Alva Noto

Hard to believe, given the numerous EPs, collections and Ryuichi Sakamoto collaboration albums that have come out bearing the Alva Noto moniker, but Xerrox constitutes the first proper solo full-length for Carsten Nicolai since 2002’s Transform. Since then, the clicks and cuts have come and gone, and by this estimation are on their way back again. Transform was a bit of a lacklustre affair by Noto standards, but still a worthwhile album that constituted his most explicit genre experiment into abstract click-hop, which bordered in places on Pan Sonic’s catalogue. He has spent the years in between avoiding making such replicable statements. Xerrox is purported to be the first of a five-part set and if its 62 minutes are any indication, this series will present the centrepiece cycle of Nicolai’s career. Xerrox is a wholly different beast for Nicolai, an evolution that brings together the digital detritus of Noto’s more recent EPs and fleshes them out with a newfound classical composure, with repetition being replaced by a more fluid attentiveness to oscillations in pitch. It’s a way more evocative product, rumbling with the influence of his Ryuichi Sakamoto collaborations and a much keener ear for the interplay between noise and silence. It’s also warmer and subtler in scope than previous work. It’s on par with the best of Fennesz’s work and is a must-have for fans of glitch music, which, given what Raster-Noton and 12k have been releasing lately, is on a major upswing.