Noton Germany Vinilo y CD

Review: Back in 2008, noted experimentalist Alva Noto began a sporadic series of albums that were far more focused on dancefloor-inspired rhythms than his usual eccentric and inspiring fare. Unieqav is the third and, we're told, final part of the series. The album is apparently meant to be a sonic representation of an underwater dive, a conceptual theme which manifests itself through the storied producer's use of deep and atmospheric chords, fluid and occasionally glistening electronics, and rhythms that evoke images of ever-deeper dives into the dark, cold depths. Rhytmically, there are nods to electro, IDM, dub techno and Autechre, though the mood remains laidback and intoxicated throughout.

Review: When he launched the "Xerrox" series way back in 2007, Alva Noto intended it to run to five volumes. Here he presents the fourth volume, which largely eschews "external samples" of everyday sounds - the series was inspired by the idea of creating new musical motifs from "copies of copies" - in favour of greater warmth, emotion and musical dexterity. There's much to enjoy throughout, from the appealing, slow-burn haziness of deep ambient opener "Xerrox Kirlian" and the distinctly cinematic, Angelo Badalamenti-in-"Twin Peaks"-mode beauty of "Xerrox Voyage", to the Radiophonic Workshop style creepiness of "Xerrox Cosmos" and the melancholic, string-laden swell of "Xerrox Canaux".

Review: Alva Noto is the alias of Carsten Nicolai, a German artist and musician who explores the intersection of sound, art and science. He is also the founder of the Noton label, via which his latest album Kinder Der Sonne comes. Containing music composed for the score of the theatre piece Komplizen by Simon Stone, its title comes from Maxim Gorky's play Children of the Sun, written in the context of the 1905 Russian Revolution. 14 tracks of glitchy minimalism and electronic-classical bend the concepts contained therein to pure sonic abstraction, reflecting the themes of the play: social unrest, human nature and existential crisis.

Review: German artists and Noton co-founder Alva Noto composed the soundtrack to 'This Stolen Country Of Mine' back in 2022. It has arrived both on vinyl and now on CD and is an accompaniment to the documentary film which explores the question of a state's sovereignty in the face of foreign powers, portraying Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country's resources to Chinese investors. Those themes sure are heavy and Noto is up to the job of matching them with his minimal, but tense score. It is quietly powerful and determined much like the communal spirit of the Ecuadorian mountain villagers.

Review: Undisputed king of tactile, glitch 'n' wash ambient soundscapes, Alva Noto's latest offering features music originally composed for a dance performance piece directed by Richard Siegal and performed at the Berlin State Opera in 2019. From the gauzy, sedate opening strains of 'HYbr:ID Ectopia Environment' to the foreboding rumble of closer "HYbr:ID Ectopia Gravitation", Noto conjures up a sequence of profoundly spatial, sparse yet deeply emotive tone floats, finding root somewhere inbetween the scattered sonoliths of Moritz Von Oswald's dub techno concrete and Ryoji Ikeda's stroboscopic pulses. It is no surprise that the pieces were composed with dancers in mind, as the contracting and relaxing of breathy pads on tracks like 'HYbr:ID Ectopia Field 1' and 'HYbr:ID Ectopia Removing Infinities' allude to the pulsing of bodies; sonic characters cutting paths through the vast aural concert hall which Noto has terraformed. Dive in!

Review: "Alphabet" is the pairing of French poet and sound artist Anne-James Chaton with former Raston-Noton man Alva Noto. Their debut album features Chaton's spoken word mutterings, which range from repeating a series of numbers to looped one word phrases via the annunciation of phonetic sounds, carefully filtered and layered into dark but inviting drones, cold wave and ambient experimentalism. It's all inspired by Etymologiae, an etymological encyclopaedia compiled in the seventh century by Spanish scholar Isidore Of Seville, and despite that weird and wonderful source material makes for an enthralling and atmospheric listen.

Review: Last summer, regular collaborators Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto joined forces for a one-off improvised performance at architect Philip Johnson's Glass House in Connecticut, a stunning building marked out by a lack of traditional walls. Using only a keyboard, mixers, microphones, singing glass bowls, crotales (tiny cymbals played with mallets), the "architecture of the building" and limited rehearsal time, the acclaimed experimentalists created a genuinely unique piece that drew influence from the surroundings. Here, Noton presents the recording of the "100% improvised" piece on CD for the first time. It's an undeniably arresting piece - think droning electronic textures, glass-blown ambience and icily atmospheric soundscapes - and one that requires more than a 30-second clip to take in. We can assure you, though, that it really is a spellbinding and at times jaw-dropping affair.

Review: Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto's collaborative partnership reaches back to the turn of the century, when Noto was touring Japan and invited to rework some of Sakamoto's material. Since then, they've delivered a modest but important body of work via Raster-Noton and produced the soundtrack to major Hollywood film "The Revenant". In the wake of last year's "Glass" released on Noto's Noton label, this live album captures the duo in full flight at Sydney Opera House. Noto's immaculately sculpted tones and textures carve out space around Sakamoto's trademark delicate, lingering notes, resulting in an absorbing listening experience as emotionally engaging as it is technically astounding.

Review: mSometime Coil affiliate CoH has spent the last few years combing his cutting-edge experimental techniques and love of mind-altering electronics with what counts - in his sphere of interest at least - as traditional rock and pop song structures. He continues that theme on WYGG: While Your Guitar Gently, a collection whose laudable attempts at accessibility are partially countered by his experimental instructs and love of curiously processed, otherworldly sounds. In truth, it's a very enjoyable and entertaining listen, with the long-serving producer combining fractured, manipulated guitar sounds with bullish, glitchy electronic rhythms, pulsating electronic motifs, copious amounts of mind-altering effects and a genuine sense of wide-eyed excitement. In other words, it's off-kilter minimalism dialled up to the max, with added musical vibrancy.

Review: There's something undeniably tactile about Japanese composer Ikeda's 'Ultratronics'. The bass is metallic and dense, the grainy and glitched-out synths ringing out in a mathematical tempo on tracks like 'ultratronics 05'. There's a philosophy of high art, a scene that Ikeda has dabbled in before with installations and exhibitions, that is a hallmark of Japanese electronica composers old and new. The album has just as many pared-back moments (like in 02 and 07, scattered throughout vocal samples of rocket and space radio transmissions) as it does hardcore electronic industrial thrashing (06 and 14 spring to mind for mind-blowing explosions of synths).

Review: While many experimentalists are still coming to terms with the death of the late, great producer and live performer Mika Vainio, his spirit lives on via occasional archival releases. This latest one is particularly special, as it presents a rare live recording - apparently the only one in existence - of Vainio's three-way collaboration with fellow electronic minimalists Ryoji Ikeda and Alvo Noto. Across 11 movements, the trio thrilling moves through droning ambient, Autechre-ish re-imaginings of Jamaican dancehall rhythms, concrete-clad electro and pulsating abstract techno, before returning to where they began. It's a dizzying and hugely enjoyable journey that somehow gets the perfect balance each of the contributor's trademark style.

Review: Italian sound designer and producer Saele Valese has been operating around the fringes of minimalistic electronic music for some time, though this outing on Noton is still his debut full-length excursion. Named in honour of his alternative production alias, IVIC, the set does a great job in showcasing his now trademark sound: a hushed, atmospheric and enveloping blend of creeping drone tones, softly swelling ambient noise, occasional sub-bass tones and sparse, pared-back electronic rhythms. For the most part the tone is clandestine and mildly unsettling, with periods of decaying beauty interspersed with strangely hypnotic outings and genuinely chilling musical moments.