The gap between the release of this and Xerrox Vol.1 back in March 2007 was longer than one might have expected given that it announced itself as the first of five volumes of an ongoing project. But Noto has always been quite prolific, and many more collaborative and solo projects have been released in the meantime.
It is only fair to state right up front that I revere Xerrox Vol.1, considering it to be the apex of Alva Noto’s musical output thus far; an astounding piece of work that remains one of the finest electronic records in my collection. The announcement of Xerrox Vol.2 was therefore cause for great excitement. It had a lot to live up to, and would finally answer the question: could we expect more of the same or would it take a fundamentally different approach?
Xerrox Vol.1 tapped into a photocopied out of existence aesthetic that rendered what ought to be recognizable samples as wiped, smeared, magnetically destroyed, as digital detritus, the human and organic badly cloned, photocopied or replicated via flawed human systems and creations, destroying the original and creating a new, totally unrecognizable one as a consequence.
Xerrox Vol.2 does indeed take a different approach. Though the techniques used to create this new content may be altogether as involved and convoluted as its predecessor, the auditory results are, if anything, more recognisable, less immediately structurally complex and less distancing. The oceans of static and soft white noise from Xerrox Vol.1 are largely gone; their place taken by heavily processed drones, pronounced classical leanings and an even greater sense of ambience and atmosphere.
This review has arrived many months after the release of Xerrox Vol.2 partly because for several reasons. Firstly, Xerrox Vol.1 had taken weeks, even months to fully reveal its unique charms; the more you live this music, the better it gets. Listen to it on your hi-fi, through your headphones, in the car, at work, in the rain, when you’re ill, when exhausted. Watch it to help you sleep, and marvel at how affecting it is to be awoken by the arrival of a new drone or surge of strings.
Ever since reading the list of samples from the sleeve notes of Xerrox Vol.1 (Narita Airport, In-Flight Program Air France etc), it has been difficult to shake off the close association of the sounds and textures of the series to airports, aircraft and all the associated experiences, behavior and interaction that goes with close proximity to them. A strange association to make when so little evidence of anything approximating these sounds can actually be recognized or heard in the final recording, but it has nevertheless colored my perceptions of Xerrox Vol.2 as well. It is this mysterious familiarity that soaks through the vast, engulfing drones and atmospheres on Vol.2 that Noto does best. These are sounds and forms rent near unrecognizable, alien, technological and impersonal yet contain subtle micro-elements that are completely human, affecting and even comforting.
“Xerrox Phaser Acat I” opens proceedings. Effectively an executive summary of the whole album, it distills the majority of the different textures, sounds and techniques found later into one sweeping 12-minute piece. A low engine-thrum and machine whine build into a sheet of distorted power-station noise, which is broken up after several minutes by the injection of looped, swooning strings, soft background static and fizzling synth spikes.
Conversely, and interestingly for such a generally becalmed body of work, “Xerrox Meta Phaser” may just be one of the noisiest tracks Noto has yet created. Effectively the culmination of the opening four-part movement of the album, it presents a turbulent vortex of white noise that rises to a searing crescendo. It is reminiscent of “Xerox” as performed by Noto and Sakamoto on the Insen Tour, the piece that had a great deal of the audience completely baffled. Like standing too close to the engine of a passenger jet, the sheer corridors of noise eventually channeled by this piece literally become almost intolerable, making it the most intense moment on ‘Xerrox Vol. 2’ and almost something of a relief when it is over.
At its most human, “Xerrox Monophaser 2” (one of Alva Noto’s finest and most mesmerizing moments to date) is vaguely reminiscent of the Debussy inspired works on Biosphere’s Shenzhou, opening with an immense, object-vibrating bass drone into which an almost jolting surge of real strings is injected. These are then looped throughout the piece, along with electronic chimes, the distant whoosh of passing cars, the sighing of wind through trees and an artificial pitch-bent sawing.
“Xerrox Tek Part 1” features another multi-layered aircraft-like drone, a constant engine thrum as heard through human ears dulled by the pressure changes of high-altitude flight. Vol.1 style radio static bubbles under repeating stings of fizzing synth tones, before our ears pop to reveal “Xerrox Monophaser 3” and more strings overheard from the headphones of a nearby passenger watching the in-flight entertainment system.
Xerrox Vol.2 is definitely not more of the same, even surpassing the immersive and mesmerizing first volume, and is an immediate recommendation to anyone who loves ambient or electronic music of all kinds. It may not mean anything to you to begin with, but take it with you wherever you go. It’s almost certain that that will change.
Xerrox Vol.2 is out now on Raster-Noton. [Listen & Purchase
