Alva Noto

We talk to pioneering German artist Alva Noto about his history, HYbr:ID 2, Ryuchi Sakamoto, and more.

For over 20 years now, Cartsen Nicolai has influenced the world of transdisciplinary art, becoming one of the most prolific artists of our time. Combining architecture, physics, sound, image, and data, his work has captivated many and has been featured in some of the worlds leading institutions.

Starting as Noto in 1996, Carsten’s desire to express himself sonically was heightened after he encountered the French experimental label MILLE PLATEAU. It was here, with his 2000 record, Prototypes, that he introduced Alva Noto to the world. Through this new vice, he would bring a multidisciplinary approach to electronic music, fusing scientific and experimental nature, and strong visual aspects to his work. This would all eventually lead to a collaboration with the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, who together, would go on to create an incredible discography that would see them nominated for numerous awards, whilst also changing perceptions of what music could be.

His recent release HYbr:ID 2, is a continuation of his 2021 record of the same name. Originally commissioned for a contemporary dance show by Richard Siegal, these hybridised compositions sit somewhere between beat-driven and ambient music, and – through Carsten’s efforts – have taken on a more independent form of their own.
Inspired by Minokowskis’s four-dimensional space-time model, Carsten removes the use of samples, relying solely on what he calls ‘acoustic electronic sounds’. The result is an expansive and emotional collection of cinematic scores accompanied by beautifully designed graphical notation.

Whether it’s creating radical moments of artistic minimalism or transmuting his passions for physics and space through his music, Alva Noto remains one of the most exciting and prolific artists of our time. Throughout our interview, Carsten reflects on his and Ryuichi’s vision towards their work, his exhibition at the FMAV, HYbr:ID 2 and more.

Alva Noto has existed since around 2000. What can you say about the past 24 years? I imagine it went in the blink of an eye.

It’s been a long journey. When I started producing music under the name of Alva Noto, it was never a goal of mine to start a music career. I had an idea about what kind of music I wanted to produce, but I didn’t have a clear vision of where this journey would take me.

There was a lot of, let’s say, unexpected but good feedback on the works that I did without the context or help of a huge label. It basically grew on its own naturally, which I am really thankful for.

Where are you finding your inspiration after all this time?

It’s difficult to say. I was a music listener before anything else. I was always looking for new and interesting sounds, so I naturally gravitated towards the experimental avant-garde scene. At some point, I began to form a clear view of what kind of music I was looking for, but I couldn’t find it. In a way, I started producing music to facilitate this. It wasn’t until later that I realised I wasn’t alone in my idea of what kind of music was for this time.

Then, through our collaboration with Raster (which would go on to become Raster-Noton) we formed a collective. What I think was interesting for many from my audience is that I would not only be producing music but that I would take a more multidisciplinary approach. There was a very strong visual aspect that accompanied the music. The aesthetics of the packaging and the live presentations have radical ideas about performance spaces. The shop idea is a good example. What could be a shop in today’s situation? Could it be more of a social space or maybe a place for listening? All these ideas have slowly developed into something.

When I started, it was possibly the golden age for MILLE PLATEAU. The label was heavily contributing to the experimental scene at the time. What I found interesting about them is that they had a very strong philosophical approach that was far more captivating than the classical idea of just releasing an album. I think my quote at the time was: “We are not releasing music; we are releasing ideas.”

Another huge step was probably the collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto. In the beginning, we hadn’t actually planned to collaborate. I was even a little bit shy to work with classical musicians. I was more interested in biographies, which have, let’s say, an unusual approach to music.

When the first two albums with Ryuichi surfaced, there were a lot of people who may have struggled with the idea of pure sine waves and the super reductional style of musical sound. It didn’t really sound like music. It sounded more like physics. As the collaboration began to take shape, I think a lot of people from that background started to get involved.

Those are radical ideas for that type of crowd to witness.

I think the combination of a classical instrument with the very spark of pure electronic music was quite unusual for the time. If you look at today’s situation, however, I think it’s normal. It’s almost like a genre of its own now.

It was a similar thing to when I started performing live. I come from a visual arts background, so I was always thinking about the visuals. I found it boring to watch people stand behind a laptop. I cannot perform, so instead I had the visuals become the interaction between the audience, the performance, and myself. I think this combination works well and is normal in today’s world. When I started, things were different. Sometimes, when I send my tech rider to people, they would come back and say things like: “We are a music festival. We don’t have projectors.”

