★Raster-Noton
List
Is there beauty in what is threatening? With List, Senking introduces 40 minutes of the darkest matter and reckons, yes. He varies and experiments with a -- for Raster-Noton -- frightening diversity of sounds. He reveals the pieces as sound-collages, as quotes, which seem to refer to splatter movies and film noir. Following the tremendous plot of his endtime-subject, he persistently welds together sound spaces in order to compress them later into overwhelming drone-sounds. These as such, then go…
Cyclo
on the occasion of new forms series of concerts in 1999 ryoji ikeda and carsten nicolai did their first joint performance at galerie für zeitgenössische kunst in leipzig/ germany - the project cyclo. was founded. between 1999 and 2001 files were exchanged, material was collected and tracks were made. cyclo sets up a priority on digital quality of the tracks. selective use of automated processes like the overlapping of loops and their falsification through wrong calculation or incorrect condensa…
Dataplex
Raster-noton's flagship Signal - Olaf Bender, Frank Bretschneider and Carsten Nicolai - is something like the reference group of one of the pivotal labels of new minimal electronic music. Although only having released one cd so far, their sessions and concerts have been very influential until today. Some of those tracks of the past years now result in a compilation that joins the work of the three masterminds of Raster-noton, but not like a simple aggregation of egos, much rather like a conversa…
1000 fragments
1000 fragments is Ryoji Ikeda's first solo album. As early as 1995 Ikeda started with this influential release his consistent work on digital sound design, having an inspiring impact on the the founders of Raster-noton label. 1000 fragments was originally released in february 1995 on Ikeda's own label Cci recordings. Raster-noton is proud to make this important piece of electronic music available again. Here's an early review from www.full-albums.net: 'The works on this disc of japanese computer…
Incidence
This release is an expression of long-lasting artistic ties between both labels. In the greyness, heavy waves begin to glide into the one-hour work. They swell and flood a vacuum. Richard Chartier intensifies this maelstrom in long and graceful moves. In a majestic and subtle manner, he creates a subsonic vastness, capturing the listener, disconnecting him from the irrelevant reality. The end mirrors the beginning -- revealing the idea of an endless space in an endless composition. Finally, Inci…
Mouvements
With 'mouvements' the artist Hervé Boghossian presents his newest work. Regarding the technique of composition as well as the acoustic effect the album is an exception. Starting point are several guitar-compositions played live into computer. In a second step the composition is re-worked using plug-in-effects. The results are gliding sounds. A pleasant harmonic take in the glassy-metallic sound - a far reminiscence of the primary of the guitar-composition. Thus the complete album becomes a real …
Leech
With his works the swedish artist Carl Michael Von Hausswolff takes interest in revealing and using accoustic, visual, social and cultural phenomena. For the cd Leech he acts as a parasite on works by Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, Tommi Grönlund-Petteri Nisunen and Richard James. In the three first pieces he sucked energy-sound out from the electric functions of those works; sounds that normally can not be heard. On James' work he bruises the skin surface as leeches usually do before they pen…
Ström
There has been a connection between carl michael and raster-noton since the early days of the label. First meeting was at documenta x in kassel in 1997 where carsten nicolai, olaf bender, frank bretschneider, mika vainio and c.m.v. hausswolff came together to do a spontaneous session at kassel autospindel. their common interest in focusing on underrated qualities of sound or music has brought them together. Above all carl michael von hausswolffs work is about presentation of static quality of hi…
Insen
With Insen, Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto continue their collaboration which started with vrioon. The debut album released on raster-noton in 2003 was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by british magazine The Wire. Particular interest was shown in nicolai's creation towards a new synergy of acoustic piano and digital post production that had not witnessed before, in his approach and interpretation of sakamoto's piano clusters. The strict splitting o…
Xerrox
CD version. 'Xerrox is the new, self-contained project of Alva Noto, which like his transall-series (Transrapid, Transvision and Transspray, Raster-noton 61-63, 2002-2004) is intended to be released in five parts during the next years. On Xerrox, Alva Noto works with samples from muzak, advertising, soundtracks and entertainment programs. These sounds we hear randomly in everyday life and thereby they become an always present and available public domain. With Xerrox Alva Noto manipulates these r…
Transspray
Part 3 of 3** This release is presented in three cds: Transrapid, Transvision and finally, Transspray. Across the 3 installments special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspects of minimalism, utilising Carsten Nicolai's maverick minimal intricacies in brilliant white surroundings. There's a crisp clarity to Nicolai's construction's that's very hard to dissect - you know that you shouldn't be able to relate to this music's sparse trajectory emotionally, and yet, in between moments of microscopic …
Transvision
art 2 of 3** This release is presented in three cds: Transrapid, Transvision and finally, Transspray. Across the 3 installments special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspects of minimalism, utilising Carsten Nicolai's maverick minimal intricacies in brilliant white surroundings. There's a crisp clarity to Nicolai's construction's that's very hard to dissect - you know that you shouldn't be able to relate to this music's sparse trajectory emotionally, and yet, in between moments of microscopic d…
Transrapid
Part 1 of 3** This release is presented in three cds: Transrapid, Transvision and finally, Transspray. Across the 3 installments special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspects of minimalism, utilising Carsten Nicolai's maverick minimal intricacies in brilliant white surroundings. There's a crisp clarity to Nicolai's construction's that's very hard to dissect - you know that you shouldn't be able to relate to this music's sparse trajectory emotionally, and yet, in between moments of microscopic …