Noton Germany Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Storied German ambient, microsound and electronica musician Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) shares the fifth volume of his intentionally indefinite Xerrox series, Xerrox Vol. 5. First begun in 2007, after envisaging a series of albums released in chronic sequence, the Xerrox series expressly aims to prove that the continued copying and replication of recorded sound will produce an indefinite variation, each copy infinitely more interesting than the last. With every edition of Xerrox using the same album cover, the sonic contents of the Xerrox albums similarly mimic each other's movements, through a process of making minuscule changes that go onto produce cascading, domino-effecting results. The palette is expansive and cinematic as ever, though it is striking to know that these suites were achieved solely through the manipulation of recordings made and subsequently timestretched from scratch.

Review: Noton Records - an outfit dedicated largely and almost solely to the output of experimental electronic / minimal legend Alva Noto - here presents the full 10" box set version of Infinity, the mammoth set of originally 72 (here just 50) "sound graffities" commissioned to the artist by contemporary art exhibition Documenta X. The aim of Documenta X was to abstract the member of the public from their everyday lifeworld, exposing them instead to bare sonic spaces in which modernist sound fragments were played back, expressly challenging the collective listener's cochlear gaze. None of these pieces amount to full songs on Noto's part; instead they serve as auditory "throw-ups", to borrow from graffiti parlance, mirroring the unconscionable nature of certain visual or aural perceptions - public art works, gradual alterations in the environment, etc. - as we perceive them only intuitively, only in passing, as we submit to the daily bustle of the street. It comes as no surprise that many of these pieces were also played in public spaces outside the white cube, such as airports and public spaces: the tracks squeeze and bend time-space with twinging noisebursts and glitching digital scuzzes; cortically, convexly, chirally inverting the dysthymias of urban life and transience.