The sound textures shimmer appealingly, but it's the melodies that really transform this pleasant mood music into something more epic.The pioneering electronic artists return.Ĭarsten Nicolai aka ALVA NOTO and Ryuichi Sakamoto will release a new live album, TWO, this November via Nicolai’s NOTON imprint. And Sakamoto's theme for Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (his Stairway to Heaven, his Wonderwall) is revived and reworked as a series of jerky geometric gestures. It's less like an installation art piece, more like a film soundtrack.Īnthems such as Brian Eno's By This River suggest that Noto (who recently wrote an opera with Michael Nyman) has become more confident at manipulating his arsenal of sine waves and oscillators to create recognisable riffs. Behind them, a long, rectangular screen displays op-art images that respond to Sakamoto's piano each chord he plays triggers an on-screen splodge, or a flurry of fractal shapes. Noto now samples Sakamoto in real time and replays his phrases, sometimes wreathed in distortion or tinny reverb, while Sakamoto seems to hesitate over every note, sometimes improvising delicately, sometimes attacking the piano strings with sticks. Initially, Noto would make weird ambient noises while Sakamoto played modal chord clusters on the piano but, after five albums, their roles have started to converge. The two have collaborated for more than a decade.
Noto makes music by manipulating the stray burbles that accompany everyday modern life – the steady hum of a fridge-freezer, the white noise from an untuned radio, dialling tones, modems and so on – recontextualising them as provocatively as a Warhol soup can or a Duchamp urinal. The other is German sound-sculptor Alva Noto (known to his mother as Carsten Nicolai), who stands behind a bank of electronic units on the opposite side of the stage. One is Japanese polymath Ryuichi Sakamoto, here playing the role of minimalist pianist. Y oko Ono has talked before about "blurring the distinctions between sound and music", so it's fitting that she has invited to her Meltdown festival two artists who do just that.
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