Browse by Label: RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)

Artist:	NOTO
Title:	Telefunken
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 032CD

Part of the Raster Clear Series, originally released in 2000. This is a mixed-media Noto EP. Mixed media in that there's both audio and visual information on the CD. How you use this CD: wire your CD player into your VCR, with the left channel into the video input, the right into the audio input (although it's irrelevant which you plug where as they're identical signals). Then sit back and watch, listen, and learn. And it works. Sonically, it's a series of rising tones and test jolts. Visually, it's a bunch of wavering (damn helical scan) horizontal lines of growing thickness, occasional bursts of pure white, and often complete darkness (echoes of Kubelka's Arnulf Rainer abound). It's either a carefully-plotted exercise or a complete happy accident. Highly enjoyable either way, especially in shuffle mode (some tracks are very short, others are longer).

Artist:	CYCLO.
Title:	Cyclo
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 041CD

Originally released in 2001. For the occasion of a New Forms series of concerts in 1999, Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai did their first joint performance at Galerie Für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig/Germany -- the project Cyclo. was founded. Between 1999 and 2001, files had been exchanged, material was collected and tracks were made. Cyclo. makes digital quality a priority on their tracks. Selective use of automated processes, like the overlapping of loops and their falsification through wrong calculation or incorrect condensation, algorithms, errors, and the translation into rudimentary rhythmic constellations, is the result of their work. The error itself becomes the topic of this first release from Cyclo..

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Title:	Vrioon
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 050CD

2010 repress, originally released in 2002. During his first live tour in Japan, Carsten Nicolai met Ryuichi Sakamoto in Tokyo. A year after that, he was asked to remix material from Sakamoto for the Japanese magazine Code Unfinished. "The material that was given to me was already layered with digital effects. From one little clean piano piece I made the first track. Those simple piano chords I combined with a clear rhythm constellation. Somehow Ryuichi was very surprised and really liked my work. Weeks later he sent me another specially for this project." This was the beginning of an almost 2 year process of musical exchange and creation. Vrioon is very relaxing, it opens rooms and landscapes blur before listener's eyes. Static rhythmic pieces circle round and vary one and the same theme that, with its impressionistic sphere, reminds of soundtracks and ambient compositions. In this cooperation, two different generations meet and share the idea of electronic music as an inspiration source for new musical structures.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Transrapid
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.50
Catalog #:	R-N 061CD

Originally released in 2004, this release is the first part of the Transall Cycle -- A cycle of three 21-minute CDs with an exclusive cover design created by the artist. Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto explains the concept of his work: "Speed of data-flow is equivalent to the speed of our time. In an era when virtual products of our ideas are expanding, we are simultaneously positioning a calm point in which to settle ourselves. The state of rapidity in which our bodies and the objects around us exist is being replaced by a new economics of anxiety for resources. Only the rudiments of rapidity remain in the form of a crude distribution. The burying and codifying of information makes information available to only a few. This closed circle repeatedly tries to establish new mechanisms to restrict access to these possibilities. In order to realize these concepts, strategies are created not only to absorb information, but also to diffuse and atomize it." The Transall Cycle is made up of three CDs: Transrapid, Transvision and finally, Transspray. The combined parts together address the problematics of speed, the vision of utopia and the dissolution of our ideas into fragments. Text, image, vector graphic -- storage files, were translated into raw audio data as the source material from which constellations of diffused sound start to form. Special emphasis is put on the rhythmic aspect of the digitalized and rasterized data. The tools of their transformation reveal themselves by the structure of the recordings. By the restricting itself to simple and transparent mechanisms, this process becomes independent from existing standards and gains autonomy. Transrapid, Transvision and Transspray, follow on from the Transform release of 2001, thus closing a circle, relating to the transformation of sound into the immateriality of frequency. Alva Noto aka Carsten Nicolai has worked on this material over a period of more than two years.

Artist:	BLIR
Title:	Raster Edits
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 064CD

Originally released in 2005. Most people know Mark Fell and Mat Steel under the name SND. Like no other project before, they stand for the propagandized clicks-and-cut sound. They toured with Autechre and released two records in 1999 as Blir. The minimally-designed covers and the anonymous layout reveal that Blir as well as SND are names of projects rather than names of a band. Blir was always meant to be an open platform. Mat and Mark had been working in the surrounding field of Sheffield University where they first met Autechre in the early '90s. Together with Jeremy Porter and Robert Baker (Premium Leisure), they set up a collective of artists in order to do recording sessions, start radio projects (Non Axiomatic) and exchange synthesizer patches with Raster-Noton's Frank Bretschneider. Blir was part of the notion of an anonymous techno collective. In 2005, the project continued. Probably not as anonymous as they would like, Mat and Mark return to their roots while relocating old session material and cutting and re-editing it in a new way. Blir pursues a more radical approach than SND does. There is no format of a song, the arrangement is minimal. Music structures are cut into short loops, are analyzed and kept -- efficiently and energetically.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Title:	Insen
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 065CD

Originally released in 2005, this is a re-press of Insen by Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Their debut album Vrioon (R-N 050CD) released on Raster-Noton in 2003 was voted "Record Of The Year, 2004" in the electronica category by The Wire, and particular interest was shown in Nicolai's creation of a new synergy of acoustic piano and digital post-production that had not been witnessed before, in his approach and interpretation of Sakamoto's piano clusters. The strict splitting of the composition process on Insen (piano: Sakamoto; production and additional sounds: Nicolai) reminds one of the debut album. However, this record carries a kind of "transcendental aura" of an early morning meditative exercise, but at the same time avoids the field of new age philosophy. Enriched by new elements, this "high-tech meditation" follows a consistent line. On Vrioon, Nicolai's typical sinus sounds counterbalanced Sakamoto's piano accords. On Insen, Nicolai works directly with the piano sounds. He dismantles Sakamoto's recordings with a "surgeon-like precision" into micro-loops, into its atomic elements. Starting with these atoms of sound, he creates a new basis for form, compressing floating, rotating rhythm with harmonic sequences, with melodic counterpoints, and laying it underneath the piano tracks. This makes Insen appear more of a complex experience, although the time-stretched flow, or even the clear lines of the piano stay untouched. From the sleeve notes one can learn that the album was a dedication to certain people. Created far away from these people, Insen might be a kind of dialog. It definitely represents a diary of a stay over several months at Leon Feuchtwanger's Villa Aurora, where a large part of the production as well as the final mixes were completed. The themes and the track titles directly refer to that place, to the times of the day, and the events there. Even the colors of the album cover reference the emotions and atmospheres experienced at Villa Aurora. Only the track "Berlin" was recorded later, with Nicolai and Sakamoto together, during a session at Nicolai's studio in Berlin. As a reference to that place, one can hear a flock of birds singing in the background of the recording. "Aveol" closes the album also seen as a diary, with a mysterious beauty. The evolution of piano recording and digital post-production were pushed the furthest on this track. The combination reached its (temporary) final point.

