Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 180

Toward Bandcamp Playlists

This is pretty nifty. You can make Bandcamp playlists from multiple accounts with a third-party tool called BNDCMPR, available at bndcmpr.co. I made this simple test pilot playlist just to give it a go. No, I’m not sure how the playlist function aligns with limits on unpaid plays. (The webapp’s developer, Lon Beshiri, replied on Twitter: “So there are no play limits yet, but it is something I’ve been going back and forth on. I’m still ultimately in the camp in that if someone is going to purchase music they’re going to regardless of play restrictions.”) Thanks, Nate Trier, for having introduced me to this.

The Code Is the Thing

Chiho Oka + Kindohm + AFALFL
No Bounds Festival, Sheffield UK/YouTube

Kindohm is typing in a room different from the one I am in now. His screen is superimposed on my screen. Video of him typing is superimposed on what he himself types: lines of computer code in nested columns. These dual layered images he projects are color-reversed, leaving his skin dark, with a sickly blue tint. His beard, a resulting white fuzz, gives the illusion that he’s twice his actual age.

The music is euphorically broken. Kindohm’s beats — and this is almost entirely beats, not so much absent a vocalist as manifestly dissenting from such decoration — stagger and strut, rev up and evaporate, pounce and recoil. They promise a downbeat, then slyly renege on the fundamental club music social contract.

Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kindohm (government name: Mike Hodnick) is participating in a mid-February 2021 livecoding livestream, under the Alpaca Sessions banner, part of the week-long No Bounds Festival, out of Sheffield, England. A trio of algorave performances constitute today’s 90 minute show. It’s hosted by Alex McLean, who helped coin the term algorave and created one of its leading languages, TidalCycles. We’re all used to musicians using laptops on stage but what’s different in algorave is those musicians aren’t running programs; they’re programming the music in real-time. Like Kindohm, they might employ external gear for support (today he expends more effort on his Midi Fighter Twister than on his laptop), but the code is the thing.

This No Bounds event also features both Chiho Oka (Tokyo, Japan) and AFALFL (Paris, France). Due to the pandemic, we’re all — audience, performers, and host alike — in our disparate locations. (Olivia Jack, who created the Hydra visual coding platform, even pops up in the chat window.) Yes, livestreams became widely familiar in 2020, but there’s something quite digitally native about a livecoding stream. Had algorave not already existed, Covid-19 would certainly have engendered this cultural variant.

Up first comes Oka, who is from the future, literally. While it’s still 13 February in Sheffield, the file name on her screen reveals it’s already Valentine’s Day where she is. Of the event’s three sets, Oka’s proves the most choreographed. Kindohm might adjust code and tweak equipment settings, but Oka presents something that’s deeply Rhizome-atic: a carefully honed breed of digital performance art. She jams at one point on nothing but her MacBook’s alert presets. At another, folders move under the guidance of a massive cursor, producing a sound-effects medley. And all along she’s present: a tiny figure in a red hoodie, as if her own mascot.

Closing the event is AFALFL (born Mamady Diarra), the one performer today hiding entirely from view. As white noise surfs left and right and back, he adjusts scripts onscreen in the “dark mode” color scheme familiar to software engineers around the globe. For AFALFL, however, dark mode is a full-on sonic aesthetic. The music is murky and chaotic, not just how it noisily veers, but how its components vary and jar, the sole constants being a kick drum and error beep.

Language within AFALFL’s code lends context: both obvious terms, like legato and speed, and seemingly project-specific ones, like 808bd, striate, and superimpose. It’s all there, naked for the audience to see, but true to the word “code,” what’s unfolding isn’t necessarily self-explanatory.

This article I wrote originally appeared in the June 2021 issue (number 448) of The Wire. It had the following header: “A historical exploration of foghorns sounding warnings to ships approaching the shore in a storm reflects on their sonic and cultural legacy.”

This article I wrote originally appeared in the April 2021 issue (number 446) of The Wire, which included the above graphic. Director’s cut alert: I reinserted a clause that had been deleted for space from the printed version. The concert is archived on YouTube:

Caprices of the Atmosphere

The Foghorn’s Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast
Jennifer Lucy Allan
White Rabbit 304pp

It seems appropriate that the daughter of the man who is said to have invented the foghorn was christened Euphemia, and that her mother died shortly after giving birth. The name means “well-spoken” (or “well-spoken of”) in a dead language, and the story is tinged with grief right from the start.

