Intuitive Music

Noto -aka Carsten Nicolai- is one of the most innovative experimental electronic music from Germany and an important representative of the ultra-minimalism electronic music.

Born in 1965 in Karl-Marx-Stadt (DE), Carsten Nicolai studied landscape and design at the age of 20. In 1994, he founded the Noton label as a platform for conceptional and experimental related projects in music, art and science. Noton became one of the most innovative underground experimental labels from the 90’s, releasing the work of artists such as Kim Cascone, Thomas Brinkman, Scanner, Ryoji Ikeda, ELpH, COH, and Komet. In 1999, the Noton label fusioned with Frank Bretsneider’s Raster Music label to create Raster-Noton.

Nicolai’s music is most based in the digital sound, with an extreme economy of sound elements, and in the tonal work on pitches and sub-tones. He has also experimented in the fields of glitch and clicks and cuts. Nicolai has often used techniques of minimalismistic repetition and quantum mechanics.

Carsten Nicolai has had numerous exhibitions and sound instalations in the most prestigious museums around the world. His early musical works include “Spin” (1996), “Mikro Makro” (1997) in collaboration with Mika Vainio, and the flexidisc track Polyfoto (1998) which featured a collection of his visual works.

In 2000 Carsten Nicolai won the Ars Electronica prize for digital music for his “20 to 2000″ series of CDs.

Carsten Nicolai has also released several works under the nickname of Alva Noto. In 2000 he released the album “Wohltemperiert” in collaboration with the Finnish duo Pan Sonic> and has worked with Ryoji Ikeda.