Artist:	VON HAUSSWOLFF, C.M.
Title:	Leech
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 067CD

Originally released in 2006. With his works, the Swedish artist Carl Michael Von Hausswolff takes interest in revealing and using acoustic, visual, social and cultural phenomena. For the CD Leech, he acts as a parasite on works by Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, Tommi Grönlund/Petteri Nisunen and Richard James. On the first three pieces, he sucked energy/sound out from the electric functions of those works; sounds that normally cannot be heard. On James' work, he bruises the skin's surface as leeches usually do before they penetrate the body. This is a new way of sampling; a reading of the un-readable in certain types of art works. It might be a "L'art pour l'art" production, but this was unavoidable as this "search for the real" continued. Leech is the second release by Carl Michael Von Hausswolff on Raster-Noton.

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	Dataplex
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 068CD

Repressed, originally released in 2005. Dataplex was made by leading Japanese electronic composer, Ryoji Ikeda. Since the mid-1990s, Ikeda has pioneered a radical and highly influential minimalist approach in the worlds of electronic and contemporary music. His seventh solo album and the first musical composition in the Datamatics series is a body of work across various media that uses data as both its material and its theme. Dataplex presents a significant and stunning progression in Ikeda's career. Aside from demonstrating Ikeda's unrivaled standards of technical precision, minute sound construction and engineering, the album also introduces an extraordinary and fascinating overall structure. The first eight tracks consist mostly of high-frequency raw data. Their structures are located clearly outside the cosmos of music. Instead, these linear tracks seem to be source code transformed into an audible medium; a constant stream of data, they represent the basic material of the album. The following pieces become longer, increasingly complex and distinctly inter-related, before the rhythmic structure itself metamorphoses. Rhythms and tones are refracted progressively, until, with track 18, "data.vortex," Ikeda opens up an apparently infinite acoustic space with an expansive piece that contrasts dramatically with all that precedes it. And following this caesura, the album almost ends in the way it started, sinking back into the data flow. Through meticulous attention to detail and the most minimal of gestures, Ikeda succeeds in expanding and enhancing his sound design to reveal a new universe to the listener. Dataplex opens up avenues of pure musical abstraction while simultaneously embracing complex, unique and elegant individual composition. In its entirety, Dataplex remains inscrutable; a mystery whose secrets require individual investigation and discovery. Its defiance of appropriate definition, description or comparison ultimately underpins the pioneering nature of this long-awaited release. The Datamatics series explores the aesthetic potentials of data by using data itself -- from its transparency to its materiality, from its ultra-speed to hyper-diffusion. The project derives the hidden constants of data-ness from the vast data ocean that ranges from DNA and the everyday world to the universe and pure mathematics.

Artist:	SIGNAL
Title:	Robotron
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 069CD

Originally released in 2007. Raster-Noton's flagship Signal -- Olaf Bender, Frank Bretschneider and Carsten Nicolai -- is something like the reference group of one of the pivotal labels of new minimal electronic music. Some of their tracks from the past resulted in this compilation that joins the work of the three masterminds of Raster-Noton -- but not like a simple aggregation of egos -- much rather like a conversation in which every discourse modulates the other and in the end, it is not possible anymore to distinguish between each individual contribution. In this sense, Signal would be a superego that serves a process in which the rule, coincidence and interaction play equal parts. This blends into an open and democratic music that has some of Kraftwerk's melancholy in it. Thus, Signal are their spiritual heirs. Robotron was recorded at Voxxx Studio/Chemnitz, Unit/Tokyo, Palast der Republik/Berlin, between 2001 and 2006.

Artist:	VA
Title:	Notations Archiv 1
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD BOX SET/ART
Price:	$102.00
Catalog #:	R-N 070CD

Notations Archiv 1 is a project by students of Klasse Systemdesign at The Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig during the winter semester of 2005/2006. The project focused on visualization of sound. It was supervised by Carsten Nicolai and Cyan (prof. Daniela Haufe and prof. Detlef Fiedler). The 13 notations are related to selected tracks from the Archiv 1 album released by Raster-Noton. Limited edition of 500 prints. Housed in a cardboard box, 43,4 cm x 31,2 cm x 2,7 cm, 2,1 kg. Artists include: Katrin Menne, Manja Schönerstedt, Simone Müller, Joachim Bartsch, Pascal Storz, Lydia Sperber, Fabian Fenk, Roozbeh Asmani, Jakob Kirch, Toni Schönbucher, David Voss, Florian Göthner, Tobias Steinert. Please note: the CD here is the same disc as the free CD which came with The Wire, issue 238, December 2003; it features a best-of selection of Raster tracks from 1997-2004.

Artist:	COH
Title:	Patherns EP
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 071CD

Originally released in 2006. The Raster-Post series winds up with a pop release by label regular and favorite Coh aka Ivan Pavlov. Entitled Patherns, this 4-track CD-EP creates a picture-puzzle-like effect, while at the same time, there are four exercises in constructive melancholy. Coh seems to recall the times of pushing rhythms and propulsive club music of the '80s and '90s (as we all know his love for the "Moroder" sound), but the past appears digitalized here... nothing would make you think that this is not a product of the 21st century! The Patherns EP presents Coh's sonic speculation in humorous and almost lyrical terms. The texture varies from piece to piece, but the basic structure stays the same and creates a diabolic drive which is a force in itself. While frisky and playful in some parts, this release never loses its depth. In this respect, the listener should follow the instructions on the inside: PLAY LOUD IF YOU CAN! 23-minute EP, housed in a die-cut digipak.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Title:	Revep
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 072CD

2010 repress, originally released in 2006. The EP Revep is a continuation of the collaboration between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and offers a previously-unreleased extract of this musical exchange which started with Vrioon (2002) and found its temporary end with Insen (2005). Similar to its predecessors, Revep breaks the rules of traditional acoustics -- the separation of sound and noise -- in a mysterious manner. "You hardly can go further, hardly can get deeper into the structure of sounds -- in order to discover a beauty never heard before." --Tim Lorenz, Groove. In contrast to both predecessors, Revep presents "Ax Mr.L.," a track where the artists fall back on an already renowned composition by Sakamoto -- the theme music to the movie Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano from 1983. 20-minute EP, housed in a fold-out digipak.

