About

The partnership between the legendary musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and the German artist Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) has produced some of the most distinctive and enduring works in contemporary electroacoustic music. Beginning with Vrioon in 2002, the artists spent more than two decades fusing and expanding their disciplines, with Sakamoto’s evocative, sustain-drenched piano compositions finding their counterpart in Nicolai’s skilful and sensitive electronic detailing.

Each successive project further deepened their artistic dialogue: from the five studio albums of the V.I.R.U.S. series (Vrioon, Insen, Revep, Utp_ with Ensemble Modern, and Summvs), to their score for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant; Glass (2017), a wholly improvised performance inside Philip Johnson’s iconic Connecticut landmark, in which the pair fixed contact microphones to the glass walls, playing the architecture itself as an instrument; and Two (2019), a document of their live performance at the Sydney Opera House.

Across these works, their distinct approaches achieved a rare synthesis, a masterfully sustained dialogue between piano and electronics, Sakamoto’s warmth and melodic finesse meeting Nicolai’s abstract electronic formalism. Together they conjure a hypnotic stillness, one whose musical resolutions feel just as rewarding as its fusion of cinematic lyricism and contemplative restraint.

12 Conversations brings together musical exchanges recorded in November and December 2022. Rooted in the same creative period that gave rise to Sakamoto’s final solo album 12, these recordings were not originally intended as a standalone release. It was only after the completion of 12 that Sakamoto and Nicolai decided to present these exchanges as a work in their own right.

The album reflects the vitality and curiosity that defined more than two decades of shared inspiration: fluid, exploratory, and forward-looking. Created with openness and trust, it captures a creative process in constant transformation – sounds expanding, altering, and evolving through attentive listening.

Conceived as the continuation of an artistic dialogue extending beyond the physical, 12 Conversations honours Sakamoto’s wish that these encounters should exist beyond the archive, offering an enduring testament to one of contemporary music’s most revered collaborations. — (via Label)

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Edited under reference N-068 of the official NOTON catalog, '12 Conversations' will be marketed globally in digital formats, compact disc, and a special double vinyl edition. The album's structure reflects a fluid and exploratory work process. The tracklist consists of sixteen tracks organized chronologically. The pieces carry sequential titles from 'Conversation 1' to 'Conversation 12', highlighting a structural anomaly in 'Conversation 9', which has been fragmented and distributed into five distinct parts throughout the listening experience.

The sound design of the record captures a creative process in constant transformation, where sounds expand and are altered through a technique of attentive listening between both performers. The production maintains the hypnotic stillness that characterizes their previous works, seeking a technical balance between the cinematic lyricism of the Japanese composer and the meditative restraint of European electronic minimalism. — (via Techno Beats)

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Label: Noton
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2026
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient

File under: Ambient / Experimental / IDM
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