Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎- Glass (2018)

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Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto ‎- Glass (2018)

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"Glass" is an improvisational piece composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Carsten Nicolai, known by his stage name as Alva Noto, for Yayoi Kusama's installation Dots Obsession—Alive, Seeking for Eternal Hope, which ran in September 2016 at Philip Johnson's Glass House. A film of the performance was uploaded to the Glass House's official Vimeo account and website on November 11, 2016, and an audio recording of the 37-minute composition was released as an album on Nicolai's label NOTON on February 16, 2018. "Glass" is an unconventional ambient piece that uses sounds from a keyboard, glass-made singing bowls, and digital processing of the House's glass walls. The composition consists of developing layers of sounds performed over a single drone. It was praised by many professional reviewers as a display of Sakamoto and Nicolai's growing artistry.

"Glass" is an unconventional ambient composition of several fragments of sound coming together into various layers that subtly grow and shrink and play over a drone. According to Resident Advisor, "the melodies emphasise the fragility of glass, while the drone underlines its solidity and sturdiness, lending the composition a duality that it wrestles with over its 37-minute length. It differs from Nicolai and Sakamoto's previous works for its emphasis on the vibrations of acoustic textures rather than electronically-made sounds. It includes dark tones from a Sequential Circuits synth, mallet-rubbed glass that go through processing, and high-pitched crotales.

Irene Shum, who co-ordinated and arranged the installation, described Sakamoto and Nicolai's performance as "call and response," which was also noted by writer Nenad Goergievski: "This it is an ambient articulation where the artists respond to the moment rather than predicating it." The performance not only processed the glass but also its outside environment, as it rained in the beginning of the performance before clearing up. The rain resulted in shrieking-like sounds.

Journalist Andy Beta noted a "intensifying sense of unease it evolves," elaborating that "When Noto and Sakamoto introduce an even higher sound it evokes a physical sensation akin to freezing rain suddenly turning to ice, brittle and crystalline," but also analyzed it was "infused with a warmth that slowly permeates the final moments of the piece."[10] Similarly, Goergievski, noting both ear-friendly and "dissonant" sounds in the track, described it as a "complex recording where the artists weave together an aural tapestry of great and dark beauty, where the patterns and the nuances may be difficult to initially perceive."