Raster noton
Raster-Noton , with its full name raster-noton. archiv für ton und nichtton , was a label for experimental electronic music based in Chemnitz that emerged in 1999 from the merger of two young labels called “raster music” and “noton.” . Since the predecessor label was founded in the mid-1990s, almost one hundred and fifty publications had been made until the beginning of 2012. With them, the label became one of the world's most renowned labels , especially in the Clicks & Cuts genre, within a few years and, along with A-Musik and Mille Plateaux, was one of the leading labels for experimental electronic music in Germany.
The founders and operators of Raster-Noton were Carsten Nicolai and Olaf Bender . The close connection between the operators and many artists of the label to the visual arts has led to a special emphasis on the design of the publications as well as the presentation of the label. Many of the publications appear as part of series that belong together in terms of design and concept.
In May 2017, Raster-Noton announced that it would split up again into the previous labels. Since then, the name raster-noton has only been used in the context of selective collaborations between the two labels.
music
The musical spectrum of the label ranges from electronic art music ( William Basinski , Kim Cascone) to experimental techno , ambient and dub to sound art outside of the music or even noise ( Ryoji Ikeda , Franz Pomassl , Marc Behrens , Disinformation ). Many artists and projects can be assigned to the Clicks & Cuts genre, a special variety of electronic music that has developed primarily in Europe since the mid-1990s, some of which come from the arts.
The special feature of numerous, especially early Raster Noton publications across all stylistic categories is a poverty of sound. Frequent characteristics are, in extreme cases, completely repetitive or only slightly varied rhythmic structures from sound events that sometimes last only fractions of a second, the frequency spectrum of which is very narrow, right up to pure sine tone . At the same time, the sound spaces are only sparsely dense, entire pieces are made up of just a few, in the extreme case completely isolated tones whose frequency spectra overlap as little as possible and which in some cases do not sound parallel.
Opposites such as "very low - very high", "very loud - very quiet", "very long - very short" and "very fast - very slow" are juxtaposed hard. The origin of the sounds is also often unusual: crackling, crackling, crackling and hissing are created in classic glitch fashion from interference pulses or take on their aesthetics.
Many artists have worked closely with Raster-Noton over the years, but there are no in-house artists who publish exclusively here, even the core of the founders have always published outside of their own label. The particularly close circle of the label with many regularly recurring releases includes above all Сон and Senking , but also Ryoji Ikeda (as a soloist and in collaborations) and at times the Finnish duo Pan Sonic (both together and as soloists).
Self-image and presentation
From the beginning, Raster-Noton worked with the methods of the consumer world and to a certain extent saw itself as part of it. As early as 1998, when the individual labels were still in existence, Nicolai said “No question about it - first and foremost,“ noton ”is a music label and works with the structures of the industry. […] «Noton» works as a label, a brand name, an umbrella term, as something recognizable. ”Nevertheless, the operators try to maintain independence and distance from them:“ The content is difficult to consume - in this way it is not Mass product. "
This self-image also becomes manifest in the publications themselves. Both the (apparent) artificial scarcity due to limited editions of only several hundred to a few thousand copies and the lack of reprints of regular publications as well as the expensive and sometimes luxurious and elaborate design for sound carriers give the publications their character of the special.
With its increasing success, Raster-Noton is also trying to oppose it being taken over by the market: “We are now already dealing with Karl Marx. Because of course we suddenly notice that we are fetishizing goods. But we try to react to the time. ", But without giving up the specific and very own profile:" With "Xerrox" we have now released a memory card, that would then be more our intention. "
After more than a decade, the initial radicalism in the concept is gently giving way to a more diverse, less puristic approach: “In the past, we were more determined about producing and communicating only pure information. […] There is of course the discussion of breaking something in this phenomenon […]. ”“ Of course, the formalistic constraint also restricts […]. Many of us are currently feeling the need to work with voices, we are already moving away from the technological ”, the first result of this approach appeared on March 26, 2008,“ Сон plays Cosey ”, a strongly vocal-based collaboration between Сон and Cosey Fanni Tutti .
