Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 223
August 29, 2020
IM-OS: The Journal of Improvised Music – Open Scores
Now in its second year, the online journal IM-OS is a wellspring of experimental composition. The initials stand for Improvised Music – Open Scores, and there’s a slightly longer description on its homepage, im-os.net: “new music journal focused on improvised music, open scores in various forms like prose, graphic and action notations.” There have been four issues thus far, two in 2019 and two this year, all edited by Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen. All are available as free PDFs.
The most recent, dated Spring 2020, includes a graphic score that approaches the rhetoric of current sitting U.S. president as a composition (see the graphic above) and a deck of cards from Dennis Báthory-Kitsz (see sample set below).
The second issue included an essay by Adam Wasażnik connecting such games as cribbage and Monopoly to music-making, and the third had an 80-card “mathematical music” game composed by Samuel Vriezen on the occasion of composer Tom Johnson’s 80th birthday. (Frequent Disquiet Junto participant Glenn Sogge has a card-based composition in the second issue titled “Gestures for one or more percussionists.”)
Check it out at im-os.net. More from Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, who is based in Finland, at soundcloud.com/jpkervinen and from Carl Bergstrøm-Nielsen, who is based in Denmark, at intuitivemusic.dk. (Thanks to Colin Drake for having introduced me to the journal.)
August 28, 2020
Ebb and Flow
Another excellent ambient modular synthesizer piece from Orbital Patterns. Not even four minutes long, it played on repeat this morning for a couple hours while I tried to settle into another unsettling day. The video is titled “Layers,” appropriate to the variety of through-lines heard here, overlapping in various ways, ever in flux: plucked virtual strings that echo to infinity, a chiming ambiance like a phaser set for stunning, and the central singsong ebb and flow. Gorgeous.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More from Orbital Patterns (aka Abdul Allums of Rochester Hills, Michigan) at orbitalpatterns.bandcamp.com and twitter.com/orbitalpatterns.
August 27, 2020
Disquiet Junto Project 0452: Let’s Scream
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 Monday, August 31, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 27, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0452: Let’s Scream
The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music.
There’s only one step this week:
Step 1: It’s time to let out some stress. Record your scream and turn it into music.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0452” (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 “disquiet0452” (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-0452-lets-scream/
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 Monday, August 31, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 27, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you. Hold your scream as long as it takes.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0452” 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 452nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Let’s Scream (The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music), 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-0452-lets-scream/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
August 26, 2020
What Was Then the Future
I’ve always taken this Lego figure to be a boombox, but I’ve come to recognize that the handle is a phone, and the screen interface on the front seems to be phone-like, as well. Perhaps the pieces were repurposed from other initial uses? Perhaps it’s a prototype for the boombox phone of what was then the future.
(In unrelated news, that is, indeed, ash from the NorCal fires on the window ledge.)
August 25, 2020
Haunting Stuff
“Helena” is the center-most track of the 11 that comprise Übersee, a new album by Oberlin, the name under which Alexander Holtz records. The full album is on Bandcamp. This piece was uploaded to SoundCloud as an example. Its six minutes are like a premonition transformed into sound. It’s haunting stuff, all tunnel wind and interference hum, beats no louder than a pin prick, and no less sharp.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/moi-qui.
August 24, 2020
Afrorack’s Crossed Rhythms
This is another great set from the Uganda-based synth musician Afrorack, aka Brian Bamanya. It has a more limited sonic palette and more intricately rhythmic intent that the live performance I mentioned earlier this month, and those two aspects serve each other well. The frequently crossing patterns sound like steel percussion, and the slight tweaks of pitch bring to mind hand drums. Those subtle contrasts set the stage for how the individual pieces rotate through the set. Check out the 9:30 mark as an off beat is introduced and then slowly takes over. I listened to all 30 minutes of this several times in a row this afternoon.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More from Afrorack/Bamanya at bamanyabrian.com.
August 23, 2020
Current Listens: Church Bells + Air Horns
This is my 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. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)
▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰
NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases
▰ Håkan Lidbo has ingeniously composed music intended to accompany long-standing public bells heard around Stockholm, Sweden, including two churches and a civic center.
