Alva Noto
Carsten Nicolai, known as Alva Noto, is a German musician and visual artist. He is a member of the music groups Diamond Version with Olaf Bender, Signal with Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender, Cyclo with Ryoji Ikeda, ANBB with Blixa Bargeld, ALPHABET with Anne-James Chaton, Opto with Thomas Knak, and Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto with whom he composed the score for the 2015 film The Revenant.
Life and career
Carsten Nicolai was born in Karl-Marx-Stadt of Saxony, GDR in 1965. He studied architecture and landscape design before pursuing art. In 1994 he founded the label NOTON, following which a collaboration with RasterMusic began and by 1999 the two labels had merged into Raster-Noton, which operated until 2017.Returning to the labels origin in 2017, Nicolai runs NOTON separately.
In 2009 Nicolai has written an opera, Sparkie: Cage and Beyond, in collaboration with Michael Nyman.
Nicolai has performed and created installations in many of the world's most prestigious spaces including the Guggenheim, New York, the SF MoMA, Modern Art Oxford, NTT Tokyo, Tate Modern and Venice Biennale, Italy. As a member of the Raster-Noton label he was responsible for the acclaimed CD series 20 to 2000 that went on to win the Golden Nica prize at Prix Ars Electronica, 2000.
Carsten Nicolai also works as a visual artist. In 2013, Nicolai participated as a visual artist in Biennale Documenta, an official collateral show of the 55th Venice Biennale of Art.
Nicolai started his professorship in art with focus on digital and time-based media with Dresden Academy of Fine Arts since 2015.
Nicolai scored the music for Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant. The score was nominated for a Golden Globe, BAFTA, Grammy and Critics' Choice Movie Awards. In 2018 he created the sound design for Iñárritu’s groundbreaking VR project "Carne y Arena" Flesh and Sand.
Discography
Alva Noto solo studio albums
- Prototypes — 2000
- module 4 — 2001
- Transform — 2001 & re-released on Raster-Noton in 2008
- mort aoux vaches — 2002
- Xerrox Vol.1 — 2007
- Unitxt — 2008
- Xerrox Vol.2 — 2009
- Univrs — 2011
- Xerrox Vol.3 — 2015
- UNIEQAV — 2018
- UNIEQAV Remixes featuring reworks by Fatima Al Qadiri, Ben Frost, JASSS, Florian Kupfer, Luis Da Silva — 2020
- Xerrox Vol.4 — 2020
Alva Noto as Aleph-1 solo studio album
- Aleph-1 — 2007
Alva Noto extended plays (EP">Extended play">EP)
- Transrapid — 2005 Raster-Noton
- Transvision — 2005 Raster-Noton
- Transspray — 2005 Raster-Noton
Alva Noto as noto solo studio albums
- spin — 1996
- infinity — 1997
- infinity — 1997
- kerne — 1998
- polyfoto — 1998
- time..dot — 1999
- empty garden, inside out '— 1999
- telefunken — 2000
- endless loop — 2002
- autorec — 2002
- sonar endless edition — 2003
Alva Noto as anbb solo studio albums
- ret marut handshake — 2010
- mimikry''— 2010
Compilation albums
- for— 2006
- for 2— 2010
Soundtrack albums
- The Revenant — 2015 Milan Records
Collaborations
- Vrioon — December 2002
- Insen — March 2005
- Revep — March 2006
- Insen Live — October 2006. DVD release
- utp_ — September 2008
- Summvs — May 2011
- Alva Noto, Mika Vainio, Ryoji Ikeda - Live 2002 - 19 January 2018
- "Glass" — February 2018
- Two — November 2019
- Cyclo. — 2001
- Cyclo.id — 2011
- Cyclo. — 2017
- Cyclo.id — 2017
- Ø + noto - mikro makro - 1997
- Ø + noto - wohltemperiert - 2001
- Uniform: SF MoMA 2001. CD Contains 1 track, "Uniform," performed and recorded by Carsten Nicolai and Robin Rimbaud for the exhibition of ""010101: Art in Technological Times"" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on 3 March 2001.
- Ret Marut Handshake — 2010
- Mimikry — 2010
- Opto Files — 2001. Limited CD release. Number 6 in the raster.static series. CD Comes in a silver anti-static bag with green card insert.
- Opto: 2nd — June 2004. The CD contains ten tracks, all titled with times of the day. The collaboration was created in a 48-hour period and was inspired by the restored recording from a cassette found in a forest in Eastern Germany.