It has also become clear that, despite the radical nature of the concept, the special aesthetics that the label uses becomes a matter of course through imitations and adaptations: “... the music is more present than ever, as the former movement is assimilated by today's music. If you listen to productions by Timbaland , Björk or Madonna - they use all these moments and we don't even notice them anymore, they have become a matter of course and have become part of popular music. "
reception
The criticism is largely unanimous in the characterization of the typical stylistic features of Raster-Noton, recurring terms are “minimal”, “reduced” and “experimental”, and references to the genres glitch and clicks'n'cuts are also frequent. Likewise - especially in connection with Nicolai's artistic work - connections to sciences such as physics or mathematics are often made. The intended correspondence between inside and outside, content and design is not overlooked: "Raster-Noton explores serial, shifts and minimal interference on the musical level as well as in the design of your products."
Rob Young emphasizes, "Raster-Noton's material may appear repulsively abstract at first, but it is not their intention to create an alien, dehumanized vision," and concludes, "It's not just about the machine, it's about the error that Alternative and choice: the qualities that make us human. "
While Young sees a relationship to Wassili Kandinsky and Oskar Fischinger , Timo Feldhaus asks whether Raster-Noton are not “the power plants that have been thought through to the end ”. The intro magazine describes the balancing act between art and the dance floor with the words "raster-noton wanders between places and worlds with its pulsating, dry frequency data streams and is interested in art contexts as well as open-minded club culture."
history
precursor
Raster music
Frank Bretschneider co-founded the band AG Geige in 1986 in what was then Karl-Marx-Stadt, today Chemnitz , an experimental electronic formation that started as a pure underground band and self-published two cassettes, but achieved some success after a few years and was officially released by AMIGA in 1990 has been included in sales. In 1988 Olaf Bender also joined AG Geige and later replaced Torsten Eckhardt at Electronics. After the band split up in 1993, Bretschneider and Bender remained active together and in 1995 founded the label “Rastermusic”.
In October 1995 the first release was the maxi single Poly Acid Morph Basic Track by Kyborg, a Berlin acid techno project. Four CD albums followed in 1996 (cdr002 to cdr005). Although the intention "... that we do not produce clearly for a club or a listening situation or for a gallery ..." was already clearly formulated here, the Rastermusic productions stylistically leave the musicians' attachment to the minimal techno or minimal techno, which was particularly popular at the time even the dub can still be seen clearly. They share with two in early 1997 released CDs (cdr010 and cdr 011) the appearance (cover with white background, on a diamond-shaped computer graphics) and together with the (conceptually actually unconnected) Kyborg Maxi Singles (vyr001 / vyr009) are as raster series combined .
noton. archive for sound and non-sound
Among the first four Rastermusic releases was the album Spin by Noto (cdr003), one of Carsten Nicolai's pseudonyms alongside Alva Noto, also based in Chemnitz. The landscape architect and artist was part of Rastermusic's environment right from the start and had his own label in 1994 and 1995 called “noton. archiv für ton und nichtton ”, which was intended as a platform for documenting sound art.
Despite its long existence, Noton had not produced any publications in the strict sense until 1996. The 1997 brochure ∞ contains a catalog of publications that illustrate Noton's profile. The titles listed there appeared only in small art editions as CD-Rs with additional graphics.
With Spin, on the other hand, a co-production with Rastermusic, Noton first appeared as a “normal” music label. Some of the other titles already published as art editions reappeared later (Noto, Goem , William Basinski , Noto & Ø ).
