The sound sources are a grand piano and a steel instrument built by ZвЂ™ev out of materials found in a London scrapyard. This disc finds sound artist David Jackman (aka Organum) collaborating with percussionist ZвЂ™ev on a collection of nine instrumental pieces. Posted in Grooves, Live | Tagged alva noto, carsten nicolai, insen, ryuichi sakamoto | Leave a reply Organum & ZвЂ™ev: Tocsin -6 ThruВ +2 For the second, Sakamoto played his famous theme to Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, its exquisite melody emerging with sublime rightness from the glistening network of digital manipulations. The large and enthusiastic audience demanded, and got, two encores. The musicвЂ™s predominant mode of gentle chromaticism gave way, in the final piece, to a thrilling ten-minute outburst of sustained aggression, with Sakamoto hammering away at the low end of the keyboard while Nicolai issued dense sub-bass rumbles and needling rhythmic stabs. Circles, lines, bars and rectangles faded in and out, their lifespan determined by the attack and decay of the notes that had generated them.Initially etched in high contrast black and white, the installation later took on deep, saturated reds and blues. All the while, the backdrop displayed ineffable visualisations of Nicolai and SakamotoвЂ™s co-operative strategy. Wreathed in echo and delay, the raw material of SakamotoвЂ™s liquid notes was bolstered by glitches, cuts and skeletal rhythms. Rather, the timbre of NicolaiвЂ™s interventions was coolly cerebral and reflexive. At the same time, a screen behind the performers displayed NicolaiвЂ™s video installation, its kinetic patterns matching the undulant shifts of the music.Дespite the nature of the collaboration, with the forbiddingly traditional grand piano lined up against the equally forbidding modernity of the Powerbook, the evening never took on the quality of a soundclash. Slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, Nicolai bathed SakamotoвЂ™s radiant tonalities in a shimmer of electronic haze. Nicolai stood to the right, the seriousness of his endeavour gauged by the presence on his table of not one but two Powerbooks. Sakamoto sat at the grand piano, engrossed in the instrument, occasionally reaching into its innards to pluck at the strings. It was the latter of these approaches that was foregrounded at the Barbican Centre in London, with SakamotoвЂ™s twinkling note clusters surrounded by NicolaiвЂ™s reverberant interventions. Sakamoto, meanwhile, has essayed a number of compositional methods from widescreen soundtrack work to glowing minimalism.

In previous collaborations with the likes of Ryoji Ikeda and Pan SonicвЂ™s Mika Vainio, and in his work as co-founder of the Raster-Noton label, Nicolai has built a formidable reputation for a rigorously formal aesthetic in both the musical and visual realms. Alva Noto) and Japanese pianist and composer Sakamoto was the live realisation of their second album as a duo, Insen. This heavyweight collaboration between German sound artist Carsten Nicolai (a.k.a. Posted in The Wire | Tagged whitehouse, william bennett | Leave a reply Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto: Insen, London BarbicanВ Hall

With these glancing allusions, Whitehouse summon up a world of unimaginable cruelty and with their skilful manipulation and interrogation of language, they refract it onto ourselves. References to Africa include the 2003 song вЂњCut Hands Has The SolutionвЂќ, which alludes to a deranged Sierra Leone commando squad 2006вЂ™s вЂњNzambi Ia LufuaвЂќ (вЂњgod of deathвЂќ in the Kikongo language) and the pan-African coloured lettering on the cover of 2006вЂ™s Asceticists.

The synthesis of everyday conversational tics and unsettling philosophical inquiry in BennettвЂ™s recent lyrics is a clear outgrowth of this interest. The lyrical focus arises from William BennettвЂ™s interest in neuro-linguistic programming, a set of techniques that seek to influence behaviour through patterns of language. More could have been said, however, on both these threads. Keenan correctly identifies the two main developments in WhitehouseвЂ™s work since Cruise: a new focus on the lyrics, and an attention to African culture and society. Many thanks for David KeenanвЂ™s commendably demystifying article on Whitehouse ( The Wire 282).

Peter brotzmann and riyuchi sakamoto