Experimental musicians Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto will surely receive a substantial amount of new exposure stateside following their score for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s new film The Revenant. But it would be a shame if they became better known for their late-career soundtrack work than the wealth of material they recorded prior. Noto and Sakamoto have recorded four albums together, all of which make for quite good ambient listening, and their solo careers have seen them pioneering numerous strains of electronica. Here’s a quick guide to what these two have done in the past.
THE MUSICIANS:
Courtesy of Resident Advisor
Alva Noto (born Carsten Nicolai, 1965) is a German musician best known for founding Raster-Noton, an influential label in the glitch subgenre of electronic music, and he’s also released a number of ambient albums on his own. He recently composed Sparkie: Cage And Beyond, an opera focusing on a parrot that acquired a vocabulary of more than 600 words in the 1960s.
Courtesy of Resident Advisor
Ryuichi Sakamoto (born 1952) is a Japanese composer and keyboardist who began his career as a member of the pioneering electronic group Yellow Magic Orchestra. The group helped lay the foundations for EDM in the late 70s and early 80s. His solo work varies from dance music to classical compositions, and he’s scored (and acted in) a number of indie films as well.
THE ALBUMS:
Vrioon (2002). Noto and Sakamoto’s first collaboration is their most minimal, consisting of little more than uncertainly stabbed piano chords and distorted, clipped electronic sounds. Though it’s pretty, it sounds more academic than their later work; it doesn’t sound like they’re having much fun, and it comes across more as an experiment than anything else.
Insen (2005). This is the warmest, most pleasant and most accessible Noto-Sakamoto joint, featuring seven songs over a scant 43 minutes. Ambient albums this brief often run the risk of not being immersive enough, but Insen leaves an afterglow that lingers long after the album’s over. Listening to Insen is a rejuvenating experience, not unlike taking a warm, soothing bath.
utp_ (2008). Scary and unsettling, utp_ is the closest precedent to Noto and Sakamoto’s current soundtrack work. The basic formula of electronic bleeps and somber piano is in place, but the duo is accompanied by a small army of string players who contribute distressing, dissonant textures. A good album for walking around at night when you want to feel a bit spooked, but it’s certainly not for ambient chill-out listening.
summvs (2011). Appropriate to its title, the final non-soundtrack Noto-Sakamoto album to date feels like a summary of everything they’ve done to date, including a series of “microon” tracks that continue in the vein of Vrioon. A good sampler of the project, but it’s too scattered to form a consistent listening experience; a good sample of the project, but not its best work front to back.