That combination pretty much sums up the foghorn: a device both famed for its emotionally resonant seaside dirges and synonymous with a certain breed of foreboding moodiness. Jennifer Lucy Allan shines light into the mist, and the mist of history alike, in a new book that traces the roughly 170 year arc of the foghorn’s existence: from innovative safety measure to ambivalently received coastal sentinel to what it is today, a fading cultural heirloom.

We learn about the tragic and frequent shipwrecks that led to the device’s invention, about the modern conservationists battling in recent years to save the foghorns themselves from destruction, and about the numerous inventors who contributed to its varied forms. Singular as the foghorn’s sound may appear to be, there is no single foghorn. There are sirens, and reed horns, and diaphones, the latter distinguished by, as Allan puts it (her always fine descriptions benefiting from years of experience writing about popular and esoteric music), the “meaty grunt” with which it “ends its honk.” We learn, as well, of the guns, bells, and explosions that played similar roles as coastal alarms — rivals that, quite obviously, never plucked at the same film noir heartstrings as the deep, bellowing moan of a voluminous, unseen horn.

As for those inventors, there is Michael Faraday, who in his seventies participated in a solution following a sea disaster near Newfoundland (he is better remembered for enclosed spaces: the cage that bears his name), and his more determined protégé, John Tyndall, who brought precision and a poetic ear to the effort. Allan writes admiringly of the latter’s descriptive prose, phrases like “acoustic clouds,” “undulating sea,” and “caprices of the atmosphere.” And, among others, there is Euphemia’s father, Robert Foulis, who may or may not in the mid-1800s have been inspired by hearing the lower notes of his daughter’s piano pierce the Nova Scotia fog.

The book draws from work Allan did toward her recent PhD on the foghorn at CRiSAP, University of the Arts London. One main difference, no doubt, is that in this book we also learn a lot about Allan herself. This is very much a first-person story. The title is The Foghorn’s Lament, but it is demonstratively Jennifer Lucy Allan’s The Foghorn’s Lament. Barely a page goes by without her own participation present. We travel the British coast with her, and fly to San Francisco, which she singles out for its association with her subject. We spend nights with her in hostels, and share her disappointment when a lengthy quest ends at a generic computer on a table in a windowless room.

This first-person material might seem a distraction. Do we need to know that Allan travels with bread and Marmite, or spent her 30th birthday in Tokyo doing karaoke, or fell for the Delta blues as a teenager? The answer is yes. Because the point of this book is that sound, even a sound as otherworldly as the foghorn’s — beloved by such fantasists as Bram Stoker, Nigel Kneale, and John Carpenter, and transformed by such composers as Bill Fontana, Ingram Marshall, and Hildegard Westerkamp — is best understood in real-world context, real-life context. Its sound means more when it maps the location in which it occurs, when it has “picked up those contours of the landscape that soften and shape its resonances.” Research into its fragile and, yes, cloudy history becomes tangible when we recognize the remnant documents exist “only because someone in a previous century also had an interest, or maybe an obsession, with ephemera like this.” The foghorn has been Allan’s obsession for nearly a decade, and the mist from which it truly emerges in this book is that of her own powerful curiosity.

This article I wrote originally appeared in the June 2021 issue (number 448) of The Wire. It had the following header: “A historical exploration of foghorns sounding warnings to ships approaching the shore in a storm reflects on their sonic and cultural legacy.”

Saturday Night

This little Expression Knob from the company El Garatge (elgaratge.com), based in Barcelona, Spain, lets you adjust a guitar pedal by hand. Last night I tried it out for the first time. It stands in, so to speak, for an expression pedal. And it’s pretty great.

twitter.com/disquiet: Venues Like Home

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at twitter.com/disquiet, which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ I asked the following on Thursday, and received a slew of great responses: What clubs/venues have meant the most to you in places where you’ve lived? For me:

Knitting Factory (Houston), Manhattan

Old Ironsides, Sacramento

Mermaid Lounge, New Orleans

Luggage Store Gallery, San Francisco

There were, of course, numerous in each city. I just chose the one in each place that was or is extra special, personally.

