Alva Noto, Anne-James Chaton live at The Barbican 2018
The dilemma of whether to listen to electronic music sitting down in an environment with good acoustics or standing and dancing in an environment with not so great acoustics, will remain unresolved. But what is certain, is that once you get to listen to electronic music with great acoustics, this dilemma will puzzle you no more.
I cannot possibly know how each of the 1942 people who filled Barbican Hall have got to know Alva 
Noto but I can share how I learned about him. It was when George Drivas, one of my favourite DJs, included Alva Noto's song Chapitre VII: Back In Town" in one of his beautiful setlists in Athens' club Dark Sun. The fact that I first listened to Alva Noto in a club environment and now I was listening to him live in a theatre, created a very informative experience. Of course the club environment I am describing could not be further away from what most of the people have experienced, as Dark Sun is not an ordinary club but a truly immersive experience. But enough about that, Alva Noto a.k.a Carsten Nikolai is a former student of Architecture and a multifarious artist who does much more than writing music. I have always admired multidisciplinary artists who surpass the limits of their medium, in this case music. Audiences have had the chance to admire the work of Alva Noto in various occasions in London, as he created a light/sound installation at Siobhan Davies' studio in 2010, he has designed the print that was placed on the surfaces of a fence in the Olympic park in 2011, he has presented a light/sound installation entitled unicolor, at The Vinyl Factory in 2015 and since 2001 he has had a constant presence in the cultural/artistic activity of London among other cities and countries. Even though his latest pieces focus on the combination of light with sound, Carsten Nikolai has also created more cryptic and 'introverted' works of art such as 'void 30hz (7bit, 9bit,11bit)', which focused on the materiality of sound. This piece, consisted of chrome plated glass tubes that contained sounds. Considering all this, it is evident that each performance of his is another instance of his artistic personality and another way for exploring sound and its properties.
At this point I feel I should praise Barbican's professionalism and promptness in everything that concerned this gig. This was not the first time I have attended a concert at The Barbican of course, but this one had a little extra. Stage times, were, as always fully respected, the sound engineer was not addressed by either Alva Noto or Anne-James Chaton and the staff was more than helpful with everything.
Anne-James Chaton opened the evening with a minimal, almost mechanical performance, 
whose black and white visuals, brought to mind the minimalist planes of Modrian and the mood of René Magritte's paintings. Listening and seeing Anne-James Chaton for the first time live, has made clear that his voice is merely 
a transmitter of energy and rhythm and not a medium for singing in the 'traditional' sense. One could either let one's mind follow the rhythmic pulse that he was creating with sound or lose the whole point of the musician's stage appearance.In an act of improvised ritual, he was holding a different piece of paper for each song, whose white color, 
matched his white shoes and contrasted with his black outfit replicating the aesthetics of the visuals that were projected on the screen. In a similar improvised act of feverish 'negation' he threw this piece of paper on the floor at the end of each song. He did not use a portable megaphone this time, as he has done in past performances, but his show was equally dynamic without it.
Alva Noto-Unieqav: A multisensory experience
Notes usually have an oval shape and a little tail or line through them, to non-musicians they have the same meaning as any symbol. Some artists just read them as they appear on a score and assign emotion to their duration, others give spatial or graphic properties to them and some are just inspired by their incomprehensible and rich meaning.Alva Noto is inspired by 
additional properties of notes and sound in general. He plots and colours their waveforms and somehow he is letting them spatially arrange themselves freely, in an attempt to visually represent some of their inherent and 'invisible' dynamics.
"For Uni, the idea was always to do three records sitting in between experimental music and club music. I was diving more into rhythmic concepts. If you listen to UNIEQAV, it's between rhythmic music you can listen to at home or in a club; sitting between these situations…"(Alva Noto, extract from an interview)
Sunn O))) will be performing live at Roundhouse on October 28th with support from Anna von Hausswolff and something tells us that this gig will lead us quite ‘well’ into the ending of the year by disturbing the whole balance of our subconscious mind…
We listened to 'Unieqav' at its entirety and as much as I personally quietly hoped for a special performance of the older 'Chapitre VII: Back In Town' with Anne-James Chaton, this did not happen. After a persistent applause, Alva Noto came out on stage and he was joined by Anne-James Chaton for the performance of the uniquely dynamic 'Uni DNA' from the album, before ending the performance with 'Uni Edit', 'Uni Tra' and 'Uni Chord'.
While the previous solo album of Alva Noto 'Xerrox Vol.3' (part of the 'Xerrox' series), had a rather dark ambient and contemplative energy which 
could have been experienced if one was left alone in the room with Rodin's 'Thinker', 'Unieqav', the third in the 'Uni' series of albums ('Unitxt' was released in 2008 and 'Univrs' in 2011) is a more dynamic album. Even though 'Xerrox Vol.3' favours stillness and the experience of the moment in all its complexity, 'Unieqav' has a 'lighter' emotional charge and feels as the sonic equivalent of the numerous little dots that can be found in a pointillist painting.
A few days after the show I keep listening to 'Unieqav' through my headphones and continue to enjoy it because Alva Noto presented it in this specific way during his live performance, accompanied by these conceptually complex and psychedelic visuals.
"There was a period where a lot of people asked me what kind of speakers they should listen to my music on. I’m not going to give recommendations as it should work on everything; that’s a part of the mastering process… I always say if the mastering works in the car then it works everywhere. It’s definitely one of the best places you should test your CD. I always test in my car before mastering even, to see how the mixes sound. When you have a long drive you have plenty of time so you can see what works…"(Alva Noto, extract from an interview)
You can see more photos from this show here
Blaue Rosen 
