The Raster-Noton crew came to town to play shows at The Bunker and Issue Project Room a few weeks ago.  I wrote a pretty lengthy review of two Raster releases last summer for Dusted which I think summarizes my thoughts on the label quite nicely.  Basically, R-N makes the most terrifying dance music that I’ve heard, for it removes all hedonism in favor of a clinical focus on the composite:  “This is a beat.  This is the texture.  Now we dance.”  If you don’t believe me, here’s Alva Noto’s description of his new album:

 

“unit—the initial working title of the album—is the name of club unit in tokyo. the way of composing the tracks in the grid of 120 pbm and out of different rhythmic units or modules recombined, as well as to express the text component of the recordings that developed in collaboration with the french sound poet anne-james chaton, changed the original title to unitxt.

after the first ten tracks that can be regarded as the core recordings of unitxt, there are 15 more tracks generated from converting pure data of programs, jpgs or other digital files into sound material. these tracks could be considered as source code ’solos’ to be played on top of the first ten tracks or to be regarded as sonified concept recordings.” 

 

It’s intensely funky, but it doesn’t properly coalesce into dance music.  The joy is in finding where it goes off the rails, or, rather, how it never quite gets dance music right:  too much repetition, not enough melody, not enough personality, certainly not enough sexiness.  As I said in that review, it’s dance music made by robots.  Or, extremely self-aware humans approximating robots that, unlike Kraftwerk, don’t have their tongues implanted in their cheeks.

 So, I went to see Frank Bretschneider, Alva Noto, Byetone, and the three of them as Signal play a few Fridays ago in a club setting.  Awesome show, awesome projections tied to the rhythms, and interesting to see a few folks fall prey to the dance – most, including yours truly, just beard-scratched.  I just visited The Bunker website, and decided that I should post a few of their pictures.  You can see me in a few.

 

I am next to kid in bright red and white striped shirt with the grey, long-sleeved thinger, talking to Daniel Blumin, who is wearing his trademark beret. 

 

Alva Noto

Frank Bretschneider

 Signal