{"product_id":"ryuichi-sakamoto-alva-noto-12-conversations-dlp","title":"RYUICHI SAKAMOTO \u0026 ALVA NOTO - 12 Conversations DLP","description":"\u003cp\u003eComposed in 2022 while Sakamoto was working on his final album '12', '12 Conversations' is a lengthy anthology of experiments - \"sounds expanded, altered, recontextualized,\" according to Carsten Nicolai - that works as a heartfelt supplement to the duo's iconic run of records.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou only need to peep 'Conversation 1' to get a handle on exactly what's happening here. The track is an effervescent memory of '12' opener '20210310', a solo synth jam from Sakamoto that sets the mood for the entire record. Nicolai adds his own distinctive processes, retaining the core harmonies and folding them into reverberant interferences - glitches and distortions that sound as if they're being streamed in from another plane of existence. The two experimental titans had been working together for two decades already when they began to shuttle ideas back and forth between each other for '12'. These sketches (or \"conversations\") were never supposed to be released as an album, they were part of the process, after all; it was only when Sakamoto finished '12', leaving it fragile and relatively bare, that the two friends decided the collaborations should be compiled and released.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd if you thought '12' was somber and reflective, '12 Conversations' manages to amp up the impact somehow. Nicolai's tried-and-true processes, the glitches that made 'Vrioon' so captivating back in 2002, make Sakamoto's soulful improvisations sound as if they being experienced outside of time and space. His distinctive piano phrases echo through clusters of hisses and whirrs on 'Conversation 3', as if the discreet foley sounds that peppered '20211201' have been transformed into insectoid stutters and subtle harmonic extensions. Even more interestingly, Sakamoto's snatched breaths are magnified tenfold, re-imagined as bio-mechanical expulsions that may or may not be of this world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNicolai's version of '20220123' is even more drastic; on 'Conversation 4', he augments Sakamoto's languid, foggy soundscape with a booming low-end drone, re-arranging Sakamoto's blunted piano and setting the echoed repetitions against cinematic strings and casually space-y bleeps. He splits his rework of '20220302' into five parts and this on its own plays almost like a mini-album; here, Nicolai works with the precision he showed on 2005's 'Insen', skillfully chopping and re-arranging Sakamoto's piano to bring out new rhythms, cadences and emotions. It's hard to believe it all comes from one track, but Nicolai's always been the consummate minimalist. On '12 Conversations', he leaves a memorial to his most consequential collaborator that might be the most emotionally open record in his entire canon - we can fully understand why he held back from releasing it for so long.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"NOTON","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53441946845451,"sku":null,"price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0529\/3899\/7932\/files\/12conversations.jpg?v=1791799280","url":"https:\/\/bisaufsmesser.com\/products\/ryuichi-sakamoto-alva-noto-12-conversations-dlp","provider":"Bis Aufs Messer Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}