Zeitkratzer, Carsten Nicolai

This is the first in a series of three releases on the Zeitkratzer label with each volume titled Electronics, which will be issued as a 3CD boxset as well, in 2009. This CD documents the cooperation between Zeitkratzer and Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto), started nearly a decade ago; a cooperation between an avant garde ensemble and a non-academic electronic musician. The electronic music of Carsten Nicolai -- sometimes being of even crystal clearness and quality -- suddenly becomes sensual and physical through Zeitkratzer's amplified instrumental sounds. Inversely, Zeitkratzer sounds different, too: in "5 Min" the musicians play only electric sound generators: the humming of plugs, the peeping of the synchronized Zeitkratzer-clocks, white noise, the TV cheeping at 10 kHz. "Synchron Bitwave," the latest piece, is the most sensual and most warm; there are no other sounds larger than a small third and its electric derivates, finally leading to high, dabbed string spiccati. "C1" transfers electronically-conceived asymmetrical loops into a 19/16th rhythm. A strange undertow results, partly because of the pieces' grounding with merging, split sounds. Here, Carsten Nicolai virtually becomes metaphysical, perhaps even romantic. Zeitkratzer is: Frank Gratkowski (bass clarinet), Hayden Chisholm (bass clarinet), Franz Hautzinger (trumpet), Melvyn Poore (tuba), Reinhold Friedl (piano), Maurice de Martin (percussion), Burkhard Schlothauer (violin), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Ulrich Phillipp (double bass), Marc Weiser (electronics), and Ralf Meinz (sound), directed by Reinhold Friedl.