Browse by Artist: ALVA NOTO + RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

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 + 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:	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:	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:	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.

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