Search - Alva Noto :: Transform

Aural equivalent of hard-edged painting, with some blurring

Phil Avetxori | 06/01/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Carsten Nicolai is a master of sonic abstraction coupled with artful, minimal packaging that helps articulate the overall concept of the sonics/object as integrated work. There's a reason this guy has attracted the attention of the art world as well as that of the expected IDM/experimental music community. "Transform" is successful on three distinct but interrelated levels: 1)Rhythm: This album is most immediately grasped as an exercise in no-frills electronic rhythm, with the careful arrangement of a minimal number of pops, clicks, bleeps, longer buzzing soumds, and deep, rumbling bass tones into surprisingly funky beats that rely as much on what isn't there as what is. Which brings us to..2)Space: The overall simplicity of the component parts of these rhythms means that plenty of aural space, in conjunction with a brilliant use of stereo panning as a crucial component of rhythmic variation, is able to articulate a real spatial element in the path between loudspeaker and ear. This effect would have been difficult to achieve with more traditionally cluttered music. 3)Commentary on technology and the social: All of the sounds on this cd are of electronic origin. No attempt is made to disguise this fact by emulating "organic" sounds. These are the sounds of life in the developed world of the 21st century, evoking computers, cell phones, and the buzzing, humming, clicking world of devices that we no longer even notice. These sounds are re-presented as "music", reflecting our immersion in and total adaptation to electronics: though austere,they are not perceived as harsh as they would have been by people of even the very recent past. This social, conceptual element, while not arguing a specific point, provides much to ponder with regards to our (over?)dependence on technology, and the disparities of technological access in a global economy. This implicit CONTENT of the technological-social works together with the FORM delineated in rhythm and space in an arena beyond the last century's Modern/Postmodern divide. Alva Noto provides a particularly succinct example of a cross-genre/pan-media tendency toward content and form working in and through one another."

A lot of spanky good bloop noises

donkeye | all up in your face | 11/10/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"There's this group called Pan Sonic who used to be called Panasonic up until a large conglomerate decided they didn't like some obscure European tone-electronica specialists using their namesake, and so...
Well, Alvo.Noto is the offspring of Panasonic's breed of electronic music, which could be said to have been formed from of the consummated love of one male Stockhausen, and one female Moodymann (this metaphor is unsuccessful, I know, but no one is paying me to write this dreck, so...) this is the avant-garde meets deep house. The result is both heavy and unsettling like a meal-replacement.Using very minimal tone frequencies (some of them excruciating and hurtful) Noto creates carefully crafted and often funky sounding music. He relies heavily on the use of the click, the burp, and the bleep. Like Panasonic, the sound is unabashedly cold and articulated. This is science fair music. This is music for working out complex math problems. If Alvo.Noto was an animal, it would be one of those Sony Aibo robot dogs.All that said, this is his most spanky album. It's really a fascinating listen. His minimalist schtick is not just Ikea for beat junkies, there is a great depth to it. A similar mood to Autechre's album Amber.I have to go now, Red Shoe Diaries just started.Take care."