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Alva Noto, "Xerrox Vol. 3"
While they differ quite a bit in scope, concept, and volume, Carsten Nicolai's Xerrox series is a long-running and intriguing digital parallel to William Basinski's analog experiments in tape decay, taking samples and using custom software to make copy upon copy until the original sounds are deteriorated into unrecognizability.  The theme for this particular volume is "towards space," which leaves the earthbound inspirations of the first two volumes far behind for a nostalgia-soaked fantasia on the science-fiction films and shows that Carsten fondly remembers from his childhood.  Unsurprisingly, that results in an album that sounds an awful lot like a soundtrack, but it is an unexpectedly poignant and curiously neo-classical one.
It is an old music critic trope that artists tend to become less special once they become competent enough at their craft to sound like the artists that they were always trying to emulate.That thought ran through my head a lot as I listened to this album, as I suspect that Nicolai always secretly wanted to be a soundtrack composer, but grudgingly wound up as a successfully conceptual artist/experimental musician instead.As it turns out, he has a knack for the former vocation, as the lush and melancholy faux-strings of album highlights "Xerrox Helm Transphaser" and "Xerrox Isola" call to mind some of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s better work.Elsewhere, however, Carsten veers into sci-fi-damaged heavy drone ("Xerrox Radieuse") or brooding, echoing dark ambient atmosphere ("Xerrox Mesophere").
Despite touching upon so many disparate stylistic veins, the album admirably maintains a consistent "haunted space station" feel that befits one of its primary inspirations: Tarkovsky's Solaris.The only catch is that I do not understand how the resultant music is related at all to the elaborate process used for its creation.  For the most part, Xerrox, Vol. 3 sounds like it could have easily been made with a synthesizer and a laptop, aside from a few especially hissing or sputtering textures–whether a chord was played on a keyboard or borrowed from a McDonald's commercial seems largely irrelevant here.  That does not diminish the album in any way, but it is odd that Carsten elected to make a somewhat straightforward album in such a complicated, concept-heavy way that does not seem to have noticeably informed the outcome.My guess is that he has just made exploiting chance and impersonal technology a life-choice and that he finds the constraint useful.
Another noteworthy aspect to Xerrox, Vol. 3 is that the most conventionally musical moments tend to be the best.I did not expect that.  While pieces like "Xerrox Helm Transphaser" certainly benefit from their gurgling, hissing, and crackling peripheral textures, the primary appeal lies in the warmly melancholy swells of appropriated strings.Carsten is at his best when he finds a strong balance between melodic hooks, texture, and entropy, which he does about a third of the time.The rest of the album is a bit less memorable, but that is primarily because he is aiming for a subdued and mysterious mood rather than due to any clumsiness or lack of good ideas.That makes Xerrox, Vol. 3 somewhat complicated for me, as it is a complete success as a complex and understated work that is alternately sublime, bittersweet, and forlorn.  That makes it a major leap forward for Carsten as a composer.  It also makes it an objective success from start to finish.
Subjectively, however, I have very mixed feelings about it.   I love the bleary, corroded Romanticism of "Xerrox Isola" and quavering beauty of "Xerrox Radieuse," both of which wildly exceeded my expectations.A few other pieces are quite good as well.Overall, however, Xerrox, Vol. 3 seems like a weirdly tame album to me–I like it for what it is, but it is a bit disappointing as a long-awaited Alva Noto album.I desperately wanted to like it more than I did.That said, my personal expectations are not Nicolai’s burden–he naturally made the album that he wanted rather than the album that I wanted.  In a couple of instances, those expectations overlap delightfully, but this is otherwise not the six-years-in-the-making tour de force that I was hoping for. However, I suspect that a lot of other people will rank this very highly within Carsten's discography and I cannot fault them for that at all–I am sure that their ears work fine.  This just is not the direction for me.
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