From Philip Sherburne Sent Thu, Mar 25th 1999, 17:38
From Philip Sherburne Sent Thu, Mar 25th 1999, 17:38
I have to chime in with a resounding recommendation of the Noton releases on Rastermusic. Plenty of people have discussed the 20' to 2000 so far so I'll say no more about them except they're excellent (and for those who are skeptical of ultra-minimalism, the first installment, by comment, has plenty of subtle beats, ringing harmonics -- not just clicks and whirrs). Other releases to check out are the "Infinity" release by Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai). As someone else mentioned, it's a collection of lock grooves, all sampled from various modem/fax/communications sounds. I'm not really a huge fan of lock grooves, actually, but this record's quite different -- none of the grooves are designed to create 4/4 beats, but rather these strange off-kilter tone-sequences. it's amazing the amount of information that can be fit into a single revolution of the record, in fact. I'm not sure if this was mentioned above, but the loops were broadcast intermittently throughout the city of Kassel during the last Documenta art event -- they were broadcast in public places, over radio stations (thrown in between "regular" programming) -- so it was very much designed as a public art piece. "Mikro/Makro," by Noto and Mika Vainio, is another great one. Four sides (a 2x10"; I'm not sure if it's also a CD), each artist takes 2 sides. For this project Noto sampled 2 sources: one was the sound of a CAT-scanner scanning his own brain (Micro), the other the sounds emitted by a radio telescope tracking pulsars (macro). This record is much more in the clicks-and-whirrs vein; but if you like Ryoji Ikeda, Vainio's solo stuff, etc., you ought to dig. As a side note, this is actually the document of an installation piece that Noto & Vainio did. Recently I picked up another record -- maybe Noton, maybe Raster -- a recording of a performance on shortwave radio, recorded some 10 -15 years ago. I was skeptical, thinking it might be all static and hiss, but it's actually pretty compelling (and I figure it'll make a good mixing tool for those desperate situations when you realize the needle's about to run out on the last track and you've got to throw something down fast, heh heh). There's a good piece on Rastermusic at Motion (www.state51.co.uk/motion), and I'll have an interview with Noto in the upcoming issue of Urban Sounds -- watch this space for details. Philip Sherburne