독일의 유명한 엠비언트 일렉트로닉 뮤지션인 ALVA NOTO와 일본출신으로 전세계에서 사랑받고있는 영화음악가 겸 일렉트로닉 뮤지션인 RYUICHI SAKAMOTO의 합작음반. 일렉트로닉한 요소로 가득한 본작은 글리치부터 엠비언트, IDM등 다양한 요소의 놀라운 전자음악 실험으로 채워져 있는데, RYUICHI SAKAMOTO의 일렉트로닉한 음반을 사랑했던 사람이라면 본 음반을 반드시 들어야 하겠다.

음악은 물론 영상, 건설, 오브제 등 다양한 분야에서 활약하는 멀티미디어 아티스트 칼스텐 니콜라이(alva noto)가 사카모토 류이치와의 협업으로 발표한 2번째 앨범.

전작 Vrioon은 인터넷 파일 교환을 통해 제작된 앨범이었지만 이번 작품에서는 교수가 베를린의 아틀리에에 어쿠스틱 피아노를 들여와 즉흥성을 중시한 세션에서 태어난 악곡이 중심이 되었다.
피아노가 가진 유일무이한 울림과 컴퓨터에서 생성되는 무구한 전자음의 얽힘은 상상 이상으로 훌륭하고, 피아노 소리가 감퇴하여 깊은 바다 바닥을 연상케 하는 전자음 속으로 사라져가는 순간은 비유할 수도 없이 아름답다.

2006년 말에는 2명의 즉흥 라이브 투어도 진행되어, 앞서 말한 피아노와 전자음에 백색 LED의 순수한 빛이 가산된 멋진 라이브가 되었다. DVD 또한 발매되어 있다.

with "insen", alva noto (aka carsten nicolai) and ryuichi sakamoto continue their collaboration which started with "vrioon". The debut album released on raster-noton in 2003 was voted record of the year 2004 in the electronica category by british magazine "the wire". particular interest was shown in nicolai’s creation towards a new synergy of acoustic piano and digital post production that had not witnessed before, in his approach and interpretation of sakamoto’s piano clusters.

the strict splitting of the composition process on this record (piano: sakamoto; production and additional sounds: nicolai) reminds one of the debut album. however, "insen" carries a kind of "transcendental aura" of an early morning meditatory exercise but at the same time avoiding the field of new age philosophy. enriched by new elements, this "high-tech meditation" follows a consistent line.

on "vrioon", nicolai’s typical sinus sounds counterbalanced sakamoto’s piano accords. now, on "insen" nicolai works directly with the piano sounds. he dismantles sakamoto’s recordings with a "surgeon-like precision" into micro loops, into its atomic elements. starting with these atoms of sound, he creates a new basis for form, compressing floating rotating rhythm with harmonic sequences, with melodic counterpoints, and laying it underneath the piano tracks. this makes "insen" appear more of a complex experience, although the time-stretched flow, or even the clear lines of the piano stay untouched.

from the sleeve notes one can learn that the album was a dedication to a certain people. created far away from these people, "insen" might be a kind of dialogue. It definitely represents a diary of a stay over several month at leon feuchtwanger’s "villa aurora", where a large part of the production as well as the final mixes were completed. the themes and the track titles directly refer to that place, to the times of the day, and the events there. even the colours of the album cover associate the emotions and atmosphere experienced at "villa aurora".

only the track "berlin" was recorded later, with nicolai and sakamoto together, during a session at nicolai’s studio in berlin. as a reference to that place, one can hear a flock of birds singing in the background of the recording.

"aveol" closes the album also seen as a diary, with a mysterious beauty. the evolution of piano recording and digital post production were pushed the furthest on this track. the combination reached its (temporary) final point.

mastering at studios of calyx mastering www.calyx-mastering.com

Insen was the 2005 follow up to Vrioon, and the product of a much more conventional collaborative process that arguably yields less effective and affecting results. The poised precision and hypnotic repetition of the works on Vrioon are substituted here for more romantic, free form piano melodies and a greater range of layered sounds courtesy of Nicolai, the experience clearly intended to be discrete from that offered by Vrioon. The separation of piano and electronics is notably smaller here, often robbing the music of the beguiling simplicity that formed the core of Vrioon's success.

Insen is also far more recognizably the work of Sakamoto despite the fact that his delicate piano phrasing is subjected to greater post-processing by Noto. Vrioon was the innovator and is arguably superior to its successor, Insen featuring a little too many by the numbers and oft-used techniques to be truly engaging. If you are familiar with much of Sakamoto's other work then the repeated CD-glitch effects that are the focus of pieces like "Logic Moon" will be all too recognizable, offering little that is revolutionary or, for that matter, particularly engaging. It has all been done better on tracks like "Ngo/bitmix" (available on Sakamoto's own Chasm album), although the following piece, "Moon" wisely combines the glitches with a more memorable melodic hook.

Some of the pieces are packed with interest: the experiment with volume in "Aurora" has the bass parts vary in their intensity, reaching out for the listener at unexpected moments, while Insen's most memorable and instantly recognizable moment - "Berlin," the only piece to be recorded outside of the sessions in "Villa Aurora" - provides further evidence that the use of such a minimal sonic palette can be significantly altered by any number of external influences and is the only track to apparently feature field recordings, evidenced by the faint sound of birdsong. "Morning," on the other hand, is cold, repetitive, verging on the atonal and almost unbearably tedious, "Iano" faceless and homogenous until its closing few minutes, and "Avaol" pads out the close of the album with three minutes of barely audible, directionless, interference-clad nothingness that has Sakamoto's piano almost entirely consumed by Noto's electronics.

Richer, warmer and more accessible than Vrioon, Insen takes its predecessors components and integrates them in a more involving and diverse manner, a technique that strangely dilutes the impact and success of the material rather than concentrates it. Insen inevitably presents itself as more of the same, though the subtle differences between this body of work and Vrioon do at least exude distinctly different moods. / Sep 01 2006