Ultrablack of Music

Anonymous, hidden, encrypted, incomprehensible - these are the forces and sounds that tell us the unheard in music.

Iconic Frankfurt techno and experimental label -Mille Plateaux- returns with a new anthology of texts written by a collective of voices who assembled around the resurrection of the label, taking Ultrablack as its organising principle. This volume features various forms of writing with and through - as opposed to about - music, including essays on quantum aesthetics, mythology, semiotics, experimental glitch literature, and macabre philofictions. As the primordial Ultrablack Noise fluctuates in intensity, it ruptures into sound and silence. Noise intensifies until it bursts over a limit; it erupts into our World through our ears. Silence comes after Noise, and only then can we arrive at Sound. What was that Noise? It was a Sound, a moment of Noise. Once you have two Sounds, you can have Rhythm. Once you have Rhythm, you have Code. Ultrablack is the Noise which escapes these dualisms: Noise/Silence, Noise/Sound, Noise/Rhythm, Noise/Code. It is the Noise that continuously exceeds the limits of its own sign, the Noise which keeps breaking until a Rhythm emerges from breaks - a break-beat - on-off, tick-tock. There is no positive, only double-negative, as Noise creates gaps within itself. Only where there is no sound, and no silence, can you hear the music of this infinite meta-rhythm, this rhythm-without-rhythm, this Noise-beyond-Noise. Featuring works from: Achim Szepanski, Eugene Thacker, Gary Shipley, Eldritch Priest, Frédéric Neyrat, Jens Schröter, Obsolete Capitalism, Alessandro Sbordoni, Lain Iwakura, Giorgi Vachnadze, Palais Sinclaire, Darko Vukic, Stefan Paulus, Alberto Ricca, Holger Schultz, Jan Heintz, Luigi Monteanni & Gabriele de Seta, Kenji Siratori, Ross Birdwise, and Andrea Taeggi.