Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto
Vrioon

LA RECENSIONE

It seems that when we pass on to a better (?) life, our body will decrease by about 21 grams. Some say it's the weight of the soul. There's even a movie dedicated to it. Who knows if this lightening produces a sound. A breath perhaps. If this breath were ever discovered, I suggest calling it Vrioon. And when it happens to me. When I am laid out on the mat after the final KO, I would like the referee, perhaps female, to slowly whisper the tracklist of this album to me. Uoon. Duoon. Trioon. Noon. The titles alone would be enough to reactivate certain neurons. The ones involved in feeling Vrioon.

Album of the year 2003 for The Wire magazine. Category: Electronic. Abstract and concrete. Together. Ecstatic and aesthetic. Like how this text may appear. Which in reality is only an invitation to dislocate listening in the direction of Alva Noto plus Sakamoto. Authors of the already reviewed "Insen." Where I refer you to the bold lines, if you want a definition of their sound. The difference between the two albums is in the modus operandi. Insen was created inside a studio. Largely in the famous Villa Aurora. The notes of the grand piano played by Sakamoto flow directly into Carsten Nicolai's laptop. Here they undergo various and assorted electrodigital discharges. They are stripped, added to, and recomposed into emotional patterns. In real time, as in live performances. What remains is the essence and the absence of an impressive dialogue. A philosophical diary in sonic form. The genesis of Vrioon, the debut, occurred over a distance. Across digital highways. From Japan came the notes of the Maestro. And Nicolai embroidered them, adding an inspired constellation made of glitches and myriads of unknown random particles until then. The result is similar. If anything, here the dialogue is more relaxed and counterbalanced. A rarefied flow of disharmonic sequences. And of what follows after a subjective listening. Compressions. Transcendencies. Revelations. Something akin to the concept of aura. An unrepeatable apparition of a remoteness.

If by any chance I met my guardian angel, this is the album I would give them. Vrioon. One last listen before the Nowhere. And if in Nowhere there was still music, I would want the "Miracle". But this is another dream. Another album. Over the rainbow.