Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto
Took me a while to warm to their tunes but after a wee bit i did get into it.
Thoughs
Ryuichi Sakamoto - Genious
Alva Noto - Too much spare time on his hands to create mediocre loops
With insen Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto create a new synergy between acoustic piano and electronic music. Subtle digital processing and an on-stage LED screen installation by Alva Noto counterbalance and manipulate Sakamoto’s elegant piano phrasing, creating vivid dialogues between melody, rhythm and texture. insen is an exquisite exploration of what music might look like. Strips of light and grid-like patterns appear on screen, triggered by Sakamoto’s piano playing and Alva Noto’s electronic processing in a perfect synchronisation of sound and visuals. With senses heightened the audience is taken on an eclectic visual and aural journey.
Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar winning Japanese producer and composer who has made a career of crossing musical and technological styles. He is best known for his popular, orchestral and film music and has composed original scores for 18 major and independent films including Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence and The Last Emperor. Berlin-based Alva Noto is a multimedia artist concerned with connections, circuitry and interactivity between different media. He uses sound, image, sculpture and the computer as hybrid tools to research what he describes as the “codification of the world”.
insen brings together these two different generations of artists and demonstrates their aspirations to explore the idea of electronic music as an inspiration for new musical structures. Together these two have recorded beautiful, precise and deceptively simple music, including 2005’s insen. Now Australian audiences can experience the live version of this celebrated collaboration in a multimedia concert featuring an impressive and atmospheric video installation that creates a hypnotic visual graphic representation of the music in real time.
Quotes
“As thrilling as a virtuoso tightrope walk, and, ultimately, as emotionally pulverising…a privilege to witness.”
FRIEZE MAGAZINE (UK)