Description
2025 repress, 2×12″ LP, Noton.
Where to begin with this? Vrioon, quite simply, is a work overloaded with beauty. The blue, heartache solitary piano of Sakamoto bleeding into the micro-constructions and nano-beats of Carsten Nicolai’s rewired machinery. “During his first live tour in Japan, Carsten Nicolai met Ryuichi Sakamoto in Tokyo. One year later Nicolai was asked to remix material from Sakamoto for the Japanese magazine Code Unfinished. “The material that was given to me was already layered with digital effects. From one little clean piano piece I made the first track. I combined those simple piano chords with a clear rhythm constellation. Somehow Ryuichi was very surprised and really liked my work. Weeks later he sent me another piece recorded specifically for this project.” The result is an interweave of tracks that is quite simply breathtaking, a melange of pure cathartic piano progressions and whispering beats, a re-definition of minimalism and intellectual application into something that is quite clearly open and exposed as a spectrum of emotion and sonic loveliness. Immense.
_____________________________________________________________________
Pioneers in their own musical approaches, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, began their exploration of sound in the evocatively titled V.I.R.U.S series in 2002. After more than a decade from the release of the collection’s final installment with summvs in 2011, NOTON reissues all the five albums between June and October 2022. With its impressionistic atmosphere, in this collaborative project two generations met and shared the idea of electronic music as an inspiration source for new musical structures. Over a series of five albums, Vrioon (2002), Insen (2005), Revep (2006), utp_ (2008), and summvs (2011), the duo has explored blending electronic and acoustic sounds into a meditative whole that is at once expressive, breathing and precision-engineered. Remastered in collaboration with Calyx Mastering, the recordings are made available under the title Remaster, accompanied by exclusive, unreleased compositions and housed in a beautifully designed sleeve with original cover art by Carsten Nicolai.
