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The godfather of 'clicks & cuts' returns with what is probably his best work yet, and that at a time when the hype surrounding "glitch" has all but bled the genre dry. Of course Carsten Nicolai (the butch German artist hiding behind the 'alva.noto' moniker) hitherto hadn't fallen into the trap of turning hiss and crackle into mediocre techno yet, but with everyone and their grandma spicing up their lousy disco tunes with static and white noise, the risk of even the absolute master of the genre succumbing to quick success was, of course, a very real one. Luckily, you'll find none of this 'flavor of the month' crap on 'Transform'. All of the tracks on this album are viciously uncompromising, sparse, extremely cleverly laid out, etc. etc. To be sure, they do have somewhat of a swing to them that wasn't there yet on previous alva.noto releases, but in no way does this swing constitute selling out. For nowhere on 'Transform' does Carsten Nicolai give in to gratuitous thud-n-stab, thud-n-stab, thud-hiss-n-stab. Instead, little ticks pan hard left and then hard right again in a somewhat rhythmic fashion, while underneath extremely low 'bass' sounds (you'll need a reasonably good stereo to really enjoy this album) buzz in and out of the mix in an obtuse fashion that's at times reminiscent of Pan Sonic's seminal 'A' album. Furthermore, the sounds used reveal a far greater amount of care and attention to detail than is commonly found on your average Mille Plateaux disc: they're cold, minutiously sculpted and extremely grating if you happen to have an aversion to the lovely music of digital machines gone bad. Which is exactly how it's supposed to be. 'Transform' is the kind of album that makes you remember why 'glitch' was such a cool thing back when it first came out. Not recommended to dedicated followers of fashion, but to everyone else I say: go get it.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/alva-noto/transform/1200/
Meer Alva.noto op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/alva-noto
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