cooperation
The cooperation phase between the two labels began in 1996 with the Clear series . Rastermusic mainly brought the structures of a conventional small label including distribution through Indigo as well as contacts in the field of popular, albeit borderline music. Carsten Nicolai, on the other hand, brought along numerous contacts to, in some cases, extreme experimental musicians, and above all a completely different approach to the label's work: “He tore down certain inner barriers with us. At that time we had a few contacts in Cologne and Leipzig, but [...] that the CDs could also be sent to Japan, that just wasn't in our heads. "
Nicolai was invited to Documenta X in 1997 , where he staged a sound installation inside a spiral car park driveway. On June 21, 1997, a concert took place at the opening, at which Mika Vainio , Carl Michael von Hausswolff and the three projects of the operators of the now cooperating labels, Komet (Bretschneider), Byetone (Bender) and Noto, performed. This “first real public presentation” of the joint label is now considered the “founding myth”. Looking back, Bender stated “We were NoNames back then”, but as early as 1998 he was able to say on the occasion of an appearance at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona: “People, they know us. An experience that is overwhelming when you are not sitting in a metropolis, but in Chemnitz and trying to build a network from there. "
On the occasion of the twenty-year collaboration between the label for electronic music raster-noton, the light and sound installation white circle was created in 2016 , a multi-channel composition consisting of fluorescent tubes. Together with five independent compositions by other sound and video artists, white circle was shown from May 10 to July 8, 2018 in the Kunstbau of the Städtische Galerie in the Lenbachhaus in Munich.
Fusion to raster-noton
The success of the cooperation led in 1999 to the complete merger of the previously formally separate labels. Rastermusic and Noton became Raster-Noton. In the spirit of Nicolai, who has been operating internationally for many years, the label increasingly sought the way to a global audience and as independent a sales model as possible. A website was launched at the end of 1999, and since mid-2000 sales have been through a separate internet shop. 1999 should also be the artistically most successful year of Raster-Noton so far: The series 20 'to 2000 realized this year should prove to be the label's final breakthrough.
In an entrepreneurial sense, the label is now managed by Olaf Bender alone, Frank Bretschneider retired before that, but has remained connected to the label privately and as a musician, technician and producer to this day. Carsten Nicolai, on the other hand, is no longer involved in the everyday work, but is still active for the label: "Olaf Bender takes care of the office and production, I take care of the external image, it's teamwork." There are also questions Graphics and design in the Bender department.
Dissolution of raster-noton
In May 2017, the label announced that the merger of 1999 would be canceled and that Raster-Noton would split up again into the predecessor labels. Since then, Olaf Bender has been managing the Raster-Noton catalog under the name raster-media, in addition to new publications. Exceptions are the works of Carsten Nicolai, whose works are completely distributed by his own label NOTON . The name raster-noton is only used in the context of selective collaborations between the two labels.
Publications
Series
The majority of the label's publications appear as part of series that belong together in terms of design and sometimes also conceptually. Rob Young recognizes in this the attempt to "avoid the artistic uniqueness", Susanne Binas feels reminded of "the prototypical vinyl, printed with sparse label information, as we know it from the connections between techno and house."
clear
Based on Noton plans, albums by Kim Cascone , Goem , Marc Behrens , Noto and Ø + Noto were released in 1996 . In terms of content, the series revolved around working methods that led significantly further out of the field of conventional electronic music of the time than before. The selection of musicians already shows the greater distance to pop music compared to the Raster series (Cascone is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music , Behrens is a visual artist, Goem comes from experimental music). "The Clear series clearly emphasized the conceptual and experimental, the rhythmic was sometimes completely left out."
The design theme of the series was the maximum reduction in every respect, "we wanted to publish the music without anything except the music itself and what was immediately necessary for publication.", While "the soundscape of the label corresponded to the aesthetics of its product design and presentation." This is already clear from the packaging: the CD covers were clear jewel cases without a booklet, only the most basic information was printed directly on the cover, identical in shape to the print on the CD surface, which otherwise only reflects the jewel case. Vinyl editions were pressed in transparent vinyl and were delivered in transparent plastic sleeves, only with a small, again transparent sticker. Martin Pesch finds “today's predominant form and shape of music publication subject to self-reflection”, “by relating the two necessary elements - CD and packaging - to each other and making their sheer materiality tangible.”
The Clear series was ended after seven publications with the catalog number cdr014, but later continued with four publications between cdr032 and cdr038 as the "New Clear series".
static
The Static series began at the end of 1998 with the publication of the catalog number cdr015, Сons "Enter Tinnitus", and was completed in 2001 after seven further publications with the cdr040, a joint effort by Alva Noto and Opiate . An originally announced release of Byetone ("Ratio") did not appear. Three of the eight releases in the series were provided by the Russian debutant Ivan Pavlov (Сон), CDs and others have also appeared. a. by Taylor Deupree and Senking .
