Unitxt

Unitxt
Studio album by Alva Noto
Released	July 22, 2008
Recorded	during Raster-Noton Japan tours 2006 and 2007, reviewed and edited in Berlin in 2008.
Genre	Ambient, experimental, microsound, glitch
Length	55:20
Label	Raster-Noton r-n095
Alva Noto chronology

Last updated April 01, 2019

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Pop Matters	^[1]
Tiny Mix Tapes	^[2]

Unitxt is the fifth studio album by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released on July 22, 2008 via Raster-Noton label.^[3]^[4]^[5] The word "Unitxt" means the processing of rhythmic patterns (unit = unit of measurement, element) and information (txt = data, language).^[6] The album is the first installment in a trilogy, followed by 2011’s Univrs and 2018's Unieqav .^[7]

Carsten Nicolai, known as Alva Noto, is a German musician. He is a member of the music groups Diamond Version with Olaf Bender (Byetone), Signal with Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender, Cyclo with Ryoji Ikeda, ANBB with Blixa Bargeld and Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto with whom he composed the score for the 2015 film The Revenant.

Raster-Noton was a German electronic music record label established in 1999. Based in Chemnitz, Germany, it emerged from the fusion of Rastermusik, founded by Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider in 1996, and Noton, a sublabel which was run by Carsten Nicolai. In 2017, the label has split up back into two distinct entities: Raster, which would continue to be run by Bender and Noton, focusing on Nicolai's output.

Univrs is the seventh studio album by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released on 10 October 2011 via Raster-Noton label.

Reception

Dimitri Nasrallah of Exclaim! wrote "Unitxt, however, is a major leap forward from both Transform and the kind of glitch music that made headways at the turn of the century. Nicolai is working with more complex arrangements here and he appears more willing to let things get a bit messy, allowing sharp bursts of dissonance to enter the mix. It’s fitting that nostalgia for the more serious techno of Mille Plateaux, Max Ernst and Raster-Noton has lately drifted back into the minimal mindsets of new acts like Shed and Stefan Goldmann, artists who find the current club culture a bit too formulaic and crowded to produce anything new. A release like Unitxt is a fitting and timely portrait of an uncompromising master at work".^[8]

Exclaim! is a monthly Canadian music magazine that features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and cutting-edge artists. Content is based on the monthly print publication, which publishes 9 issues per year, distributing over 103,000 copies to over 2,600 locations across Canada. The magazine has an average of 361,200 monthly readers. Their website, exclaim.ca, has an average of 675,000 unique visitors a month.

Transform is the second studio album by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released on September 4, 2001 via Mille Plateaux label. The album was re-released in 2008 via Raster-Noton label. The album is the first part of Alva Noto's Transall series, along with the EPs Transrapid, Transspray, and Transvision (2001–2006).

Lukas Suveg of Tiny Mix Tapes stated "A curious dichotomy exists in Unitxt, the latest album from Carsten Nicolai, a.k.a. Alva Noto. Nicolai’s work relies on mathematical processes to govern rhythm (rather than traditional sequencers), utilizing machine noises — modems, telephones, and fax tones — for most of its sounds. On Unitxt, Alva Noto applies these frigid clicks and blips to an innate form of human expression: each track is about 120 bpm, and the rhythms, though often heavily obscured or syncopated, are entirely in 4/4 time — the basic ingredients for a dance album".^[2]

Tiny Mix Tapes is an online music and film webzine that focuses primarily on new music and related news. In addition to its reviews, it is noted for its subversive, political, and sometimes surreal news, as well as its mixtape generator.

Track listing

All tracks written by Alva Noto.

