Ah, dear old Aleph 1: the cardinality of certain uncountably infinite sets. That old chestnut. Georg Cantor played around with this in his so-called continuum hypothesis which claims that there is no set whose size is strictly between that of the integers and that of the real numbers. Now I know what you are thinking: Georg old fella, that is crazy talk: you know as well as I do that there is no way of proving or disproving that sort of nonsense, particularly if you are going to bring in those stupid Zermelo-Frankel axioms. And I’m trying to watch the footy, will you pipe down? Oh, and it is your round, you insufferable long-winded long-dead long-bearded fool.

Now who in the name of Crom would choose this obscure mathematical backwater as the subject matter for their latest album? If you haven’t guessed at a certain Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, that most cerebral and scientific of musicians, then go and stand in the corner and think about what you have done, you mathematician-insulting musician-notguessing dunce. However, while last year’s magnificent Xerrox 1 mushroomed from a seemingly strict concept into a dense, lush and emotional tour-de-force, this is Nicolai at his most minimalist. Right down to the Autechre-like track titles. The eight tracks on Aleph 1 are maddeningly cyclical bunches of little noises, rigid constructs of clicks and tones. Sometimes they can be sparse, as with the echoing Bretschneider-like robotics of “C A B 05″, while sometimes as on “C A A 01x” or “C A E 02″ they spiral off into their own little infinities, the juxtaposed sounds gathering into strangely addictive, and deceptive rhythms which only reveal their complexities after a number of iterations.

For such an initially simple-seemingly record, it turns out o be an infinitely rewarding listen. Aleph 1 is available now from Warpmart. Really.