Artist:	PIXEL
Title:	Set Your Center Between Your Parts In Order To
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 074CD

Originally released in 2006, Set Your Center Between Your Parts In Order To is the follow-up release to the stellar debut, Display, by Danish artist Pixel aka Jon Egeskov. As a professionally-trained jazz musician with academic credentials, Egeskov furthers his journey into the realm of minimalistic electronic music. With distinct parts, he continues merging digital (sound) artifacts with subsonic bass lines in a rather allusive manner. Inspired by African conflict and cross-rhythms, Pixel examines the potential of simultaneous yet independent pulsating meters. He fuses polyrhythmic and polymetrics with the signature Raster-Noton sound vocabulary and thus connects his work to the here and now. The tracks are heavily accentuated in regards to dynamics. They were recorded during several studio sessions without any overdubs (and without later editing). Pixel may have drawn inspiration to proceed this way after witnessing live performances by Pan Sonic and Autechre. The songs were created intuitively and spontaneously during the process of performing and improvising. You can indeed hear that everything is floating and that there are no statics or incidental situations. Set Your Center Between Your Parts In Order To gets its sparks from the ups and downs of its density... from the complex blending of basic particles, to the shift in their significance. If you allow yourself to get into this dark and evolving fabric, an auditory sensation of rhythmic timing will emerge. Mastered by Stefan Betke of Pole/~scape.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Title:	Insen Live
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	DVD
Price:	$29.00
Catalog #:	R-N 076DVD

Originally released in 2006. In 2005 and 2006, three major tours in support of Insen (2005) led the artists Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto around the world. The Insen Live DVD is a document of this project. Recordings for the DVD took place at Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal, on June 11th, 2006 and at the Sonar festival 2006, Barcelona, Spain, on June 15th, 2006. Besides material from Insen, the DVD contains previously-unreleased tracks such as "Xerox" and "Barco." The DVD is in Dolby 5.1 surround sound, and comes in a cardboard cover with special laser engravings. The booklet contains 15 full-color photos and texts by Rob Young and Michael Bracewell. Format: DVD, NTSC, region-free.

Artist:	SENKING
Title:	List
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 077CD

Originally released in 2007. Is there beauty in what is threatening? With List, Senking introduces 40 minutes of the darkest matter and reckons, yes. He varies and experiments with a -- for Raster-Noton -- frightening diversity of sounds. He reveals the pieces as sound-collages, as quotes, which seem to refer to splatter movies and film noir. Following the tremendous plot of his endtime-subject, he persistently welds together sound spaces in order to compress them later into overwhelming drone-sounds. These as such, then go to serve a fundamental purpose -- as an environment for minimalistic themes and melodies, always to be driven by the ever present slow-beat of the pieces. Nonetheless, the syntax, the destiny of each single piece is highly varied and has the appearance of a much more mature composition, compared to his earlier works. Remarkably, the technical aspect does not take a leading role in Senking's anti-utopia visions. It's about substantial and age-old patterns, about impulses and the inevitable. Comparable to a tracking shot, the sound masses are flowing grey and drama-laden towards their final purpose -- seeming to follow the ductus of the opening piece -- let's go.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Xerrox Vol. 1
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 078CD

Originally released in 2007. Originals are unique, be it genetic codes or image and sound documents. Their copies are mere means of distribution. To secure these originals from misuse is the main issue today. The essence and potential of the copy mostly is disregarded. We live in a world of constant reproduction, where only the replication counts as original, the single object is a sheer copy of the prefiguration, which is abstract and becomes an icon. The uncountable number of multiplied images confirms the original, but immediately the copy withdraws and assesses its own value. By using the technique of copying the copy, it also often contains mistakes and abstractions that differ from the original. These simplifications and deformations inherent to the copy process lead to a gradual loss of its connection to the original and results in a substantial change of meaning. Although there is still a core of the actual source, the original message disperses in the white noise of reproduction. In the end, the observer can hardly differentiate if the origin is part of the information transferred. If there is still an integral material component of the original or can this only be projected... these questions remain unanswered. What finally remains is the process of copying itself. It becomes a creative tool by analytically accomplishing something new. The mutating copy provides space for development -- the copy becomes original again. Xerrox is the new, self-contained project by Alva Noto, which like his "Transall" series (Transrapid, Transvision and Transspray) is intended to be released in five parts during the next years. On Xerrox, Alva Noto works with samples from muzak, advertising, soundtracks and entertainment programs. These sounds we hear randomly in everyday life and thereby they become an always-present and available public domain. With Xerrox, Alva Noto manipulates these recognizable melodic (micro) structures by the process of copying. He alienates them beyond recognition so the results manifest their connection to the original only suggestively. In this respect, the original is copied to the original. Alva Noto used several samples from these sources: Narita airport Tokyo, in-flight program Air France, telephone wait-loop Lufthansa, hotel Apollo Paris, Suizanso hotel Yamaguchi, Seven-Eleven Tokyo, Forma London, Reaktor and www.kkmovie.com.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Transform
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 079CD

Transform by Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai), originally released on Mille Plateaux in 2001, is now being re-released on Raster-Noton. The album, released as a CD, comes with a new cover and is digitally remastered. On Transform, Alva Noto meant to reduce the aesthetic of pop to the bone. Rather than in pop music, where the basic focus lies on harmonic and melodic forms, on Transform, they give way to pure rhythm structures derived from only sine tones and white noise, which nevertheless communicate on an emotional level. Transform is the first part of Alva Noto's Transall series (along with the EPs Transrapid, Transspray, Transvision: 2001-2005), and after his first release on Mille Plateaux, Prototypes (2000), marked his next step into a more rhythmically-oriented phase of his work.

Artist:	ALEPH-1
Title:	Aleph-1
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	2x12"
Price:	$23.00
Catalog #:	R-N 087LP

2x12" release. Originally released in 2007; a co-release with iDEAL Recordings, Aleph-1 is a project by German sound-sculptor, Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto/Noto. Aside from his sound works under those pseudonyms, Aleph-1 is electronic music with an acoustic sound aesthetic that was especially developed for the iDEAL Recordings label. The concept of Aleph-1 derives from the theories of the mathematician Georg Cantor, who was teaching in Halle, Germany, a city to which Nicolai is deeply connected with through his family. The sound pieces of Aleph-1 deal with the idea of infinity in terms of structure and length. Without actual beginning or end, they fade in and out. The pieces have a very logically-constructed nature of overlapping tracks, which never seem to be the same, thus could be extended into infinity. The album consists of eight rhythmic circles, based upon acoustic material, at first sight very minimal but always carrying pulse and melody. Music you can lose yourself in. For a deeper knowledge of the term "Aleph-1," here's a short definition: in 1884, the term "Aleph-1" was introduced by Georg Cantor into the mathematical world. Since then, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, combined with a number, has been used to represent the cardinality (or size) of infinite sets. The Aleph numbers differ from infinity, commonly found in algebra and calculus. Alephs measure the sizes of sets; infinity on the other hand, is commonly defined as an extreme limit of the real number line, or an external point of the extended real number line. While some Alephs are larger than others, infinity is just infinity. Housed in a heavyweight gatefold sleeve.

