Record Label Samplers: A1 Raster-Noton Archiv 1

The late 90s/early 00s witnessed the breakthrough of the minimal electronic/glitch/clicks+cuts genre. Well, for some values of “breakthrough”: I think you had a perfume ad that used music by Oval? And that was probably it, commercially.

But! Raster-Noton (along with Touch) dropped a lot of music associated with the genre, and this record sampler almost perfectly encapsulates what was so fascinating about it all.

While I think there’s an audience crossover with noise, the music here is distinctly different from that genre. It’s not abrasive, but instead thoughtful and (dare I say it) pretty.

Archiv für Ton und Nichtton (one half of the label, sort of) was a perfect name for the thing, and look at the packaging: Anti static bags. Eh? Eh?

I guess Alva Noto is the most famous performer here (perhaps through his many collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto), along with Ryoji Ikeda… And of course William Basinski these days.

But this sampler feels like more than just a random sampler — it got the flow of a “real” album. It’s also a snapshot of a particular time in history. I used to listen to it all the time, but then I sorta forgot.

And it also worked well as a sampler in that it made me buy albums from almost all of the acts featured.

 03:45 ø+Noto - Mikro Makro
 05:56 Pixel - Scrapple from the Apple
 04:14 Senking - Lift
 04:38 Coh - Silence is Golden
 08:40 Robert Lippock - Close
 06:35 W. Basinski - Shortwave Music
 05:21 Lima - Versions
 00:51 Signal - Lines
 05:17 Cyclo - C7
 00:12 Ryoji Ikeda - 0'12''32
 00:12 Rjoji Ikeda - 0'12''34
 00:39 Signal - Waves
 03:22 Byetone - Oacis
 04:31 M. Akiyama - Arteial
 04:29 Komet - Band
 04:25 Noto - Time Dot
 05:54 Signal - Spiral
 04:55 Noto - Mm

Full album here, and some individual tracks:

This blog post is part of the Record Label Samplers series.