ROBERT LIPPOK
Redsuperstructure
RN134
Raster-Noton 2011
09 Tracks. 39mins36secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

Robert Lippok steps out of his day job as one third of To Rococo Rot for his third solo outing, following his debut, Falling Into Komëit (Monika Enterprise) in 2004 and the mini-album that followed, Robot (Western Vinyl) two years later.

Redsuperstructure stems from a live set Lippok gave at Raster-Noton’s Electric Campfire in Rome last year. There’s very little of the Krautrock influences which have informed much of the TRR catalogue over the years. Instead, Lippok opts here for crisp electronic structures which he arranges into compact sonic vignettes. Continue Reading »

BYETONE
Symeta
RN130
Raster-Noton 2011
07 Tracks. 46mins24secs

Amazon UK: CD | LP | DLD Amazon US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | LP | DLD iTunes: DLD Spotify: STRM

A founding member of Raster-Noton with Frank Bretschneider and Carsten Nicolai, Olaf Bender first solo excursion as Byetone dates back to 1999, but in the twelve years that have passed since, the Byetone outings have remained fairly sporadic, with only two album released, one, Feld, on BineMusic in 2003, and the other, Death Of A Typographer, on Raster-Noton five years later.

Conceived out of live performances documented over the last two years, Symeta is built around repetitive minimalist technoid structures rocked by occasional intense dubbey convulsions. Continue Reading »

ALVA NOTO
Univrs
RN133
Raster-Noton 2011
14 Tracks. 62mins43secs

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All through his career, Alva Noto’s Carsten Nicolai has focussed his work around a variety of concepts, some more developed or assumed than others, which have allowed him to explore the outer reaches of experimental minimalist electronic music. Univrs is the second instalment in a series of releases based on language forms, and follows Unitxt published in 2008, a record in which Nicolai developed complex rhythmic structures had been partly generated from Excel, Words and Powerpoint documents after the original data held in these files had been converted into sound.

Univrs stems from a similar idea, but the original medium is different, and to a certain extent, the process is reversed, with sound controlling images. This album started as a live audio visual experiment for which custom hardware and software was develop in order for audio signals to trigger unique colour patterns to be projected in real time. Continue Reading »

MARK FELL
UL8
EMEGO111
Editions Mego 2010
20 Tracks. 64mins48secs

MARK FELL
Multistability
RN125
Raster-Noton 2010
17 Tracks. 63mins48secs

UL8
Amazon UK: CD | DLD Amazon US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD
Multistability
Amazon UK: CD | DLD Amazon US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

SND, the duo of Mat Steel and Mark Fell, have, in just four albums released over the course of ten years, defined a totally unique sound, based on extremely minimal electronic soundscapes and rarefied grooves. Fell released his first solo record under his name back in 2004 on Line, and has since collaborated with a number of other musicians and worked on numerous sound installations and performances. In a matter of weeks towards the end of 2010, Fell delivered two rather different records, one, UL8, on Editions Mego, the other, Multistability, on Raster-Noton. Continue Reading »

ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO WITH ENSEMBLE MODERN
utp_
RN96
Raster-Noton 2009
10 Tracks. 71mins57secs / DVD 112mins07

CD+DVD: Amazon.co.uk | Boomkat | Download:  iTunes | Boomkat

utp_ is the fourth collaboration between legendary Japanese innovator Ryuichi Sakamoto and German sound artist Carsten Nicolai, as Alva Noto, following Vrioon in 2002 and Insen and Revep in 2005. In 2007, the pair were commissioned an audio-visual performance with eminent German contemporary orchestra Ensemble Modern, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim, situated in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the South West of Germany. Released as a CD, presenting the various compositions, and DVD, documenting both the live performance, complete with synchronised visuals projected at the back of the orchestra, and utp_ Tryout, a behind the scene documentary showing every aspect of the preparation for the performance, from composition to the creation of the visual components, utp_ is quite a big piece of work, totally in contrast with the minimal aesthetic of the work itself. Continue Reading »

SND
Atavism
R-N 107
Raster-Noton 2009
16 Tracks. 62mins10secs

SND | Raster-Noton
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Citing a dictionary definition is perhaps the most clichéd way to begin any kind of persuasive piece, but here I am and all I can think of are the reasons why SND have titled this record Atavism. So, here it goes: atavism: the reappearance in an individual of characteristics of some remote ancestor that have been absent in intervening generations.

Keeping in mind that such a title suggests a musical continuum, it’s initially puzzling to hear that this music is as polished and, there being no better descriptor, sanitary as it comes. There’s minimalism, and then there’s minimal techno/microhouse – frequently breaking its own rules for blasts of funk – and then there’s this, the Lysol-coated showroom countertop. By comparison, Monolake sounds like big band jazz. It’s not just that tracks repeat the same themes with small, gradually unfolding variation, nor that that any ostensibly tonal material tends to hit only at the same time as a percussive counterpart. Atavism retreats even further into its own system by using the same general palette of strictly-digital sounds across the entire record. Continue Reading »

ALVA NOTO
Xerrox Vol. 2
RN103
Raster-Noton 2009
11 Tracks.  66mins32 secs

Carsten Nicolai’s conceptual bent and experimental drive get relativized in a larger whole on this, the second edition of the Xerrox series.  The former, led again by Nicolai’s interest in clarity, precision, and finesse, are made to bleed into a previously untapped luxuriance.

Samples from Michael Nyman, Stephen O’Malley and Ryuichi Sakamoto are processed to varying degrees, and often occupy a delicate, fragile place between their original coherent identity and a unintelligible, anonymous state.  As a result, though the composerly feel for pace and dynamics is apparent, and though the arcs are finely wrought, the skillfully maintained ambiguity of these musical interfaces ensures that dubiously unresolved tensions characterize them equally as much. Continue Reading »