Artist:	IKEDA, RYOJI
Title:	1000 Fragments
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 089CD

1000 Fragments is Ryoji Ikeda's first solo album, originally released in 1995 on Ikeda's own CCI label. As early as 1995, leading Japanese computer-manipulated sound composer Ikeda started his exploratory work with digital sound design, having an inspirational impact on the founders of the Raster-Noton label. 1000 Fragments encapsulates the early parts of Ikeda's career, from the mid-'80s through the early/mid-'90s, in three different subsections: Channel X (1985-95), 5 Zones (1994-95) and Luxus (1993). An early review from www.full-albums.net characterizes 1000 Fragments as such: "The first piece, consisting of several short parts (bursts?), snaps the listener around a jumble of sound fragments from TV, NASA, radio, film, raw electronics and computer-generated tones, and so on. It's rather disorienting stuff... more like something you'd expect out of The Hafler Trio, and actually sort of out of character with the rest of the disc. As for the rest of the disc, it's taken up with two long works, which I assume involve computer-generated sound but which have the lushness one more associates with analog electronics. Both are longish ambient works, but instead of featuring static repetitive structures, these unfold in an intriguing manner, like a long, slow drive across a very sparse landscape. As opposed to the initial work here, these are definitely the 'meat' of this disc, and anyone looking for some fine ambient work with perhaps a bit of an edge would do well to check this out."

Artist:	COH (IVAN PAVLOV + COSEY FANNI TUTTI)
Title:	COH Plays Cosey
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 091CD

COH Plays Cosey is the first part of an ongoing collaborative project between Stockholm's Ivan Pavlov/COH and the UK's Cosey Fanni Tutti, known for her solo performances and work with Chris Carter/CTI as well as for being a part of the radical cultural phenomena COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle. Very much a statement rather than just a musical venture, COH Plays Cosey deals with concepts of honesty, trust, privacy and communication as well as (perceptions of) sexuality. The work represents a very close contact between the two, where one (Ivan) was to interpret voice recordings made for him by the other (Cosey) -- recordings made in intensely emotional states to establish a dialogue that extends beyond words, beyond intellect. A most private emotional diary of one (Cosey) pronounced to the general public by the other (Ivan). The work has been kept hermetic by Ivan voluntarily restricting his choice of sound exclusively to that originating from the voice recordings, thus preserving the raw quality of his source material. In this explicit sonic adventure, COH plays Cosey without inhibitions, without fear and without questioning the content submitted. COH plays Cosey like an actor -- becoming her through his elaborate transformations of the voice. COH plays Cosey like a computer game -- making his way though the infinite combinations and variety of human expression with ease and a sense of fun. COH plays Cosey like sex -- fully controlling the process and manifesting the eventual outcome. COH Plays Cosey is the embarrassingly unspoken made audible, COH Plays Cosey is the place where there is nothing left to hide.

Artist:	BYETONE
Title:	Death of a Typographer
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 092CD

Olaf Bender (Byetone) is co-founder of the Raster-Noton label, and this is his third release for the label. Death of a Typographer is meant to be a snapshot, recorded in a wintery week in Berlin. Only the pre-released single Plastic Star was created in sunny Athens, which is included in its original session version here. The music on Death of a Typographer carries the special sound of Raster-Noton, but with an important difference: the tracks act as focal points, as elegies to a latently-flowing stream, a stream that still moves on, even when the music has long faded away. The tracks do not necessarily move forward, they rather open up a dark abyss which seems deepest in "Capture This" parts I and II. Byetone manages to achieve a remarkable metamorphosis of the organic, with tracks that don't reveal any of the elements of conventional composition techniques, but which somehow seem to emerge from a static sound body. Weirdly danceable yet remote, and a big step for Raster. Death of a Typographer poses riddles. In fact, for the vigilant spectator, the ambiguous artwork will reveal the Death of a Typographer.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO WITH ENSEMBLE MODERN
Title:	Utp_
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 096CD

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim, Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto were invited to develop an audio-visual performance together with Ensemble Modern. The concept of the arising piece named "Utp_" is derived from the rasterized structure of Mannheim (built as an ideal city in the 17th century), also making reference to the musical history of the city. The result of the collaboration, like the other projects by Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Vrioon (2002, R-N 050CD), Insen (2005, R-N 065CD), Revep (2005, R-N 072CD) and Summvs (2011, R-N 132CD), is a synergetic mixture of electronic and natural sounds that is expanded by the potential of the classical instruments of Ensemble Modern. Utp_, the title of the new composition, is deduced from the term "utopia" and hence describes an approach that leaves space for further extensive associations. This is a re-release of the album as audio CD-only. Utp_ was previously released as a more expensive 2 disc set with a DVD & CD together.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO WITH ENSEMBLE MODERN
Title:	Utp_
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	DVD/CD
Price:	$29.00
Catalog #:	R-N 096DVD

On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim, Germany, Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto were invited to develop an audio-visual performance together with Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt am Main. The concept of the arising piece named Utp_ is derived from the Rasterized structure of Mannheim (built as an ideal city in the 17th century) and also pays reference to the musical history of the city. The result of the collaboration -- like the former projects of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto -- Vrioon (2002), Insen (2005) and Revep (2005) -- is a synergetic mixture of electronic and natural sounds that is expanded by the potential of the classical instruments of Ensemble Modern. Utp_, the title of the new composition is deduced from the term "utopia," and hence describes an approach that leaves space for further extensive associations. The DVD contains the Utp_ concert movie and an Utp_ "try-out" to document both the developing process of the piece and the final result. 5.1 channel Surround Sound; 2.0 channel Stereo sound; region-free, NTSC. Includes a 16-page booklet containing color images and a text by David Toop, plus a 28-page score. Total time on the CD is 72 minutes, the DVD is 113 minutes. The "try-out" portion of the DVD is in German with English subtitles.

Artist:	ATOM TM
Title:	Liedgut
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 099CD

This is Atom TM's (Uwe Schmidt, Señor Coconut, Atom Heart) debut full-length release for the Raster-Noton label. From a contemporary point of view, Liedgut may be considered a Romantic work. While researching his own past, the artist found himself in the Austro-German time, space, and way of thinking and feeling. Between Nietzsche, Helmholtz, Schubert, and many other guidelines, Atom TM absorbed a universe striving for clarity and simplicity, where science and irrationality, ornament and mathematic purity were the key elements of a (still) oscillating social and mental order. Liedgut therefore oscillates between those poles: scientific exercises on Schubert chord progressions, digital waltzes and romantic lyrics. This research consistently led him to the post-Romantic works of Oskar Sala, Kraftwerk and others, who could be seen as direct heirs of the Romantic movement. Upon completion of the album, Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk contributed a spoken epilogue, commenting that the leitmotiv of Liedgut lies in the track called "Weißes Rauschen" ("White Noise"). For Atom TM, the phenomenon of "white noise" perfectly served as an analog expression of the Romantic dualism: scientifically defined on the one hand, it is also described in a poetic manner, seeking for a more profound meaning. "Wellen und Felder" ("Waves and Fields"), which directly connects to "Weißes Rauschen," similarly refers to both scientific models and philosophic/poetic ideas. Consequently, Atom's research does not stop here, thus managing to convey Liedgut into the present. Both form and content appear to be explicitly new and contemporary, yet "ex-temporary" at the same time.

