Alva Noto - HYbr:ID III (Noton)

The soundtrack is chilly & typically precise - rather like the art form, where there can be no room for error or mind wandering to a song's subject matter.

A few brief thoughts…

I'd love to see Richard Siegal's dance show that Alva Noto's Noh influenced HYbr:ID III score was commissioned for, but when its inspiration is Shuudan koudou - synchronized precision walking, I guess all preconceptions of a dance show & music should be left at the door. The soundtrack is chilly & typically precise - rather like the art form, where there can be no room for error or mind wandering to a song's subject matter. The beauty lies with Noto's obvious love of machine tones, his painstaking sculpting of electronic noise into impressive time resistant sounds & their meticulous arrangement into enduring music for the mind rather than the heart.

Have a listen:

I can’t embed a player for you today as the LP isn’t available on Bandcamp, the Soundcloud embed in this case is rather limited and I don’t wish to promote Spotify - currently the only streaming service that can be embedded in Substack, but I’m sure you’ll work it out if you fancy a full listen (headphones recommended). It’s a good excuse to check out the perfectly dispassionate videos for a couple of tracks from the LP.

You can also find a track from the LP & lots of other machine loving musicians in the Slowtronic Playlist.

What The Release Notes Say:

HYbr:ID III, continuing the trajectory established by its predecessors, crafts a soundscape of meditative and resonant tones. Drawing inspiration from Noh, a traditional Japanese musical drama dating back to the 14th century, the album reflects the genre’s distinctive rhythmic movements and its nuanced expression of emotions through subtle gestures.
“The HYbr:ID albums are conceived as worlds. My focus has been on crafting them to possess a sculptural quality. Each composition transitions into the next. I emphasize engaging with them in the intended track sequence, allowing sounds and structures to reveal their full dimension”. — Carsten Nicolai

The HYbr:ID series is Carsten Nicolai’s ongoing research into heterogeneous compositional methods that converge in music fusing geometries, dystopias, and scientific references. The sounds oscillate between stylized, dilated rhythms and dreamy atmospheres generated by high and low frequencies.