▰ Clubs and venues that felt like home in towns where I have never lived, only visited:

Loop-Line in Tokyo

Enemy in Chicago

Erased Tapes in London

Coaxial Arts in Los Angeles

(via an adjacent comment by @willmasonmusic)

▰ This beautiful artifact just fell out of a journal that used to circulate in a library.

▰ It’s a short walk to the bay.

▰ Found the grave of ’80s hair metal. It’s in need of tending.

▰ Nature’s ambiguous embrace

▰ Every time I listen to Metallica’s cover of Diamond Head’s “Helpless” I remember clearly the very first time I lowered the turntable needle onto this EP.

Have a good weekend.

The Refraction Context

Tired: album liner notes.

Wired: a link to the GitHub repository where the open-source software used to record the music is housed.

Case in point: Ambalek’s track “Lofi Snowflakes,” a sedate sequence of tones that follow a pace seemingly static but varying regularly throughout. The melody alters just enough to feel of a piece, but in fact it shifts continuously, effortlessly, notes occasionally warped in a manner that echoes the open-ended refraction context. The script, titled Raindrops, was written for the Norns, a device from Monome (see: monome.org/norns).

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/ambalek. Github at github.com/ambalek.

Disquiet Junto Project 0502: Global Swarming

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, August 16, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 12, 2021.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0502: Global Swarming
The Assignment: Create a swarm of imaginary insects.

This project is the third of three that are being done over the course of as many months in collaboration with the 2021 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 1 through 5 under the motto “schwärme” (“swarms”). For this reason, a German translation is provided below. We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the third year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern. Select recordings resulting from these three Disquiet Junto projects will be played and displayed throughout the festival.

Step 1: You’ll be creating the sound of a swarm of insects. First, select the insect sounds from sets that resulted from two previous Disquiet Junto projects:

https://we.tl/t-pKgdA5pNcH

Step 2: Create the sound of a swarm of insects approaching, gathering mass, and then passing you by, utilizing some of the sounds you selected in Step 1.

Background: Selected results of this assignment will be played at the festival center and on the local alternative radio station Radio RaBe. The participants whose work is included will be listed by name.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0502” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0502” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0502-global-swarming/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto and #musikfestivalbern so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Note: Please post one track per weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, August 16, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 12, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0502” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 502nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Global Swarming (The Assignment: Create a swarm of imaginary insects) — at: https://disquiet.com/0502/

Thanks to Tobias Reber and Musikfestival Bern for collaboration on this project. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0502-global-swarming/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by David Hoffman, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

https://flic.kr/p/aePCyj

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

. . .

Jeden Donnerstag wird in der Disquiet Junto-Gruppe eine neue kompositorische Aufgabe gestellt. Die Mitglieder haben dann etwas mehr als vier Tage Zeit, um einen Track als Antwort auf diese Aufgabe hochzuladen. Die Mitgliedschaft in der Junto-Gruppe ist offen: einfach beitreten und mitmachen. (Ein SoundCloud-Konto ist hilfreich, aber nicht erforderlich.) Es gibt keinen Druck, bei jedem Projekt mitzumachen. Die Junto findet wöchentlich statt, so dass du weisst, dass sie jeden Donnerstag bis Montag da ist, wenn du die Zeit dafür hast.

Abgabetermin: Der Abgabetermin für dieses Projekt ist Montag, der 16. August 2021, um 23:59 Uhr (also kurz vor Mitternacht) deiner Zeit. Die Ausschreibung wurde am Donnerstag, dem 12. August 2021, veröffentlicht.

Dies sind die Anweisungen, die an die E-Mail-Liste der Gruppe verschickt wurden (unter tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Projekt 0502: Global SwarmingDie Aufgabe: Erschaffe einen Schwarm von imaginären Insekten.

Dieses Projekt ist das dritte von drei, die im Laufe von ebenso vielen Monaten in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Musikfestival Bern 2021 durchgeführt werden, welches vom 1. bis 5. September in der Schweiz unter dem Motto “schwärme” stattfinden wird. Aus diesem Grund findest du im Folgenden eine deutsche Übersetzung. Wir arbeiten auf Einladung von Tobias Reber, einem frühen Junto-Teilnehmer, der für die Vermittlungsaktivitäten des Festivals verantwortlich ist. Dies ist das dritte Jahr in Folge, in dem die Junto mit dem Musikfestival Bern zusammenarbeitet. Ausgewählte Aufnahmen aus diesen drei Disquiet Junto-Projekten werden während des Festivals gespielt und ausgestellt.

