Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 212
November 24, 2020
Jason Richardson’s Lessons from the Disquiet Junto
▰ Play: “I find it’s important when approaching any activity to switch off my inner critic and unleash a child-like sense of play.”
▰ Action: “One of the best things about the Disquiet Junto is finding that creativity doesn’t need to wait for inspiration.”
▰ Variety: “Sometimes the prompts are like cryptic crossword questions, and it’s fun to see the variety of interpretations that emerge from the community; other times they’re prescribed directions and it still seems as though everyone comes up with something radically different.”
▰ Learning: “So I think that, while there are many lessons I’ve learned from being part of the Disquiet Junto community, a key one to reflect on here is that creative experiments can not fail. You just need to adopt an attitude that you’re still learning.”
Those four observations (with my labels) are just a few of the points brought up by Australian musician and artist Jason Richardson in a post he published this week, at cyclicdefrost.com, about his experience as a frequent participant in the Disquiet Junto music community. It’s a thoughtful, generous overview of the Disquiet Junto’s weekly compositional prompts, and it’s informed by his having accomplished roughly two thirds of the 464 projects to date. Jason has also contributed project ideas over the years, such as one using samples he made from “the biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere.” He also interviewed me back in 2017, during which he made an observation I think about quite frequently: “the Junto themes seem to have proportion to daily life, with a number about sleeping, waking, eating, walking, etc.”
November 23, 2020
Ana Roxanne, Back in 2019
There’s a great new album out from Ana Roxanne, Because of a Flower, which I’ve mentioned once or twice in the run up to its November 13 release. Definitely check it out for its layers of looped vocals and other forms of lush, often semi-verbal playfulness.
And while you’re at it, (re)visit this video of a half-hour set that she performed at Union Station in Los Angeles back in mid-May 2019. It’s a great show, benefiting especially from the way the vast hall expands upon her already well-documented penchant for echoing spaciousness. And note the facial expressions each time the train announcements threaten to disturb the fragility and serenity that the music has worked so hard to achieve. Ooo, and it closes with a cover of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “Ooo Baby Baby” that would make Angelo Badalamenti cry for an encore.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More from Roxanne, formerly of Los Angeles and currently of New York City, at instagram.com/frincess.
November 22, 2020
Current Listens: London Beats, Robot Piano
A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.
▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰
NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases
▰ London-based Vigi Beats delivers five brief instrumental hip-hop tracks, the loops expertly balancing a downtempo pace with a frenzy of sped-up samples. The set is titled Just Some Chops.
▰ Hard to imagine the new Thys / Amon Tobin collaboration wasn’t initially conceived as the score to an unidentified video game or film project, so thick is Ithaca with scene-setting, rhythmically amorphous sonic experimentation.
▰ John Schaefer’s New Sounds hosts two piano performances by Icelandic musician Olafur Arnalds. Arnald’s new album, some kind of peace, involves his algorithmic Stratus software (“intelligent custom software that could trigger self-playing, semi-generative ‘ghost’ pianos — his ‘robot writing partners'” per the software company, Spitfire Audio, that released it). Listen to the interview at newsounds.org.
November 21, 2020
Grace Notes: Used Sounds, De-Amplifying
I do this manually each week, collating the tweets I made that I want to keep track of (and sometimes some stray thoughts that didn’t appear earlier). For the most part, this means ones I initiated, not ones in which I directly responded to someone. Long ago, as I mentioned two weeks ago, there was an automated way to collect a week’s tweets as a blog post. Bizarrely, after years and years of that plugin not functioning, this morning it suddenly worked, out of the blue. When I discovered that it had auto-posted a summary of the past week’s tweets, I deleted the entry, because it’s sort of an inelegant solution. I may fiddle with the plugin’s settings, but in the meanwhile, collating these manually is a good practice.
▰ A Go-Go’s song came on over the weekend, and I immediately started tapping my foot and paying attention with what I can only describe as military-grade attention and focus. I felt like I was suddenly becoming aware that I am, in fact, some sort of Gen X Cylon sleeper agent.
▰ Fun thing about buying used music equipment is occasionally hearing, due to SD cards and internal memory, whatever music the person you bought it from was making before they put it in the box and mailed it to you. Even generic looper pedals have stories to tell.
▰ tired: subtweeting
wired: de-amplifying
▰ Skynet alert: The AI spambots are getting smarter. Based on the past few days’ flurry, they’ve sorted out (17+ years after I left New Orleans) that despite my 504 area code I live in 415.
▰ Mistakenly thought Twitter had become a China Miéville book club.
▰ Fellow San Franciscans: if you have children unfamiliar with the concept of “rain” this is a good time to take them outside.
▰ “A lot of people could identify the roar as a Palmer roar or a Nicklaus roar or a Tiger roar” (nytimes.com. Despite the old saw about golf claps, competitive golf without a crowd present is quite a different thing. (I don’t golf, so I’ll take their word for it.)
▰ The “sound beaming” technology that puts music in your head. Cybernetic earmworm FTW: timesofisrael.com.
▰ Have a great weekend, folks. I usually take a long social media break at the end of the year starting right around now, but given the social restrictions of pandemic life, I may hang around online. We’ll see. Still taking weekends off, either way. Be well.