Artist:	VOIGT, WOLFGANG
Title:	Gas
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	Book w/CD
Price:	$45.00
Catalog #:	R-N 102CD

Softcover book/photographic art catalogue with exclusive audio compact disc included, 128 pages in full-color, shrink-wrapped together. For the first time ever, Wolfgang Voigt aka Gas presents the visual aspect of the comprehensive Gas project in print. It is not meant to be a monolithic retrospective of his visual work, but it features a broad spectrum of photographic images taken between 1995 and 1998, showing many different moods and perspectives of Wolfgang Voigt's cosmos. What they all have in common is the mystical focus and seemingly, the blurring of boundaries between lightness and darkness, happiness and depression, kitsch and art, pixels and leaves. With the enclosed CD, Voigt has opened his treasure chest and presents some well-selected, rare jewels from the very early days (and nights). Four of the five tracks have never been released or played before. In the middle of the 1990s, Wolfgang Voigt, better known under a great many pseudonyms such as Mike Ink, Studio1 or Grungerman, and the driving force behind the rise of Cologne minimal techno, had reached a temporary peak in his career. Going back to the 1980s, Voigt began working under a self-realized concept he named "Blei." Taking in the most varied sound models, he began to extract elements from classical, polka, or brass music, and along with electronic pop music and German schlager sounds, formed a distinguished and unique pop music style that would fit in with the subculture at that time. In the early 1990s, influenced by techno, Voigt began to experiment with a timbal marching through strongly alienated, free-floating string loops. These elegiac tracks, their lack of beginning or end, their intoxicating, smooth, and partly amorphous structure sounded to him like evaporating gas and thus, Gas music was born. In his music, Wolfgang Voigt does not create a direct reference to the original sounds he alters; rather, he tries to reduce the material to its basic aesthetic structure by using different zoom, loop and alienation techniques in order to release it from its original meaning and context. His intention is to create a kind of aesthetic essence, a cave (detail/loop/repetition) where you can get thrillingly lost.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Xerrox Vol. 2
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 103CD

This is the second volume in the planned 5-volume Xerrox series by Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai), the follow-up to Xerrox Vol. 1, released in 2007 on Raster-Noton. With volume 1, Alva Noto manipulated melodic structures with the process of copying field-recorded sound samples beyond recognition into fragile, ambient soundscapes. Volume 2 undertakes an intense journey and affords the luxury to take its time. While Xerrox Vol. 1 referred to the "old world" with its tradition deeply rooted in classical music, Xerrox Vol. 2 tries to access a "new world." It works with samples that have been gathered and developed in the U.S.A., the so-called "new world" where the album was largely recorded. The dramatic and dynamic approach of Xerrox Vol. 1 has since been replaced by a structural density. Instead of working with individual musical entities, the new album develops an overall, linear aesthetic that refers to musical strategies of film music. Hence there are no implicitly singular pieces, but open musical structures -- a journey without a predetermined target. The first four tracks of Xerrox Vol. 2 actually condense into one track, using samples of Michael Nyman and Stephen O'Malley (KTL, Sunn O)))). They combine into a soundtrack, as if in a movie, before fading away in a swell of reverb feedback. "Sora" originated as a rudiment from his collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, performed as an encore during the 2004 Insen tour. Continuing on from "Monophaser 2," the album creates a dense and interwoven complexity which only gradually unfolds its depth. While "Teion" dissolves in the process of copying into another sample rate, "Teion Acat" re-condenses its quality. Xerrox Vol. 2 seems to be more playful than Vol. 1; following the approach of a live set, it is not as much obligated to theoretical concepts, intending to break a static framework before it gets too restricted. The eleven tracks on Xerrox Vol. 2 serve as documents of an immediately experienced time or as attempts to unfold in an endless space. In this sense, this recording comes close to the idea of the Aleph-1 project that tried to disappear, rather than occupy an endless space. In the end, one might ask where the journey will go.

Artist:	PIXEL
Title:	The Drive
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 106CD

This is the third full-length release by Danish artist Pixel (Jon Egeskov). The Drive is meant to be the soundtrack to his imaginary journey by car across the USA, a road movie encoded in the tracklist. With warm and deep guitar amplifier hiss and feedback in connection with floating rhythms, he creates very organic sound patterns. The music might evoke images of deserts, chemical warfare plants, rugged landscapes, rocket takeoffs and hectic suburban night life, but there is an additional level of meaning. Pixel invites the listener to discover his mise en abîme -- the image behind the image. Suggestion and impression interact and develop an astonishing force to attract the listener. The interplay of these two contrary elements allows unusual ways of traveling. The Drive is the perfect soundtrack for this journey.

Artist:	BRETSCHNEIDER, FRANK
Title:	EXP
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	R-N 108CD

Audio CD + data CD. Berlin-based Frank Bretschneider is a musician, composer and video artist who co-founded the Raster-Noton label in 1996. EXP is a music-visual work based on the idea that fine art should attain the abstract purity of music. An attempt to assimilate the qualities found in music -- including movement, rhythm, tempo, mood, intensity and compositional structure -- within visual phenomena. The music for the project was composed of specific generated and selected waveforms, feedbacks, impulses, clicks, the sound of mechanics, electricity, magnetism, light and other radiation. In addition, since the animation is mainly driven by sound frequency and intensity, the sonic quality of these sounds makes it possible to obtain an optimal effect on the graphics motion. In combination with several other ways of controlling the animation -- from MIDI programming to applying motion curves -- the visualization represents an exact reproduction of the audible occurrences. As a consequence, the computed images often attain an unexpected beauty, from simple geometrical patterns to extraordinarily complex forms. The data CD is an 18-minute video generated from the realtime live visualization of EXP.

Artist:	VAINIO, MIKA
Title:	Time Examined
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	2CD/BOOK
Price:	$59.00
Catalog #:	R-N 109CD

In the past 13 years, Finnish experimental electronic musician Mika Vainio has exhibited in some of the major art spaces in Europe, and has collaborated with a number of important artists and curators. Since his musical work has been in the focus of attention, his installations have never gained the broader recognition they deserve -- without good reason. In this book, an overview will give a clear outline of this segment of his oeuvre. Also, his realized soundtracks for other artists, in the genres of video, film and dance are included. Each work is presented with a significant selection of images (installation views, visuals or sketches) and an explanatory text gives context and delivers its basic idea. In the two essays, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Daniela Cascella -- longtime companions and collaborators -- delicately introduce Vainio's conceptions to further enlighten the reader's understanding. On CD1 all tracks originate from the installation and soundtrack pieces presented in the book. CD2 is a reissue of his 1997 collaborative release with Carsten Nicolai -- Ø + Noto, Mikro Makro. 92 pages, color/monochrome. Texts by Daniel Klemm, Daniela Cascella, Carl Michael von Hausswolff.

