SCHATTENSTIMME (Soundtrack for a Missing Movie - Part 2) [CD]

Alva Noto - SCHATTENSTIMME (Soundtrack for a Missing Movie - Part 2) [CD]

NOTON announce the release of LICHTSTIMME and SCHATTENSTIMME by Alva Noto: two soundtracks for a film that never existed. The starting point is E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Sandman: a world where perception and reality drift apart, and the question of identity remains unresolved. Recognition, in Hoffmann, is never quite secure. The doppelgänger is less a figure than a condition, the point at which the self can no longer vouch for itself. With the second record, SCHATTENSTIMME, the instrument enters the sonic space. The pieces were recorded together with percussionist Rainer Römer and the Ensemble Modern. A central role is given to the Sixxen, the extraordinary metallic percussion instrument originally developed by Iannis Xenakis together with Les Percussions de Strasbourg and instrument maker Robert Hébrard for Pléiades. Its resonances, unusual microtonal structure and distinctive timbre make it an instrument that resists being placed within a familiar musical context. Complete Sixxen sets are extremely rare and require highly specialized construction. The instrument appears only on the second record. Its absence from LICHTSTIMME and its arrival on SCHATTENSTIMME are structural. It behaves like a shadow: present only when something else has already changed. With its appearance, it is not only the sound that changes. The entire musical space seems to shift its character. The Sixxen's metallic sound becomes the unfamiliar. The unfamiliar becomes a counterpart. The two records follow an inner movement: from light to shadow, from trust to doubt, from identity to doppelgänger, and back to a harmony that is no longer quite the same. What emerges as an independent, personal sonic language has been transformed by the journey. The unfamiliar has not disappeared. It has become part of the self. LICHTSTIMME and SCHATTENSTIMME are records about the instability of the familiar. Something is always almost recognizable and never quite confirmed, in the story, and in the sound. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai & Nibo.

Tracklist
01. Prolog
02. Accelerating
03. Aftermath
04. Flashback
05. Identifies
06. Hypnosis
07. Detuned
08. Asymmetrics
09. Disappearing
10. Flux
11. Divisible
12. Incomplete
13. Hypothesis