After the radical and puristic Clear series, Static was also a look back at the somewhat more conventional soundscapes of the Raster series, a turn towards the “more musical than experimental aspects”. The CDs were packed in ziplock bags made of a metal-coated antistatic film with a mostly colorful, single-colored inlay, "Mask of Birth" by Son appeared in a similar design only on vinyl.
The name of the series is explained in more detail in a text on the label: "Objects and phenomena that are commonly viewed as" static "often appear in other scales, dimensions or coordinate systems as lively processes and forms of life." So it is also the point of view, who decides on the knowledge of movement or stasis.
20 'to 2000
20 'to 2000 - twelve releases about the cutting edge of the millennium. was Raster-Noton's most successful series and the label's final breakthrough. The idea was to bring out a publication by a different artist every month from January 1999 up to and including December, with the same design and exactly 20 minutes long. The series included contributions from numerous artists who went beyond the previous core group and were already known internationally ( ELpH , Scanner , Wolfgang Voigt , Ester Brinkmann ). The series was concluded with a four-hour concert in December 1999 in the Berliner Volksbühne , at which all artists performed live.
This "musical calendar, which in twelve CD releases gives an impression of electronic music and sound research at the end of the 20th century," has received critical acclaim around the world, received the Prix Ars Electronica 2001 and was the first digital record to be included in the Collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art included. The Briton Rob Young saw the design of the series as the "most coherent attempt to date to erase the medium or to make it disappear."
raster post
Raster-Post was a series of 9 publications, numbered 1 to 8 and a number 10, a number 9 never appeared. The series opened in May 2002 with "Temporary Music" by Mitchell Akiyama and ended in 2006 with "Patherns EP" by Сон. Raster-Post was the last series explicitly identified as such so far, a conceptual foundation is apparently missing here.
Other publications
Documentation and catalogs
In addition to the publications that appeared in series, there have also been numerous other publications. Books (often with CDs) and boxes in which the label documents and accompanies special events as well as its own activities are of particular importance.
Documentation for the event series “Taktlos Bern” (“oacis” catalog with CD and a CD box), the Leipzig exhibition “New Forms”, the Chemnitz exhibition series “Weltecho” and a publication called “Frequencies [Hz]” for the exhibition and Event series "Frequenzen [Hz]" in the Frankfurt Schirn , the catalog of which was supplemented by the box.
In addition to such compilations, there were also repeated extensive monographic works on the artistic work of Carsten Nicolai, starting with the narrow, 18-page brochure from 1997 ∞ with glued-in flexi single to the 104-page books "Polyfoto" and "Autopilot / Autorec" (1998 and 2002, each with an audio CD) to “Fades” from 2007, a 128-page book with an accompanying DVD.
Small series and cycles
In addition to the series in the strict sense of the word, there were also some smaller, rather loosely connected episodes of publications or “small series”.
At the time the labels merged in 1999, for example, there were three very different releases of a "semi-official" and atypical character (an accompanied reading by Yōko Tawada , a CD specially produced for a Nicolai exhibition in Tokyo and the first publication by Signal, the joint project von Bender, Nicolai and Bretschneider). The three publications had the order numbers A1 to A3 and were each designed differently.
Shortly before the end of Raster-Post, the last series to date, a loose series of CDs began, all of which shared the same design: a CD in a rectangular slipcase with several postcards enclosed. This quasi-series spanned five publications by Carl-Michael von Hausswolff, Pixel, Kangding Ray , Richard Chartier and finally in March 2007 by Senking.
In the work of Carsten Nicolai in particular, there were repeated short series and cycles. Since 2002 two albums have been released, a maxi CD and a live DVD from the collaboration between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto , a collaboration that proved to be a great success with both critics and audiences and which mutually support each other musically as well as creatively be close. Likewise, the three-part “Transall” cycle by Noto belonged together in terms of both content and design, including a hand-bound slipcase that was published at the end, which took up all three parts.
Sublabel / distribution
Raster-Noton founded a sub-label called "Kangaroo" in September 2001, which was to be run by Ilpo Väisänen , one of the two members of the Pan Sonic duo. However, the label fell asleep after the first two releases, two 10 ″ singles by Väisänen himself.