Artist:	LICHTENBERGER, GRISCHA
Title:	Ununbium: ~Treibgut
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 112EP

Ununbium is the second release in Raster-Noton's Unun series, derived from the Greek atomic numbers of the chemical elements 111-119 in the periodic table. The series will continue with Ununtrium (R-N 113EP); Ununquadium (R-N 114EP); Ununpentiumr (R-N 115EP); Ununhexiumr (R-N 116EP); Ununseptium (R-N 117EP); Ununoctium (R-N 118EP); Ununennium (R-N 119EP). For Ununbium, Berlin's Grischa Lichtenberger recorded sounds from the world around him -- a sliding table top, the noise of a radiator or the droning of a broken machine. By means of digital manipulation, these sounds become instruments.

Artist:	TAKAMASA, AOKI
Title:	RN-Rhythm-Variations
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 113EP

This is the first release by Aoki Takamasa on Raster-Noton. Aoki came to Berlin via Japan, and has been releasing music since 2001. He enthusiastically pursues an expansive variety of techniques of expression via a broad array of software and hardware. The rhythm and groove created by driving the CPU to the max may seem extreme; however, one must respect the inquiring mind that incessantly probes the roots of musical expression.

Artist:	KYOKA
Title:	Ununpentium/iSH
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 115EP

The fifth release in the Raster-Noton Unun series is a 12" release by Kyoka, known for her chaotic, direct approach and heavy/rough sound, resulting in a broken pop-beat with experimental yet danceable rhythms. Produced by Frank Bretschneider. Berlin, June/July 2011. Remix for "HADue" by Atom TM. Photo by Sylvia Steinhäuser. Live drum by Tetsuya Yamasaki, Turkey. Ryuichi Sakamoto on Kyoka: "it sounds like a toy box turned upside down. How can she make such pretty & chaotic sounds!? I love it!"

Artist:	ANBB: ALVA NOTO & BLIXA BARGELD
Title:	Mimikry
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 121CD

Raster-Noton presents the debut full-length album by ANBB, the collaborative project of electronic music composer/visual artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) and composer/voice artist Blixa Bargeld (also known as singer of Einstürzende Neubauten and guitarist of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds). Having been friends and admirers of each other's work for a long time, they decided to join forces to develop a musical concept based on the combination of improvisation and abstraction. The collaboration debuted at an impulsive live performance at Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco in September 2007, where the spontaneity of Blixa Bargeld's voice and the elaborate beat structures and soundscapes of Alva Noto merged to surprising and unexpected results. Rethinking traditional songs in their own special manner, they deliver an outstanding and inspiring musical blend of abstract electronics and radically altered traditional songs. On its ten tracks, Mimikry readopts two originals and two alternate versions of tracks from the duo's debut EP, Ret Marut Handshake (R-N 120EP), while introducing six brand new songs. Additionally, the album includes a guest vocal contribution from model/actress Veruschka (known for her appearance in Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 cult movie Blow-Up). Presented with a 16-page booklet that presents original text and drawings developed by Blixa Bargeld during the recordings.

Artist:	KANGDING RAY
Title:	Pruitt Igoe
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 124EP

Pruitt Igoe is a 4-track EP by Kangding Ray on which both Alva Noto and Ben Frost have been invited to produce sonic variations on a contemporary architectural myth. The EP's title is taken from a gigantic social housing project, completed in 1955 in St. Louis, Missouri, regarded as a symbol of the modernist architecture failure. Designed according to the principles of modernism, and by the same architect who would later build the World Trade Center, the project saw a disastrous and violent decline after only a few years, plagued with vandalism and massive criminality, leading to its complete destruction from 1972 onwards. On the A-side, the original track and its remodel by Alva Noto both represent the planning and construction phase, based on a clear structure and a hypnotic loop of women chanting in the streets of a small town in North India. On the B-side, Ben Frost and Kangding Ray undertake the demolition process -- slicing beats, destroying structures and emphasizing the beauty of collapse.

Artist:	FELL, MARK
Title:	Multistability
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 125CD

Sheffield-based artist and electronic musician Mark Fell presents Multistability, primarily an exploration of erratic and non-regular rhythmic patterns. Drawing equally from his work with snd and his many solo projects, this work promotes a minimal complexity; combining meticulous synthetic chordal layering with convoluted, chaotic, yet fundamentally engaging temporal structures. In the field of Gestalt psychology the term "multistability" refers to the effect where one is unable to perceive a single stable object within complex or ambiguous patterns. A famous example is the Necker cube -- a wire frame with no depth cues that oscillates between front/back orientations. The term is also found in systems theory where it describes a condition that is neither stable nor instable, where a system switches between different states. Fell takes these as a starting point for his project, developing compositional structures and strategies that transform and transcend the familiar; structures that refuse to accept parental advice. Split into two halves, the album contains two versions of itself. Using what Fell describes as "extremely basic" pattern-generating systems, passages reappear throughout... yet these are applied and maneuvered into parallel versions of themselves -- often different sounds and parameters are explored, producing no singular or resolved arrangement. In his recent works, Fell's process has been influenced by his collaborative encounters with friend and fellow musician Yasunao Tone -- particularly Tone's approach to ideas concerning intentionality and time within the context of musical practices. In Fell's work, deliberate actions are layered, and distorted; manipulated to produce unforeseen and often extraordinary aesthetic outcomes, documented here in the form of 17 related pieces. Above all, Multistability should be understood in light of Fell's claim that "Music is a technology for constructing an experience of time." Here, in musical form, Fell aims to disrupt familiar temporal divisions and structures and investigate non-repetitive musical process. Last copies.

Artist:	CYCLO.
Title:	id
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 127CD

A decade since its inception, Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai are relaunching their collaborative project, Cyclo., a project that focuses on the visualization of sound and seeks to create a new hybrid of visual art and music. Both leading electronic composers/artists from Japan and Germany respectively, Ikeda and Nicolai release their second album (CD/EP on Raster-Noton), that will later be followed by a publication with an extensive presentation of their visuals. Since the beginning of the Cyclo. project, the artists have developed a database of sounds composed to produce visual responses when analyzed in real time with the help of stereo image monitoring equipment. Phase and amplitude of stereo signals can be illustrated graphically: the audio elements are constructed through the minute editing of frequencies (often beyond the physical range of human hearing) and selected by the artists for their visual characteristics when analyzed. Through processes of composition, editing and experiment, Cyclo. is amassing an "infinity index" of sound fragments. In building this archive, Ikeda and Nicolai transcend the usual dynamic whereby image acts merely as a functional accompaniment to sound. Instead, the audio element in the process is subservient to the desire and appetite of the image. This record purposefully remains unmastered, in order to retain the waveforms as originally visualized through an XY phase scope. For listening, please do not convert the tracks into a compressed format such as mp3.