▰ If you’re tired of me recommending Jon Hassell’s latest album, then please allow me to recommend a record by one of its featured contributing musicians, guitarist Eivind Aarset. Snow Catches on her Eyelashes, released back in March on the Jazzland label, teams Aarset and Jan Bang on what could be the film score to a slow-burn science-fiction noir, all otherworldly tonalities transmuted through digital processing. Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet), through whose band I first experienced Aarset many years ago, is among the guests.
Snow Catches on her Eyelashes by Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang
▰ As the album’s title suggests, Harbors sounds like coastal atmosphere come to musical life. With roughly 50 strings between them, Theresa Wong (cello) and Ellen Fullman (Long String Instrument, accounting for the remaining lion’s share) make resonant music together. Released last week on the Room40 label.
Harbors by Ellen Fullman & Theresa Wong
▰ Maximalist ambient music — orchestral and soaring — created from, of all things, the sound of an air horn. Better yet, it’s a multi-track video (using the SP-404, usually associated with beats). Recorded by the UK-based musician Morn Valley.
August 22, 2020
0HP 4Life
Modules from the Eurorack format of modular synthesizers are measured, in terms of width, by what are called “HP.” The letters stand for “horizontal pitch,” which equals a fifth of an inch. Modules are placed alongside each other in cases, and some ingenuity and space-consciousness can be required when putting together a system. You can see such standard modules, out of focus, in the background of the above two photographs. Functional modules are generally between 4HP and 30HP, but start as low as 1HP and seem to get both wider and narrower with each new release, pushing both ends of the spectrum. On the low end, there’s a wide range of 2HP and 3HP devices.
However, the modules can get smaller still. There is a growing number of modules not intended to be in a rack at all, but instead to hover above the rack, held aloft by the very cables that are plugged into them. These are so-called 0HP modules (that is: zero HP). Pictured here are two such ones I recently obtained. On the bottom, from the small company Schenk.work, is the Gerridae, which is named for the water strider bugs. The one up top, from Error Instruments, is named the Flying Attenuator. There’s a company called Mystic Circuits that specializes in 0HP modules. Whether floating or soaring or on the spiritual plane altogether, these add handy functionality without taking up any precious room.
August 21, 2020
Forging Rhythmic Similarities
Sublumia: Liquid Aesthesia by João Ricardo, Henrique Fernandes and Jorge Quintela
Sublumia: Liquid Aesthesia is the trio of João Ricardo, Henrique Fernandes, and Jorge Quintela working in collaboration. They combine myriad tiny sounds, from closely experienced field recordings to minuscule devices to composed tones making subtle variations, all in the service of forming a detailed sound world that derives the exotic from the familiar. Such things, apparently, as field recordings of insect noise, the burble of boiling water, and the mechanistic click of unidentified gadgetry gather to a forge singular listening undertaking, one in which the similarities between the source materials, notably in rhythmic terms, provide a conceptual through line. Liner notes explain that the recordings originated as the sound of a combination performance and sound installation: “The objects that integrate it use the sound capture and projection of light from and on water and several electromechanical elements, such as air pumps, dc motors and sound induction devices, without resorting to manipulation or any type of artificialization of the sound sources or lighting.”
Album originally posted at skupina.bandcamp.com.
August 20, 2020
Disquiet Junto Project 0451: Ursula’s Silences
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 Monday, August 24, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 20, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0451: Ursula’s Silences
The Assignment: Make music inspired by a line from A Wizard of Earthsea.
Step 1: In the classic fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea, its author, Ursula K. Le Guin, writes the following: “For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.” While the words are her own, of course, they are spoken not by the narrator, but by the book’s main character. The statement occurs toward the end of the book. For emphasis, Le Guin informs the reader that the character, whose name is Ged, speaks the words “slowly.”
Step 2: Consider how the statement can be applied to music, to sound, to the linear unfolding of a composition.
Step 3: Record a piece of music inspired by the Le Guin text: one sonic object at a time, with attention paid to the spaces, the silences, between those objects as they are introduced.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0451” (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 “disquiet0451” (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-0451-ursulas-silences/
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 Monday, August 24, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 20, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you. Remember: it’s a sentence, not a novel.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0451” 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 451st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Ursula’s Silences (The Assignment: Make music inspired by a line from A Wizard of Earthsea), 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-0451-ursulas-silences/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