The relationship to “Wavetrap” is somewhat different. The label was founded in 1999 by Ivan Pavlov and until 2007 had only five releases, all of them by well-known artists in the field of noise / sound art / clicks'n'cuts. The label is run independently by Pavlov, but distributed exclusively by Raster-Noton.
Selection discography
Raster series
- Comet, seed
- Noto, spin
Clear series
- Ø + Noto, micro macro
- Goem, Stud Stim
- Kim Cascone, Blue Cube []
- Marc Behrens, Final Ballet
- Noto, Endless Loop Edition
- William Basinski, Shortwave Music
Static series
- Сон, enter tinnitus
- Сон, Vox Tinnitus
- Signal, center
- Taylor Deupree, Polr
- Senking, trial
- Mokira, cliphop
- Alva Noto + Opiates, Opto Files
- Сон, Mask Of Birth
20 'to 2000
- Comet, Manhatten / 20 'To January 2000
- Ilpo Väisänen, Untitled / 20 'To February 2000
- Ryoji Ikeda, 99 (1999) :: Variations For Modulated 440Hz Sinewaves :: / 20 'To 2000. March
- Сон, Into Memories Of S-Tone. For Gavin Bryars / 20 'To April 2000
- Byetone, Untitled / 20 'To 2000.May
- Senking, Untitled / 20 'To 2000.June
- Ester Brinkmann, || | || . | .... / 20 'To July 2000
- Scanner, Cystic / 20 'To August 2000
- Noto, Time..Dot / 20 'To September 2000
- Mika Vainio, Untitled / 20 'To October 2000
- Wolfgang Voigt, 20 Minuten Gas In November / 20 'To November 2000
- ELpH, Twelve / 20 'To December 2000
Raster post
- Mitchell Akiyama, Temporary Music
- Blir, Untitled
- Сон, Patherns Ep
Others
- Noto, Transall (trilogy)
- Сон / Cosey Fanni Tutti, Сон plays Cosey
- Сон, strings
literature
- Raster-Noton, Taktlos-Bern (Ed.): Raster-noton.oacis - [optics acoustics calculated in seconds] , 2000, ISBN 3-931126-48-X
- Ben Borthwick: Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom . Interview in: The Wire Magazine , Issue 238, December 2003, pp. 40-47, online
- Simona Verdrame (Ed.): Carsten Nicolai - diary # 03 . tema celeste editions, Milan 2004, carstennicolai.de (PDF; 35.23 MB)
- audio visual spaces . Exhibition catalog. SMAK, Gent 2005, ISBN 90-75679-23-8 , carstennicolai.de (PDF; 839 kB; Dutch or English)
- Timo Feldhaus: 11 years Raster-Noton - The physics of the minimal . In: De: Bug , 117, 2007, pp. 8-10
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Carsten Nicolai in: Frank Eckart: Disassembling and Assembling - Conversation between Frank Eckart and Carsten Nicolai . In: Carsten Nicolai: Polyfoto . Nuremberg 1998, ISBN 3-928342-91-6 , p. 74
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Olaf Bender in Timo Feldhaus: 11 years Raster-Noton - The physics of the minimal . In: De: Bug 117, 2007
- ↑ Carsten Nicolai in Timo Feldhaus: 11 Years Raster-Noton - The Physics of the Minimal . In: De: Bug 117, 2007
- ↑ “… the minimal electronics label…”, Ben Borthwick: Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom . Interview in: The Wire Magazine , Issue 238, December 2003, p. 40
- ↑ "... Raster-Noton music label brand of experimental, minimal, and glitchfused beat music." Anonymous: Music: See Hear Now! In: News In: Computer Music Journal , 2005, Vol. 29, No. 4, p. 8
- ↑ a b Raster Noton - Let the gaps tell . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Intro , No. 82, March 2001, online
- ↑ "It's not only about the machine, but about error, contingency and choice: the qualities that make us human." / "Raster-Noton's materials can appear for biddingly abstract at first encounter, but their intention is not to create an alien, dehumanised vision." Rob Young: Raster-Noton: Impulse to line . BBC Radio 3, Cut And Splice 2005
- ↑ a b Timo Feldhaus: 11 years Raster-Noton - The physics of the minimal . In: De: Bug 117, 2007