November 20, 2020
Ease into the Slow
Close out the week, and ease into the slow (and, one hopes, uneventful) denouement of the annus horribilis that has been 2020, with a new Jeannine Schulz piece, “Beacon.” It is ebb and flow ambient, with a steady throb setting the pace, to which thick, soft tones attach themselves, the whole thing vibrating with a peaceful, sing-song quality. At times a field recording of waves can be heard, and the ease with which those natural sounds coordinate with the synthesized material is a tribute to the keen, patient ear that Schulz brings to the music.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/jeannineschulz. More of Schulz’s work at jeannineschulz.bandcamp.com. Schulz is based in Hamburg, Germany.
November 19, 2020
Disquiet Junto Project 0464: Blanket Song
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, November 23, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 19, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0464: Blanket Song
The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
Step 1: The point of this project is to cover a song in the literal sense of the word. To “cover” a song usually means to play your own version of it. Here, you will blanket the original: you will play atop a song you like, and then remove the original so only your accompaniment is heard. The original will not be recognizable in what remains. First, choose the song you want to blanket.
Step 2: Record yourself playing along with the song you selected in Step 1.
Step 3: Remove the song from Step 1 so that only the original recording from Step 2 remains.
Step 4: You needn’t identify the song from Step 1 when posting your track, but certainly feel free to do so.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0464” (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 “disquiet0464” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0464-blanket-song/
Step 5: Annotate your tracks with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto 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.
Additional Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 23, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 19, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you. Presumably it will be around the same length as the source audio on which you based it.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0464” 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 464th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Blanket Song (The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original), at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0464-blanket-song/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project is by Paul Morriss, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (flipped and cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:
November 18, 2020
Music to Not Listen To
Pandemic nights often mean some time with simple tools. The synthesizer remains turned off, and the laptop, too. This track, recorded last night, is just electric guitar loops: two Ditto Loopers running asynchronously (different lengths), each taking a signal from a Stratocaster going through a reverb pedal (HardWire RV-7), with an EBow used on occasion. Recorded into Adobe Audition via a mixer and an audio interface. Some reverb and EQ work done in Audition.
If recording you want to listen to is something to aspire to (and it is), this is something else: music that I’ve found myself happy to have on loop in the background while working the next day. Music to not listen to.
The title, “Arrow Up,” relates to the symbol for Mars, patron saint of Tuesdays.
November 17, 2020
Out of Service
Corruption, the equal parts prolific and mysterious Japanese noisemaker, has returned to SoundCloud after an unexplained six-month absence. That absence hasn’t been complete, in that the Corruption Bandcamp account has been collecting numerous albums (most of them archival, suggesting a possible pandemic stasis) in the interim. Two tracks, though, have appeared on SoundCloud in the past few days, one titled “out of service,” which may be intended as a marker for an account on hiatus (we’ll see). It’s peak Corruption, just over a minute of noise for its own wonderful sake, a rhythmic procedural that transforms widely and, yet, somehow slowly during its course, brief runtime.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/corrption.
November 16, 2020
Akin to Harmony
Kent Sparling has a way with atmospheric ambient music that is entirely his own. His work has a naturalist quality and a fantastic quality in equal amounts, and they coexist in something akin to harmony. He achieves a balance that is as much sound design as it is composition. Those, too, exist in a balance akin to harmony. The extended hushed chord that is “Tinted Bilaval,” which is up there with Sparling’s best work, contains oceanic depth, orchestral depth, deep forest depth. This isn’t merely the depth of cavernous echo, or the end result of sonic smoke and mirrors. It is a depth of numerous, carefully considered layers. Each time through (I had it on repeat this evening), one can listen to (and focus on) foreground and background separately, and to various junctures in between, and as elements from each zone exchange places with the grace of a waltz, or perhaps the grace of a falling leaf. Or more to the point: both. The track takes its title from Indian music, and you can hear in “Tinted Bilaval” a droning presence like the swelling of a tanpura, one presence among myriad.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/purling. More from Sparling at kentsparling.com. I’ve been a fan of Sparling’s music for the longest time. According to a search of this website, I first mentioned him here 15 years ago. That might have been the first time, but I feel like it was earlier still.
November 15, 2020
Current Listens: Loraine James, Ginger Baker, More
A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.
▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰
NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases
▰ Awesome hour-long Loraine James laptop set of glitchy, club-borne IDM, even more intense, more shattered, than the session she recorded for Fact back in mid-August. (Thanks, Bradley Allen for the alert.)
▰ The ranginess and looseness of Live in Japan, an album from Material, the Bill Laswell band, with drummer Ginger Baker, reinforces just how constructed was the (amazing) 1986 Laswell-produced album Horses & Trees. This is a very different pleasure, with lots of space and soloing, but it’s still very enjoyable. In addition to Baker and Laswell the group features Foday Musa Suso, Bernie Worrell, Nicky Skopelitis, and Aiyb Dieng
Live In Japan by Material with Ginger Baker
▰ If Tuvan throat singers reached the singularity in the presence of a synthesizer rack, it might sound like the abraded, glottal drones of J. Soliday’s Slow GENiE.
Slow GENiE by J.Soliday