Schritt 1: Du wirst den Klang eines Insektenschwarms gestalten. Wähle zunächst die Insektenklänge aus den Sets aus, die aus zwei früheren Disquiet Junto-Projekten entstanden sind:

https://we.tl/t-pKgdA5pNcH

Schritt 2: Erzeuge den Klang eines Insektenschwarms, der sich dir nähert, sich sammelt und dann an dir vorbeizieht, indem du einige der in Schritt 1 ausgewählten Klänge verwendest.

Hintergrund: Ausgewählte Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit werde im Festivalzentrum und auf dem lokalen alternativen Radiosender Radio RaBe gespielt. Die Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer, deren Arbeiten gezeigt werden, werden namentlich aufgeführt.

Sieben weitere wichtige Schritte wenn deine Komposition fertig ist:

Schritt 1: Verwende „disquiet0502“ (ohne Leerschläge und Anführungszeichen) im Namen deines Tracks.

Schritt 2: Falls deine Audio-Plattform Tags zulässt: stelle sicher dass du den Projekt-Tag „disquiet0502“ (ohne Leerschläge und Anführungszeichen) verwendest. Vor allem auf SoundCloud ist dies hilfreich um anschliessend eine Projekt-Playlist erstellen zu können.

Schritt 3: Lade deinen Track hoch. Es ist hilfreich, aber nicht zwingend, wenn du dazu SoundCloud verwendest.

Schritt 4: Poste deinen Track im folgenden Diskussions-Thread auf llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0502-global-swarming/

Schritt 5: Füge deinem Track eine kurze Erklärung zu deiner Herangehensweise bei.

Schritt 6: Falls du den Track auf den sozialen Medien erwähnst, verwende gerne die Hashtags #disquietjunto #musikfestivalbern so dass andere Teilnehmer deinen Hinweis besser finden können.

Schritt 7: Höre und kommentiere die Stücke deiner Junto-Kolleg*innen.

Hinweis: Bitte posten Sie einen Track pro wöchentlichem Junto-Projekt. Wenn Sie mehr als einen Track auf SoundCloud hochladen möchten, lassen Sie mich bitte wissen, welchen Sie zur Playlist hinzufügen möchten. Vielen Dank!

Zusätzliche Details:

Einsendeschluss: Der Einsendeschluss für dieses Projekt ist Montag, der 16. August 2021, um 23:59 Uhr, egal wo du bist. Es wurde am Donnerstag, 12. August 2021, veröffentlicht.

Länge: Die Länge deines fertigen Tracks ist dir überlassen.

Titel/Tag: Wenn du deine Tracks postest, gib bitte “disquiet0502” im Titel und ggf. (z. B. auf SoundCloud) als Tag an.

Upload: Wenn du bei diesem Projekt mitmachst, dann füge deinem Post eine Beschreibung deiner Vorgehensweise bei – Planung, Komposition und Aufnahme. Diese Beschreibung ist ein zentrales Element im Kommunikationsprozess der Disquiet Junto. Fotos, Video und eine Auflistung der verwendeten Instrumente und Werkzeuge sind immer willkommen.

Download: Ermögliche gerne das Herunterladen deiner Komposition und erlaube attribuiertes Remixing (z.B. eine Creative Commons-Lizenz welche nicht-kommerzielles Teilen mit Attribution erlaubt und Remixes zulässt).

Wenn du den Track online postest, füge ihm als Kontext die folgende Information bei:

Mehr zu diesem 502. wöchentlichen Disquiet Junto Projekt – Global Swarming (Die Aufgabe: Erschaffe einen Schwarm von imaginären Insekten) – unter: https://disquiet.com/0502/

Vielen Dank an Tobias Reber und das Musikfestival Bern für die Zusammenarbeit bei diesem Projekt. Mehr über das Festival unter:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/musikfestival_bern
https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern

Mehr über die Disquiet Junto unter: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Abonniere die Projektankündigungen hier: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Die Projektdiskussion findet auf llllllllll.co statt: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0502-global-swarming/

Es gibt auch einen Disquiet Junto Slack-Kanal. Sende deine E-Mail-Adresse an marc@disquiet.com um Zugang zu erhalten.

