You’ll think I’m silly, but I almost didn’t want to listen this: I love Alva Noto, I love Ryuichi Sakamoto, I love Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sakamoto’s latest album was almost heartbreakingly perfect, and I didn’t want to be disappointed.
Well, I’m glad I got over myself, because this is a magical and wondrous thing. It’s not what you’ll be expecting if you’ve heard their previous collaborations like Insen and Summvs. It’s a single 37-minute piece, recorded live at Philip Johnson’s modernist (and self-explanatory) masterpiece Glass House, and a lot of the sounds here are from playing the house itself, with gong mallets, fingertips, and contact microphones. Other instruments are singing bowls, crotales, and keyboards. The effect is out of this world, in every sense of the phrase. I’m not sure I can think of anything to compare it to except — and this is going to sound idiotic, but bear with me — there’s one segment that’s a tiny bit like Brian Eno’s Prophecy Theme from the Dune soundtrack… which is a good thing, honestly! Other than that… There are sounds that just hang in the air, delicate crystalline things, and then tiny moments that are surprising in exactly the right way. Alva Noto does a thing to the crotales that somehow makes them sound like a cross between windchimes and firecrackers: I don’t think there’s any way you’ll know what I mean by that without listening to it, but it’s brilliant. I don’t want to over-egg this or anything, but OMG YOU GUYS this is awesome. It’s the kind of thing that, when it finishes, you feel like you’ve been holding your breath for the last half an hour.
Oh, and if you don’t believe me, check out the 26-minute video version for free (although it deserves a quiet room and some proper headphones).
I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Electronic.
dogrando writes about some records 