Is there a single glitch musician more renowned, accomplished, and innovative than Germany’s Carsten Nicolai, a.k.a. Alva Noto? That’s a rhetorical question. There really isn’t. In addition to the two superb collaborative albums already released this year, Summvs with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Id with Ryoji Ikeda (under the inclusive moniker, Cyclo.), Nicolai, as Alva Noto, will be releasing univrs, his first solo album of the year, on October 17.
As the relevant press release reveals, univrs will be the unofficial sequel to Unitxt (TMT Review) from 2008 and will, from a conceptual point of view, focus on language as a source of unification and universality, as opposed to an idea concerned with bits or units of information. I won’t bother surmising in detail what this may indicate from a musical standpoint, but I think it’s reasonable to expect something less fluctuating and a bit more fluid and engrossing.
In addition to the standard album release, there will also be the option to purchase a CD+DVD special-edition version, available exclusively from the Raster-Noton web store. This edition will include two booklets explaining the visual concept behind the live performance of univrs, as well as videos of the performance itself and of the ‘uni acronym video stills,’ a series of 208 three-letter acronyms set in alphabetical order, designed to create a ‘random narrative.’
Those unfamiliar with Nicolai might be inclined to consider this a mammoth undertaking. In reality, this is exactly the type of achievement that fans of his work have come to expect.
univrs tracklisting:
01. uni c
02. uni fac
03. uni asymmetric tone
04. uni rec
05. uni dia
06. uni iso
07. uni mode
08. uni acronym feat. Anne-James Chaton
09. uni asymmetric noises
10. uni deform
11. uni asymmetric III-IIII
12. uni syc
13. uni asymmetric sweep
14. uni pro
• Alva Noto: http://www.alvanoto.com
• Raster-Noton: http://www.raster-noton.net
