora" we find ourselves among the dying moments of a held chord, until seconds later the lid of the piano is dropped shut, amputating its echo forever.

 

As we listen we are almost aware of this record having breath, as a watchful vacuum draws in influences before exhaling them back into the music. This ebb and flow marks time over for 2's reference points, reminding us that creativity is perceptive of that which lies at its edges and, similar to language, absorbs it within. — Andrew Cannon

 

02: field recording with piano decay recorded at Villa Aurora / Pacific Palisades. 03: for Ryuichi Sakamoto's Chain Music. 04: commissioned by BCN 216. 06: recorded for Evelina Domnitch and Dmity Gelfand’s Camera Lucida project involving the phenomena of sonoluminescence (DVD LINE_030). 07+08: composed for the prize ceremony of the German Design Award for Dieter Rams. 09: contains a sample of Phill Niblock—thanks Phill. 10: national anthem for the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland—premiered at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin on October 21, 2006. 11: drawing recorded live with the ANS Synthesizer at Theremin Center, Moscow State Conservatory. 12: arrangement by Max Knoth. Cover image: Carsten Nicolai. milch 110 Hz. 2000 / courtesy Galerie EIGEN + ART Leipzig/Berlin and PaceWildenstein.

 

 

Carsten Nicolai (a.k.a noto / alva noto / aleph), lives and works in berlin and chemnitz, germany.

 

"in Nicolai's work neither music nor visual art are by-products of one another—the one calls the other into being"

– Rob Young, Modern Painters, 2006

 

Berlin based visual artist/electronic musician Carsten Nicolai performs and records using the pseudonyms noto and alva noto. Described as 'metal machine music of a most beautiful kind', Nicolai's powerfully synaesthetic live performances combine minimal electronic sounds and real-time visualisations. Nicolai's works captivate consistently through their elegance, simplicity and cool technicism. alva noto has performed in many of the world's most prestigious spaces and has won a number of highly regarded prizes for art and electronic music. He has collaborated with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Blixa Bargeld, Ryoji Ikeda, Mika Vainio, Michael Nyman and Thomas Knak. With Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider he founded the pioneering label 'supergroup' Signal.

 

In my opinion the emphasis of self-generating processes is a reaction to the claim to plan everything. Many of my works underlie a rule and introduce a model as organiszing sceme to recognize chaotic movements. I am interested in both moments, they lie really close together. (...) A major impact on my work had the article Active mutations of self-reproducing networks, machnes and tapes (1996) by Takashi Ikegami and Takashi Hashimoto. They wrote about loop strcutures and self-organisation. Loops get ceated by mathematical processes whose results at the same time are the source for new calculations. By constant re-calculating mistakes occur, build up changing patterns and become the origin of new intelligent processes.

— Carsten Nicolai

 

www.alvanoto.com

Ooh awesome, what a lovely surprise! For is brilliant.

Everything carsten touches is gold.

Can not wait for this!

Ordered, samples sound fab !

no release date ?

That's cos it's already released !

how annoying, this sounds great and therefore I'm about to get poorer

some of the samples do sound promising indeed. This stuff is so great for playing on audiophile gear (not that I have any).

The only annoying this is that now I have to keep looking out for everything Alvo Noto based. Before the only time I'd pay attention is if it was a Xerrox release or a collaboration between Mr. Sakamoto, everything else sounded like quantised cash registers. For 2 has proved the exception to the rule.

  On 3/13/2010 at 11:43 PM, mcbpete said:

The only annoying this is that now I have to keep looking out for everything Alvo Noto based. Before the only time I'd pay attention is if it was a Xerrox release or a collaboration between Mr. Sakamoto, everything else sounded like quantised cash registers. For 2 has proved the exception to the rule.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=62174

the first track on this is just

quantized cash registers, ahahaha

  On 3/13/2010 at 2:13 AM, fiznuthian said:

Everything carsten touches is gold.Can not wait for this!

i hate being poor

This has been released for a few days. Really loving it, most of it is surprisingly gentle for an Alva Noto solo release. Stalker (For Andrei Tarkovsky) is very haunting. Have to find For 1 somewhere.