No.	Title	Length
1.	"U_07"	7:57
2.	"U_06"	2:07
3.	"U_04"	5:15
4.	"U_09-1-2"	4:48
5.	"U_08-1"	3:13
6.	"U_03"	4:30
7.	"U_08"	5:37
8.	"U_01-2-0"	4:00
9.	"U_05"	3:20
10.	"U_09-0"	3:53
11.	"(no audio)"	3:00
12.	"60308_47"	0:13
13.	"838TP7cdp"	0:04
14.	"Enigma4.0"	0:05
15.	"Fontlab4.0"	0:51
16.	"Hyperengine"	0:10
17.	"Entourage"	0:54
18.	"Excel"	1:07
19.	"Powerpoint"	0:45
20.	"Word"	1:41
21.	"Monitortest"	0:06
22.	"Morse"	0:08
23.	"Prototype6_isdn"	0:08
24.	"Serialbox"	0:29
25.	"Soundmaker"	0:07
26.	"Spray16x9s"	1:07
Total length:		55:20

Track 11 is unlisted.

Credits

Alva Noto – primary artist, composer, sounds
Anne-James Chaton – vocals

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Vrioon is the debut collaboration album between Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, released in 2002. This is the first album in the Virus Series followed by four other records: Insen (2005), Revep (2006), utp_ (2008), and Summvs (2011). The initial letters of the five albums together form the word "Virus".

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"Glass" is an improvisational piece composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai, known by his stage name as Alva Noto, for Yayoi Kusama's installation Dots Obsession—Alive, Seeking for Eternal Hope, which ran in September 2016 at Philip Johnson's Glass House. A film of the performance was uploaded to the Glass House's official Vimeo account and website on November 11, 2016, and an audio recording of the 37-minute composition was released as an album on Nicolai's label NOTON on February 16, 2018. "Glass" is an unconventional ambient piece that uses sounds from a keyboard, glass-made singing bowls, and digital processing of the House's glass walls. The composition consists of developing layers of sounds performed over a single drone. It was praised by many professional reviewers as a display of Sakamoto and Nicolai's growing artistry.

<i>Unieqav</i> 2018 studio album by Alva Noto

Unieqav is the ninth solo studio album by German electronic artist Alva Noto. The record was released on 16 March 2018 via Noton label.

Transrapid is an extended play by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released in 2004 via Raster Noton label.

Transvision is an extended play by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released in 2005 via Raster Noton label.

Transspray is an extended play by German electronic artist Alva Noto. It was released in 2005 via Raster Noton label.

References

↑ GABRIELE, TIMOTHY (7 January 2009). "Alva Noto Unitxt". Popmatters . popmatters.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
1 2 SUVEG, LUKAS. "Alva Noto: Unitxt [Raster-Noton; 2008]". Tiny Mix Tapes . tinymixtapes.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ "ALVA NOTO: UNITXT". Raster-Noton . raster-noton.net. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ "Alva Noto – Unitxt". Discogs . discogs.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ "ALVA NOTO: Unitxt". Allmusic . allmusic.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ "Alva Noto captures the univrs on new album". Fact Magazine . factmag.com. September 5, 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
↑ Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (16 March 2018). "Alva Noto: Unieqav — 'sparse techno beats'". Financial Times . Retrieved 28 August 2018.
↑ Nasrallah, Dimitri (25 September 2008). "Alva Noto: Unitxt". Exclaim! . Retrieved 29 August 2018.

External links

Alva Noto official website

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[1] GABRIELE, TIMOTHY (7 January 2009). "Alva Noto Unitxt". Popmatters . popmatters.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[TMT-2] 1 2 SUVEG, LUKAS. "Alva Noto: Unitxt [Raster-Noton; 2008]". Tiny Mix Tapes . tinymixtapes.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[3] "ALVA NOTO: UNITXT". Raster-Noton . raster-noton.net. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[4] "Alva Noto – Unitxt". Discogs . discogs.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[5] "ALVA NOTO: Unitxt". Allmusic . allmusic.com. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[6] "Alva Noto captures the univrs on new album". Fact Magazine . factmag.com. September 5, 2011. Retrieved 10 February 2016.

[FT-7] Hunter-Tilney, Ludovic (16 March 2018). "Alva Noto: Unieqav — 'sparse techno beats'". Financial Times . Retrieved 28 August 2018.

[8] Nasrallah, Dimitri (25 September 2008). "Alva Noto: Unitxt". Exclaim! . Retrieved 29 August 2018.