- Zeitkratzer & Carsten Nicolai: Electronics — 2008
- Anne-James Chaton With Alva Noto And Andy Moor - Décade, Raster-Noton, R-N 135, 2012
- Alva Noto & Anne-James Chaton - ALPHABET, NOTON, 2019
- EP1 — 2012
- EP2 — 2012
- EP3 — 2013
- EP4 — 2013
- EP5 — 2013
- CI — 2 / 3 June 2014
- Leaves of Grass — February 2016. A seven-track EP on which Iggy Pop performs the poetry of Walt Whitman to music composed by Alva Noto and Tarwater.
Compilation appearances (exclusive/non-albums tracks)
- "Monophaser 4" from "V.a. – :2"
- "Garment" from "Sound Canvas | 1"
- "Planet Rock" from "Recovery"
- "Stalker" from "In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky"
- "Haloid Xerrox Copy 3 " from "Mind The Gap Volume 70"
- "06.1 Quanta Random" from "Tribute to Iannis Xenakis"
- "Sonolumi " from "Camera Lucida"
- "Odradek " from "It Just Is In Memoriam Jhonn Balance"
- "Re10" from "Landscape 2"
- "Post-Remo" from "Richard Chartier + Various – Re'Post'Postfabricated"
- "Party Plasibenpuis " from "The Hidden City: Sound Portraits from Goteborg"
- "Time...Dot " from "An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music / Third A-Chronology 1952-2004"
- "m6re" from "SoundxVision 2004"
- "Obi 2 Min." from "Frecuencies "
- "60 sec" from "Soundcultures"
- "Strategies Against War 1.0—Covering All Information with White Noise" from "60 Sound Artists Protest the War" as Carsten Nicolai
- "MM", "Time Dot" from "Raster-Noton. Archiv 1" as Noto
- "Obi_2.3" from "Electrograph 02 – Athens Sound Media Festival 02"
- "Menschmaschine" from "Klangmaschine_Soundmachine"
- "Crystal R" from "Various – Live Sets At Ego 1998-2000" as Noto
- "M 06 Short" from "Electric Ladyland Clickhop Version 1.0"
- "Neue Stadt " from "Clicks & Cuts, Vol. 2"
- "Modul 4", "Impulse" from "Raster-Noton.acis Box" as Noto
- "Neue Stadt Skizze 1" from "Between Two Points" as Noto
- "Sound Mobile" from "Ringtones"
- "Prototyp P" from "Raster-Noton. Oacis"
- "Prototype n." from "Clicks & Cuts"
- "Crystal s 10 60 sec." from "Computer Music Journal Sound Anthology, vol. 24" as Noto
- "Crystal.s2" from "Microscopic Sound" as Noto
- "∞ " from "Various – Because Tomorrow Comes #2" as Carsten Nicolai
- "Polyfoto 1a-1" from "Modulation & Transformation 4" as Noto
- "Zeit T3" from "Effe 1999"
- "POL.Motor", ".Test", ".Versuch", ".Anordnung", ".Variation", ".Modell" from "Just About Now" as Carsten Nicolai
- "Chemnitz" from "Decay" as Noto
Remixes
- Björk – Innocence
- Björk – Dark Matter
- Byetone – Plastic Star
- Greie Gut Fraktion – Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt
- Hauschka – Radar
- John Cale – Catastrofuk
- Kangding Ray – Pruitt Igoe
- Ludovico Einaudi – Divenire
- Machinefabriek – Stofstuk
- Modwheelmood – Things Will Change
- Opiate – 100301
- Pantha Du Prince – Frau Im Mond, Sterne Laufen
- Pomassl – Sol
- Ryuichi Sakamoto – Insensatez
- Ryuichi Sakamoto – Undercooled
- Sōtaisei Riron + Keiichirō Shibuya – Our Music
- Spyweirdos – Wiesbaden
Installations, etc.
- Audio installation in the Piazza del Plebiscito, Naples, Italy, December, 2009
- Opening performance for "010101: Art in Technological Times" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on 3 March 2001
- Lovebytes Digital Festival, Sheffield, England, 2003
- Sónar Music Festival, 2004 and 2009
- Netmage, Bologna, Italy, 2006
- BBmix Festival, 31 October 2008
- Club Transmediale, Berlin, Germany, 2009, 2008 and 2000
- Pace Gallery, New York, 2010