It’s interesting how fast things move. Nowadays, festivals have a large emphasis on the audio-visual side of things.

I remember carrying a bunch of cables around with me to connect everything. The festivals didn’t have anything, and would often have to rent equipment for the performance. I think we prepared the ground for something which has become very fruitful. Considering today’s situation, I don’t think anybody would guess this was only 20 years ago.

Let’s loop back to Ryuichi Sakamoto. He has obviously been a huge figure inside and outside of your working life. Your latest exhibition Strahlen holds two works dedicated to him. Could you tell us more about them?

When we started cooperating with Ryuichi, we wanted to make five albums, each one taking a slightly different approach. After our third album Revep, we were starting to think about a word that could connect those albums together. At the time, both Ryuichi and I were strong fans (and friends) of Laurie Anderson, and in one of her earlier albums, there is a quote which references language as a virus. This sentence really stuck in our minds. Language was a virus, and our language was music. However, in the days post-COVID we see it in a completely different way. If we had known what was coming, we would have never chosen such a word, as it does not have a positive connotation as it did in the past.

When I designed the box set for the collection, I created a kind of abstract design which was later made into two paintings. I had created them after Ryuichi’s passing, so in a way, I dedicated them to his memory. After observing the works, I started to realise a few things. Not only do they reflect on our past collaboration, but I also realised that the image had an abstraction to it. It was not only the image of a virus, but at the same time, it was the symbol of radiation, a warning sign.

In German, the word strahl means ray, and it holds multiple meanings. It could represent radiation, but it could also represent the viewer. It could be that you have a smile on your face, and you are in fact the one sending out these rays. I don’t know if this poetic translates easily in other languages, but in German terms, it felt like a large part of the exhibition was based around this concept of radiation. 

Another thing was that one of the first tours we did with Ryuichi was in Medina. Strangely enough, they put me in the exact same hotel that we had stayed in back then, so it was a kind of, let’s say…

Coincidence?

A lot of coincidences. But they all made sense in some way.

Can you explain your process when designing the exhibition?

Honestly, much of it came as a reaction to the space. FMAV is a symmetrically oriented building which has a central entrance. From its centre point, the space is practically mirrored. With this in mind, I wanted to have two main works that more or less created a certain kind of polarity. I chose Reflektor Distortion. It’s more of a sculptural work that works with sound and light that I produced in both black and white versions.

It felt good to frame everything between these two works as a main work. Reflektor Distortion is around ten years old, so I included newer works towards the centre. Whenever you get an offer for these kinds of specific museum spaces, you can’t always present the works you want. You must look for the ones that fit and make sense in the space. There was a lot of discussion between myself and the museum curators on how things would look. They had a lot of ideas, but the space wasn’t suitable for many of the other works we wanted to show.

This is a normal process when it comes to compiling an exhibition. Also, a small budget would usually exist for a catalogue of the featured works, but instead, I proposed that the money go towards a new work. I wanted to print a kind of artist edition that would be part of the show as well. This edition became Ray Collector

Let’s take things back to Alva Noto. HYbr:ID II is an interesting project. In what ways has it expanded from the first?

When thinking of the name hybrid, it references botany more so than hybrid cars. As a trained landscape designer, I have learned a lot about plants. There are some that are referred to as hybrids, which are basically a merging of different species.

After I finished the Uni series, I considered returning to the idea of my first albums, where beat-driven and ambient tracks are not so clearly divided. As the album is a merging of these different approaches, I thought HYbr:ID was a nice name.

The starting point for the series started with a composition for a ballet that I was asked to work on. When the project began, I started very early, even without knowing the choreography. Sometimes, I only get a rough concept, or someone will give me inspirational material like a photograph.

The second edition was much more scientifically oriented than the first, but in a way, they kind of have the same topic. I thought about stripping everything back, removing the samples and instead sculpting the raw electronic sounds.

After I composed a lot of music, I realised that I wanted to make it more or less a full body of work, regardless of it being used in the ballet.