Artist:	CHATON, ANNE-JAMES
Title:	Événements 09
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 128CD

1 ticket "ticket T+ OPTILE ratp - bus tm rer dans paris t sncf - carnet - stif stif stif - 005676486 I 0803 B 14" "Poor literature," that's what French sound-poet Anne-James Chaton calls trivial workaday texts like receipts, metro tickets, newspaper headlines and so on. He has been collecting these kind of texts for years now, always on certain "événements" -- media-related occasions which are of particular interest. Chaton converts them into music. On Raster-Noton, he releases "Evénements n° 20 to 28," which deal with, among others, the investiture of Barack Obama or Michael Jackson's death. The fragments of literature and their musical arrangement remind, due to their precision of the performance, of a human beatboxer. Chaton cuts, loops and samples the spoken texts and assembles them into staccato-like, hypnotizing tracks. The text itself is treated like an instrument; its repetition, its inner rhythms condense the song and push it. Apparently, random chosen phrases are isolated and their original message is transformed, their former simple meaning is extended.

Artist:	BYETONE
Title:	Symeta
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 130CD

Byetone's new record Symeta opens with a combined track -- a transit -- since "Topas" and "T-E-L-E-G-R-A-M-M" could be seen as one single piece. Both tracks convey the atmosphere of a live session rather than the character of a studio production. The tracks are quite long and deal with repetition, layers of sounds, density and energy, more than melodic and engineering finesse. The whole album follows this approach, as it was fashioned within the context of live performances during the last two years. "Neuschnee" -- the third track -- has an obviously reduced tempo, creating a wide landscape of sound with an intimate aura, which works as a counter draft to the other tracks on the record. With "Opal," the tempo speeds up again, a polyrhythmic phrase whirls around a straight beat, filters are turned, all that evokes the impression of early-'90s minimal techno. Byetone is basically interested in remembering, in a way to preserve, in citing rock/pop styles, without getting stuck in the past, whereas none of the tracks really fit into a specific genre. Seen from this perspective, "Helix" opens the final, more rocky block of the album. Here, the tracks are offensive and rude and sound like a band in a rehearsal room. This part peaks with "Black Peace" in a high-speed heavy metal session. Finally, "Golden Elegy" closes Symeta and a band-like situation occurs. The track ends with a wired lament, presented by Jan Kummer in the tenor of Chemnitz, hometown of both artists. In former GDR-times, they started their musical activity with the brilliant, dilettantish AG.Geige, together with Frank Bretschneider (Komet). Symeta, the title of the album, appears mysterious. This synthetic word arouses associations with symmetry, synthesis or (meta-)structures. It doesn't stand for a definite object, there isn't any solution, and that is the reason why the title has been chosen. Byetone's music tries to create such associations without really fulfilling these expectations. In this sense, Symeta consequently follows Death Of A Typographer (R-N 092CD), this album's well-received predecessor.

Artist:	BYETONE
Title:	Symeta
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 130LP

LP version. Byetone's record Symeta opens with a combined track -- a transit -- since "Topas" and "T-E-L-E-G-R-A-M-M" could be seen as one single piece. Both tracks convey the atmosphere of a live session rather than the character of a studio production. The tracks are quite long and deal with repetition, layers of sounds, density and energy, more than melodic and engineering finesse. The whole album follows this approach, as it was fashioned within the context of live performances during the last two years. "Neuschnee" -- the third track -- has an obviously reduced tempo, creating a wide landscape of sound with an intimate aura, which works as a counter draft to the other tracks on the record. With "Opal," the tempo speeds up again, a polyrhythmic phrase whirls around a straight beat, filters are turned, all that evokes the impression of early-'90s minimal techno. Byetone is basically interested in remembering, in a way to preserve, in citing rock/pop styles, without getting stuck in the past, whereas none of the tracks really fit into a specific genre. Seen from this perspective, "Helix" opens the final, more rocky block of the album. Here, the tracks are offensive and rude and sound like a band in a rehearsal room. This part peaks with "Black Peace" in a high-speed heavy metal session. Symeta, the title of the album, appears mysterious. This synthetic word arouses associations with symmetry, synthesis or (meta-) structures. It doesn't stand for a definite object, there isn't any solution, and that is the reason why the title has been chosen. Byetone's music tries to create such associations without really fulfilling these expectations. In this sense, Symeta consequently follows Death Of A Typographer (R-N 092CD), this album's well-received predecessor.

Artist:	SENKING
Title:	Tweek
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	12"
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	R-N 131EP

On Tweek, Senking again reveals his sense of cineastic atmospheres and dark abysmal depths of sound, which are subordinate to extremely slow, choky basses and delayed beats. Tweek is meant to be a DJ-tool for a club environment. "Tweek" refers to a character on South Park, who constantly struggles with feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. This 12" documents the eagerness to experiment, with astonishing ideas shining through the dark substance. The tracks even reveal cheerful and comical features.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO
Title:	Summvs
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 132CD

Raster-Noton releases the album Summvs, the latest result of the unusual creative partnership between the Oscar-prize honored film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and the fine artist and electronic music pioneer Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto. The name of the artists' fifth collaborative release Summvs refers to the Latin word "summa" (engl.: sum) and "versus" (engl.: towards), serving as a metaphor for the work being oriented towards a collaborative whole. Summvs is the last of a series of five releases that started with Vrioon (R-N 050CD) in 2002 and continued with 2005's Insen (R-N 065CD) and Revep (R-N 072CD) and Utp_ (R-N 096DVD) in 2007. Passages of sparse yet emotionally-charged and passionate piano solos are embedded in sine waves or reworked to establish new aesthetics of piano sound. Sparse percussions and throbbing bass pulses hover above and below -- the music being contemplative and minimal at the same time. The tracks "Microon I-III" contain recordings of one of the 15 pianos using a 16th tone interval tuning built by Sauter, Spaichingen/Donaueschingen, Germany. The original "Piano Metamorfoseador En Dieciseisavos De Tono" was designed by Julián Carrillo Trujillo. Thanks to the music department of Berne University of the Arts for making this instrument available. Included in the album are two cover versions of the track "By This River," originally written by Roedelius, Moebius and Brian Eno in 1977. In their instrumental versions of the song, Nicolai and Sakamoto create and investigate the song's appeal in both normal speed and slow motion. Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano and Alva Noto on electronics will present this fifth collaborative release live with a uniquely-styled visualization and a state-of-the-art technical setting and stage design.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Univrs
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 133CD