- ↑ See the Raster-Noton website for the raster series from June 1, 2000 raster-noton.news ( Memento from September 1, 2005 in the Internet Archive ), as well as evidence of the use of these terms in the reception Ive Stevenheyden: Kijken met de oren - Enkele aandachtspunten bij Carsten Nicolai's geluidswerk / Seeing with the Ear: Some Points of Focus in Carsten Nicolai's Sound Work . In: audio visual spaces , p. 17 or p. 24 (Dutch or English)
- ↑ The information for the date contradicts each other in the different sources. The 1994 information can be found in Carsten Nicolai: Polyfoto , 1998, Nuremberg, ISBN 3-928342-91-6 , p. 96; Susanne Binas: module rn. a portrait. , in: Raster-Noton and Taktlos-Bern (ed.): raster-noton.oacis - [optics acoustics calculated in seconds] , Ss. 13–14 as well as in Anti Reflex , catalog for the exhibition in the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt / Main, p. 194, 2005; the 1995 information in Carsten Nicolai aka Noto: ∞ , op, last page and Gianni Romano, Carsten Nicolai: Facts & Arti-Facts , Interview in: Simona Verdrame (Ed.): "Carsten Nicolai - diary # 03", p. 7th
- ↑ a b Susanne Binas: module rn. a portrait. , in: Raster-Noton and Taktlos-Bern (ed.): raster-noton.oacis - [optics acoustics calculated in seconds] , Ss. 13-14
- ^ Carsten Nicolai aka Noto: ∞ , op, 1997, ISBN 3-929294-22-2
- ↑ Martin Conrads in Timo Feldhaus: 11 years Raster-Noton - The physics of the minimal . In: De: Bug 117, 2007, p. 9
- ^ White Circle. Lenbachhaus, accessed on March 20, 2019 .
- ↑ http://www.raster-noton.de/ ( Memento from March 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) raster-noton | archive for sound and non-sound
- ↑ See the change in the destination of the link “raster-noton.order” on www.archive.org, from version 1.7, March 3, 2000 ( memento of March 3, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) to version 5.00, June 18, 2000 ( Memento of August 24, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved February 4, 2008
- ↑ “Olaf Bender is running the office and taking care of the fabrication and I do the outside communication, it's teamwork.”, Carsten Nicolai in: Carsten Nicolai: Inserting Silence , in: MONO.KULTUR # 01, September 2005, p. 13 , PDF online
- ↑ Ben Borthwick: Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom
- ↑ raster-noton press release, May 3, 2017 - restructuring "raster-noton" into "raster-media" and "NOTON" . raster-media.net; accessed on November 10, 2017
- ↑ a b Rob Young: look through . In: Raster-Noton and Taktlos-Bern (eds.): Raster-noton.oacis - [optics acoustics calculated in seconds] , p. 65
- ↑ "The Clear Series was more interested in the conceptual and experimental, sometimes not even interested in the rhythmic." Carsten Nicolai in: Ben Borthwick: Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom
- ↑ "We wanted to release the music without anything except the music and what is necessary to carry it out." Carsten Nicolai in: Ben Borthwick: "Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom"
- ↑ a b c Martin Pesch: reduction. material. series. to aesthetics . In: Raster-Noton and Taktlos-Bern (eds.): Raster-noton.oacis - [optics acoustics calculated in seconds] , p. 29
- ↑ “the follow-up to the Raster releases still interested in rhythmic constellations and more musical than experimental aspects”, Carsten Nicolai in: Ben Borthwick: Raster-Noton: The Perfect Strom
- ↑ "objects and phenomena commonly viewed as 'static' often appear to be lively processes or life-forms in a different scale, dimension or system of coordinates." Text accompanying "Enter Tinnitus" from the label's website, not linkable, accessed on February 2, 2008
- ↑ Brigitte Heilmann: Electronic music and the challenge of silence . In: Welt Online , December 17, 1999, accessed January 27, 2008
