alva noto: transform alva noto: transform (Mille-Plateaux /Raster-Noton - 2001) alva noto is the project name of Berlin's audio/visual artist Carsten Nicolai (he who put the "Noton" in the Raster-Noton label). As the microscopic glitchcraft within is underscored by various subsonic activities you won't want to miss, I recommend that you listen to transform on a system with good bass-response. The low-low-low frequencies of 1 sometimes pulse rhythmically, and are continually bespeckled with sputtering digital flecks and shimmery looping materials. Rippling machinelike emanations meet with 2's high insectoid buzzes. Thumping/sparking syncopations stir the steady drones and sparse crackles of 3 (10:09). Thrumming energies hover beneath the lightly crunchy rhythms of 4 evolving into something like deep-house gone micro. Amid a barely-wavering mechanical haze, 6's fragmented percussion elements sputter in time with brief-but-suggestive throbs. hough there seems to be little to hang onto amidst its gauze-and-stutter, 9 proves to be quite catchy; its sonic backdrop extends (sans "beats") into and through closing track, 10 (2:41). Crisp, yet often vague, the rarefied rhythms of transform are even more intriguing for what's not there... extraneous details are stripped away to reveal skeletal beat-patterns, deep emissions and bits of audio detritus. Ten such tracks fill almost-an-hour with alva noto's 9.1 entrancing disintegrations. Mille-Plateaux, Raster-Noton and Force Inc. are all involved with this particular release... and more good things like it, so see them all. This review posted September 29, 2001 AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).