I also wrote a lot of abstract, poetic texts that reflect different scientific ideas. The fascingating part of reading some of these scientific papers on quantum physics, etc., is that you don’t necessarily know the context of the texts. You don’t know if they write about a personal or spooky relationship because they have a lot of poetics. This is kind of a hybrid idea too.

There are a lot of mysterious descriptions of the unknown, so when you hear scientists talking about this, it becomes blurry, but you can feel that there is a certain kind of belief behind it.

Mostly, they want to believe in the beauty of nature, that it all makes sense. But it’s also very descriptive because you don’t know if they are describing particles, or the relation of two humans. I was also involved in some elements of researching the unknown like black holes and weird recordings of radio telescopes from NASA. I was inspired by these kinds of sounds.

Compositionally, has your approach changed at all from the first one?

For HYbr:ID II, I was looking into more acoustic sounds, but ones from a purely electronic base. Let’s say you have a modular system, and you are building on a sine wave, I would always stop when the sound became too rich. But for this one, I was searching for the richness. I involve resonators, harmonizers, and some clicks and pings. These things do not necessarily have a musical aspect, but I involved these weird, resonating harmonies.

This was kind of a focus for me, but you can hear that it’s an Alva Noto record. I always think it’s radical and new, but when I play it for my friends, they say: “yeah, it sounds like you.” I am not so talented that I can simply switch to another genre that easily, so I more or less stay in the same domain.

How do you like to spend your time outside of creation?

Nowadays, I can’t really say that this is where I get my inspiration from. I’m not sure if you are aware, but I am a teacher in an art school, and a large part of my life now revolves around being with my students.

The other day I was telling my students that sometimes it’s good to try to do nothing without any approach. This is something that is probably falling behind during the creative process. Most of the time, you are too busy computing stuff in the background, and you can’t really switch off.

Once a year, I have this routine where I completely disappear for around two months. In that time, I try not to work on anything. I try to do something simple that is completely removed from what I usually do, like cooking or sewing. There are always these moments of input and output. If you only have the output, then I think it’s very difficult to find new ideas and inspiration.

What’s next for Carsten Nicolai/Alva Noto?

Well, I have already finished HYbr:ID 3 a few months ago, and it has recently been sent off for mastering. When it comes out, it will pretty much continue the series. I have also recorded two soundtracks which I might release, but I have to think about it. I always need some distance to see how the material ages.

Whenever I do these types of commissions, I like to return to it and review it, forgetting that it has a context of somebody dancing to it or whatever. I may even re-record the tracks again. It’s important to me that they have a life of their own.

Sometimes in film for example, the tracks can be super short, so I make alternate versions and then wait to see if the material is worth releasing. I have to listen back in a few months and see how I feel about it.

I am also working on Xerrox Vol. 5, which I want to finish this year. I would say it’s around 80% finished. I think I just need a solid two or three weeks of listening again to decide what might be missing in terms of hearing it as a complete album. This one has taken a long time to make.

What was the reason?

Since Vol. 3, I’ve predominantly stopped using samples. There may be some here and there, but I’m rebuilding the ones I do use from scratch.

It took me around 3 years to write the melodic parts for this one, but now I’m making changes, stripping it back down into something rougher, changing the sonic landscapes, etc.

It’s an interesting way of working, but I’m sure that the project will be amazing when it’s finished.

Let’s see. It’s funny because I was playing a track to my friend the other day, and he said it sounds very much like a continuation of Volume 4.

Were you happy about that?

Yes, very happy. Between this album and Volume 4 it’s now been 7 years or something, so it’s quite a long time. I’m a little bit sad that It’s coming to an end. Maybe I’ve been kind of scared to finish it. I think I will miss this in my life. But, on the other hand, it will be good to wrap this up to create more space for other things.

What do you think you’ve learned about yourself in these seven years?

It’s difficult to say because a lot of things have happened. Ryuichi died, and a lot of personal things changed around us. It’s a very radical society around us at the moment, and I would say that the atmosphere is not very peaceful. Politically speaking, the right wing is really growing, and there’s a lot of worries inside as well. So maybe it’s good I finished it. I always felt this project had something outside of its time.

It had the atmosphere of a different world so to speak. Maybe how the world would have existed in the past. In this context, maybe HYbr:ID is more the idea of how the future may look.