Alva Noto
The same narrow electronic material as Ikeda, worked from the visual-art side: grids, codes and errors made audible, released on the label Nicolai founded.
Carsten Nicolai performing as Alva Noto, 2009.
PHOTOGRAPH Dieter Wuschanski / commons.wikimedia.org / CC BY-SA 4.0
Plates 4
Overview
Alva Noto is the name Carsten Nicolai uses for his music. Nicolai is a German artist and composer based in Berlin, born in Karl-Marx-Stadt in 1965. His own label describes the music as reductionist, built from a personal code of signs and acoustic symbols.
The records are short on material and exact about it. Clicks, sine tones and digital faults set the rhythm. Later series such as Xerrox take familiar recorded sounds and copy them until the source is gone.
Start here
- Transform (2001)Ten tracks titled Module 1 to Module 10. The numbering tells you how to hear it: units in a series, not songs.
- Xerrox Vol. 1 (2007)Built from copies of copies. Nicolai and Christoph Brünggel made a sample transformer and fed it jingles, airport tones and telephone hold music until the sources stopped being recognisable.
- Unitxt (2008)Made for a live set at the club UNIT in Tokyo. Anne-James Chaton is credited on two tracks, and the last track is titled Unitxt Code (Data to AIFF).
Selected works
What to notice
- One black sign on whiteThe covers for Transform and Unitxt are a single heavy letterform on a white ground with the title set small in a corner. The sleeve does what the sound does: one element, placed exactly.
- Series, not albumsMost of the catalogue sits in named series: Trans, Xerrox, Uni. Read the titles as stages of a method that keeps going.
Historical context
Nicolai founded the label NOTON in 1994. From 2000 to 2017 it worked with Raster Music as Raster-Noton, a label known for glitch and sound art. He also exhibits as a visual artist, and took part in documenta X and the 49th and 50th Venice Biennales.
His collaborators include Ryoji Ikeda, as the duo Cyclo., Blixa Bargeld of Einstürzende Neubauten, as ANBB, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, across a long run of joint albums starting with Vrioon in 2002.
Connections
Shared context
- Ryoji Ikeda, Ryoji Ikeda
Nicolai and Ikeda record together as Cyclo., starting with an album on NOTON in 2001, and both released on the same label. They work the same narrow material of tones, pulses and data.
- Einstürzende Neubauten, Einstürzende Neubauten
Nicolai and Blixa Bargeld, a founding member of Einstürzende Neubauten, released Mimikry as ANBB on NOTON in 2010. Neubauten's sound comes from struck metal and the room; this is the same voice set against clean digital pulse.
Formal resemblance
- Untitled concrete works, Donald Judd
Numbered modules, named series and one element per cover. The logic of repeating a unit and changing one variable is close to Judd's, though no source links the two.
Sources and further exploration
- alvanoto.com
- alva noto: discography
The artist's own list of albums, years and labels.
- N-017 Alva Noto: Transform
Label page with tracklist and links to streaming platforms.
- N-029 Alva Noto: Xerrox Vol. 1
Label page with tracklist, notes on the method and streaming links.
- N-031 Alva Noto: Unitxt
Label page with tracklist and notes on the Uni trilogy.
- About NOTON
Label history and short biographies of Carsten Nicolai and Alva Noto.
- carsten nicolai
The visual-art works, listed by year.
![A dark hall with Ryoji Ikeda's test pattern [no.5] projected across the floor: long bands of white and black bars running the length of the room, two visitors standing on them.](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Ff%2Fff%2FRyoji_Ikeda.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
