ALVA NOTO - For 2

It was 2006 when "For" came out. That decidedly underrated work nonetheless marked a crucial turning point in Carsten Nicolai's discography. For the first time, glitch was set aside in favor of peaceful melodies and ambient backdrops.

Four years on comes the follow-up, "For 2". Released by the excellent label run by Taylor Dupree, the album's twelve tracks reveal a side of Alva Noto that's completely out of step with his past and present output.

There are no epic drones flowing like magma, nor icy scaffolding of glitch. "For 2" exists shut away in a cold, limpid isolationism, broken up by monochrome tonalities onto which the shyest of rhythmic sections are grafted. The immersion that Carsten Nicolai theorizes here is tied to a silent, almost imperceptible unfolding.

The velvety backdrops turn their gaze now toward snowy expanses (the opening "Garment (For A Garment)"), now toward mirrors refracting their images at different angles ("Sonolumi (For Camera Lucida)"). And between faint sighs ("Stalker (For Andrei Tarkovsky)") and glitches that never intrude ("T3 (For Dieter Rams)"), moments of pure solitude pass by. The air grows rarefied right up to the beautiful conclusion: in the seven minutes of "Argonaut-Version" the sonic matter turns warm, wrapping the listener in soft, rising velvety touches.

"For 2", likely destined to be set aside when weighing Carsten Nicolai's mammoth discography, instead marks a further step forward for a body of musical work as vast as it is continually evolving.

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29/03/2010