Microsound, minimal techno and ambient artist Alva Noto aka Carsten Nicolai performs HYBR:ID UNI PARA, his first Irish show in over a decade, at the Button Factory, Dublin on 28 March. We asked him the BIG questions . . .
Carsten, who was born 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) in Germany, lives and works in Berlin.
Under the pseudonym Alva Noto, he is recognised as one of the leading exponents of contemporary electronic music and has performed at prestigious venues, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate Modern in London.
He has collaborated with Ryoji Ikeda, Mika Vainio, Iggy Pop, Blixa Bargeld and Ryuichi Sakamoto and composed the score for Alejandro González Iñárritu's Oscar-winning film The Revenant, which received nominations for Golden Globe, BAFTA and Grammy awards in the Best Original Score category.
Tell us three things about yourself . . .
I'm an artist, composer and label owner based in Berlin.
How would you describe your music?
Experimental futurism.
Who are your musical inspirations?
Nature.
What was the first gig you ever went to?
Probably as a child with my parents, a Bach concert. I grew up in a region where Bach worked. Leipzig was not far away, so I was surrounded by that tradition from an early age.
What was the first record you ever bought?
There wasn't much contemporary music available in East Germany, so we taped everything from radio stations and exchanged those tapes.
The funny part is that we constantly listened to the more avant-garde radio stations and assumed everyone in the West knew those artists. In a way, we were specialized in underground movements; we were educated through that music.
After 1990, I realized that we had been listening to music for specialists, by specialists.
When the Wall fell, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the options of buying records. I bought two albums: Behind the Iron Curtain by Nico, and United States Live (box set) by Laurie Anderson.
What’s your favourite song right now?
Look How Hard I’ve Tried by Barker.
Favourite lyric of all time?
From White Lily by Laurie Anderson: "What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says: 'What flower expresses days go by, and they just keep going by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future?"
If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?
For Philip Guston by Morton Feldman.
Where can people find your music/more information?
On my website and newsletter, streaming platforms, and through the NOTON shop.
Alan Corr