Das mit dem Projekt assoziierte Bild ist von Nick Southall, und wird dank Flickr und einer Creative Commons-Lizenz (zugeschnitten und mit hinzugefügtem Text) für nichtkommerzielle Zwecke:

https://flic.kr/p/aePCyj

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Disquiet Junto 500 Roundup

Since the first week of January 2012, a music composition prompt has been sent out each Thursday to a growing and ever-changing assortment of musicians and sonic experimenters around the planet. The name of the group is the Disquiet Junto. Two weeks ago, the group marked its 500th consecutive such project. Here is a roundup of coverage and related material. If I’ve left out something, please let me know.

▰ An article by Colin Joyce at hii-mag.com.

▰ An interview I did with Peggy Nelson at hilobrow.com. A few additional notes here.

▰ An interview I did with Lee Rosevere at the CBC. A few additional notes here.

. . .

▰ Four observations made by Marty Petkovich on the occasion.

. . .

▰ The 500th project itself, the assignment being: “Play a tune by yourself and as if by two people whom you invent.”

▰ The project discussion thread at the llllllll.co](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-...) message board.

▰ The project playlist at soundcloud.com/disquiet.

. . .

▰ Some favorite projects from the first 499.

▰ What preceded the Disquiet Junto.

▰ How Junto prompts originate.

▰ Thoughts on why work is more important than inspiration.

. . .

▰ A full list of the prompts to date, since January 2012.

Reviewed “Seeing Sound” @ Kadist SF

Ah, it’s that font I love to be published in. I have a new article in the latest issue of The Wire. It’s a review of a group show at the Kadist gallery in San Francisco. The show, titled Seeing Sound, featured work by the artists Marina Rosenfeld, Aura Satz, and Samson Young, and was curated by Barbara London. (This is the new issue with Grouper on the cover.) I posted a bit about the exhibit here previously.

When the Doorbell Tolls for Itself

You don’t miss you water ’til your well’s run dry, and you don’t miss your doorbell until it’s no longer capable of being rung. But before the doorbell gets to such a state, there is, apparently, a death rattle, as I’ve now learned firsthand.

In the case of the doorbell in the home where I have lived for nearly 13 years, this rattle took the form initially of a long held note, and a dense one at that — not so much handfuls as bushels of overtones. The doorbell was rung one recent afternoon, and many seconds passed before I realized it wasn’t receding. It wasn’t quieting. It rang, and then it held, like a violin played with an endlessly long bow — or to borrow a term from synthesizers, as if some tiny, granular segment of it had been captured and then looped so as to give the illusion of an extended pause. I was caught within a frozen, eternal moment of doorbell-ness. Part of me didn’t want it to ever end. Part of me feared it never would. Part of me knew this was the end, or close to it. This was the sound of a doorbell when it tolls for itself.

I woke from the spell when I recognized that while the doorbell may be on a kind of held pause, whoever had cause it to ring was outside the time-loop bubble, or at least outside the front gate. I opened the door to receive the inevitable package, and then headed back upstairs. There, at the end of the hall, above the entrance to the kitchen, the doorbell continued to ring. It was such a strange presence, this all too familiar sound — even when I knew someone was due by for a visit, it would shock me and send the hair of my arms up on end — heard in a new way.

As it played on, and on, my sense was this was no mere blip. This was the end. It was the end, but it just wasn’t over yet. The ringing was orchestral. It felt like it can be to watch ocean waves churn over and over: in constant motion, yet in many ways never really changing, and all along giving only a hint of the depths they cover.

And then the drone of this former bell, the held tone of this former terse chime, began to settle, like a balloon deflating, like ice melting, so slowly that there came a point when I couldn’t tell if it was still ringing, or if I was just remembering the impression of its ring.

And then briefly it surfaced again, fading in, rising to a substantial volume, though with none of the strength it had moments before, only to fade out with an unambiguous finality. This fade was the end. There was a memory, but there was no illusion of presence. No pressing of the buzzer outside could revive it.

When someone rings it currently, if the house is quiet, there is a distant buzz. There is, of course, no ring. A replacement needs to be selected, and installed, but there’s time for that. Replacing it too soon feels a bit like replacing a recently deceased pet. A respectful void is necessary before one truly moves on. For now there’s near silence, and I could get used to it, impractical as it may be.