Alva Noto's (Carsten Nicolai) Univrs follows on from and develops the concept of the album Unitxt (R-N 095CD/LP). Whereas the focus of Unitxt was on the processing of rhythmic patterns ("unit" = unit of measurement, element) and information ("txt" = data, language), with Univrs the focus is on the conceptual differentiation of a universal language ("universum/universal" = unity, entirety). The 14 tracks on Univrs have evolved from a live context, hence, the approach is more continuous and dense. For the track "Uni Acronym," Alva Noto works again with the French vocal artist Anne-James Chaton. The track is based on a number of 208 three-letter acronyms (set in alphabetical order), creating a random narrative. The audio-visual performance of Univrs is based on the real-time manipulation of software-generated test images by audio signals. A customized hardware box triggers the video signal according to the value of the audio signal. The resulting color patterns change constantly without repetition. The visualization of Univrs (Uniscope Version) -- an expanded screen projection setup -- on a digital level combines a variety of modules demonstrating different methods of audio analyzing. The resultant signal processing is shown as a relay structure and is performed in real-time. Each module can be zoomed in on the expanded screen, enabling greater visual detail. The Univrs (Uniscope Version) was developed with the Touchdesigner software in close cooperation with Derivative in Toronto, Canada. Alva Noto would like to thank Anne-James Chaton for his on-going inspiration, Martin L. Gore for providing a sample for the track "Uni Rec," and Daniel Miller for advice and support. The album was mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk, Berlin.

Artist:	ALVA NOTO
Title:	Univrs
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	2LP
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	R-N 133LP

Gatefold 2LP version. Alva Noto's (Carsten Nicolai) Univrs follows on from and develops the concept of the album Unitxt (R-N 095CD/LP). Whereas the focus of Unitxt was on the processing of rhythmic patterns ("unit" = unit of measurement, element) and information ("txt" = data, language), with Univrs the focus is on the conceptual differentiation of a universal language ("universum/universal" = unity, entirety). The 14 tracks on Univrs have evolved from a live context, hence, the approach is more continuous and dense. For the track "Uni Acronym," Alva Noto works again with the French vocal artist Anne-James Chaton. The track is based on a number of 208 three-letter acronyms (set in alphabetical order), creating a random narrative. The audio-visual performance of Univrs is based on the real-time manipulation of software-generated test images by audio signals. A customized hardware box triggers the video signal according to the value of the audio signal. The resulting color patterns change constantly without repetition. The visualization of Univrs (Uniscope Version) -- an expanded screen projection setup -- on a digital level combines a variety of modules demonstrating different methods of audio analyzing. The resultant signal processing is shown as a relay structure and is performed in real-time. Each module can be zoomed in on the expanded screen, enabling greater visual detail. The Univrs (Uniscope Version) was developed with the Touchdesigner software in close cooperation with Derivative in Toronto, Canada. Alva Noto would like to thank Anne-James Chaton for his on-going inspiration, Martin L. Gore for providing a sample for the track "Uni Rec," and Daniel Miller for advice and support. The album was mastered by Rashad Becker at Clunk, Berlin.

Artist:	LIPPOK, ROBERT
Title:	Redsuperstructure
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 134CD

Simple sonic events are unfolding themselves, evoking the sound of a Carl Orff children's ensemble. Pleasant and strange noises join a bass foundation that recreates the ground-shaking subsonic waves of mid-'90s drum n' bass. It's like a drum major meets a Tibetan monk. They try to do a dervish thing together, elegant and funky, which forcibly drags the slowest souls out of their torpor and forces them to run and jump. Loops radiate, something is bouncing, the universe steps out of an anti-academic cloud, into your mind and the unexplored regions of our sensibility. All is good in the noosphere with Redsuperstructure. Robert Lippok's new record is based on the spectacular set he performed at Raster-Noton Electric Campfire at Villa Massimo in September of 2010. After this event, the label encouraged him (as they do every year) to re-record the material for their catalog. The events and structures of Lippok's vaudeville follow scripts which Lippok notated himself with watercolor and pencil. Other tracks were even visualized as clay sculptures. His sensitive sound syntheses are complemented by only a few samples and field recordings. On the last track, "Daylightastronomy," the accompanying harp is played by Italian harpist and composer Beatrice Martini.

Artist:	VLADISLAV DELAY
Title:	Vantaa
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 136CD

With Vantaa, Raster-Noton releases for the first time an album by Vladislav Delay aka Sasu Ripatti. Ripatti is one of the pioneers of electronic music of the last decade(s). Vantaa will be the beginning of a long-lasting collaboration which will extend and deepen the spectrum of the label, whereas it falls in line with releases of, for example, William Basinski, Robert Lippok, or Mitchell Akiyama. Even though complex electronic manipulations are used, Vantaa wants to sound like a piece of nature, resulting in a mixture of techno/dub and organic textures. The tracks oscillate between a decadent, grey-ish, post-industrial sound cloud and the intimate atmosphere of a vast and desolate Finnish landscape. Ripatti plays with tiny rhythmic bricks that drift and collapse, but nevertheless create spaces that radiate calmness and tranquility. Being an experienced producer, he uses his know-how to layer compact sound fabrics in unusual ways. In this case, these elements arouse associations with gushing water, crackling wood, or growing grass. The tracks on Vantaa merge into each other and their density escalates with "Lauma" into an energetic climax, which is all at once the ecstatic, shamanic and truly moving peak of the album. Vantaa's style is sensitive and intelligent, but nevertheless subtly stirring and rich in detail. While listening to it, it is possible to completely dive into its matter and detect something new in nearly every bar, or simply let it have an effect as a particular but unobtrusive sideline. With this typical Vladislav Delay aesthetic, Ripatti has acquired a unique and distinctive style that Vantaa, his 10th Vladislav Delay album, deservingly celebrates.

Artist:	ATOM TM
Title:	Winterreise
Label:	RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	R-N 140CD

Winterreise is the audio soundtrack to a series of photographs with the same name produced by Atom TM. The series was exhibited during 2011 in Tokyo and Frankfurt (excerpts included in the packaging of the Winterreise CD edition). The Winterreise soundtrack may be considered a sequel to the Liedgut (R-N 099CD) album, in the sense that the resulting photo series was conceived as a consequence of the contextual framework which Liedgut both initiated and provided. Winterreise, though, is a far more abstract piece of work, with its accent in soundscapes and textures. With a balance between the romantic and the scientific, this album evokes, not just accompanies, the visual aspect of the Winterreise project in a perfect manner, by painting grainy sonic images that visualize the tradition and the future of the romantic subconscious.

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