Following the coming together of rastermusic and NOTON a number of years ago as raster-noton, the label will soon divide into two separate entities together.
From this month, raster-noton will be rebranded as raster-media and will continue to be operated by Olaf Bender, otherwise known as Byetone. The labels raster-music, raster-index and raster-archive will continue to release music under the raster-media axis.
NOTON will be controlled by Carsten Nicolai, otherwise known as Alva Noto, and all of his future releases will appear via the label. Both will still continue to pursue collaborative projects as raster-noton however, and in September of this year raster-noton will celebrate its 10-year anniversary at Electric Campfire Festival in Rome.
"The idea to restructure raster-noton has been in the air for some time already," says a statement by Bender and Nicolai.
"We absolutely wanted to celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2016 together without changing anything and tried to conclude this process, which means the years between 1999 and 2016, with the publication of our raster-noton. source book 1.
"Now in 2017, we want to go separate ways. The label ‘NOTON’ will take care of Alva Noto’s musical projects, which includes both his solo releases as well as his collaborations. On the other hand, ‘raster’ will continue the idea of an artistic platform, which will even be extended with new releases and new artists.
"We think that in the end, this reorganisation is to our mutual benefit as it has become harder and harder in recent years to meet and actually work together, not just because we are based in different cities now, but also because of our busy schedules, which made it all very complex. In this sense, we think it’s more efficient for both of us to continue separately."
You can find the two labels’ websites here and here. You can also read our Baker’s Dozen with Byetone from last year here.
