Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 230
June 26, 2020
Se of Wers
Come with me, my love
To the se
The se of wers
I want to tell you
Just how much I love you
About Last Night
So quiet. Like felt has blanketed the neighborhood. Hasn’t been a bus by in months. Planes rarely pass overhead. Helicopters neither. Little if any street traffic or pedestrians in the night. So quiet. Like the air is somehow more empty. Like the world outside is a void.
June 25, 2020
Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes
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, June 29, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes
The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up.
Step 1: You will need two field recordings for this project, preferably ones with clear differences between them.
Step 2: You will be creating a mashup-up of these two field recordings. Listen closely to them and locate distinct elements, as few or many as you wish.
Step 3: Extract samples of those elements selected in Step 2.
Step 4: Within minimal alteration of the source audio, combine the samples from Step 3 into a single track. It can be as chaotic or placid, realistic or artificial, as sounds right to you.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0443” (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 “disquiet0443” (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-0443-in-two-landscapes/
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, June 29, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 25, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0443” 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 443rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes — The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up — 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-0443-in-two-landscapes/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Images associated with this track are from Ted Laderas and Thorsten Sideb0ard, used thanks to Creative Commons licenses and Flickr. The images have been cropped, colors shifted, and text added.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Life on the Line
Yes, the texture of the cover of the Agnes Martin biography I’m reading (the one by Nancy Princenthal) does, indeed, resemble an Agnes Martin painting (detail magnified here). Like Basquiat and Rothko, Martin is everywhere.
Forensic Sci-Fi
Very excited to be writing a piece for the hilobrow.com series Klaatu You, in which contributors were invited by website editor Josh Glenn to “revisit their favorite pre-Star Wars sci-fi movies.” I’ll be writing about Colossus: The Forbin Project, the 1970 film directed by Joseph Sargent (perhaps best known for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three). Up top is a photo of some of the accumulated old paperbacks that sit behind my synthesizer, including the original D.F. Jones novel and one of its two sequels. And here’s the list of Klaatu You entries (some already published, many scheduled for the rest of 2020) as it stands:
Matthew De Abaitua on ZARDOZ | Miranda Mellis on METROPOLIS | Rob Wringham on THE INVISIBLE MAN | Michael Grasso on THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN | Gordon Dahlquist on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY | Erik Davis on DARK STAR | Carlo Rotella on THE OMEGA MAN | Madeline Ashby on KISS ME DEADLY | Adam McGovern on SILENT RUNNING | Michael Lewy on THIS ISLAND EARTH | Josh Glenn on WILD IN THE STREETS | Mimi Lipson on BARBARELLA vs. SINS OF THE FLESHAPOIDS | Vanessa Berry on THE FLY | Lynn Peril on ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN | Peggy Nelson on SOLARIS | Adrienne Crew on LOGAN’S RUN | Ramona Lyons on THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH | Kio Stark on THE STEPFORD WIVES | Dan Fox on FANTASTIC PLANET | Chris Lanier on IKARIE XB-1 | Devin McKinney on IDAHO TRANSFER | Mark Kingwell on THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO | Luc Sante on THE TENTH VICTIM | William Nericcio on DEATH RACE 2000 | Rob Walker on CAPRICORN ONE | Gary Panter on ANGRY RED PLANET | David Levine on THE STEPFORD WIVES | Karinne Keithley Syers on ALPHAVILLE | Carolyn Kellogg on IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE | Sara Ryan on ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN | Lisa Jane Persky on PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE | Shawn Wolfe on ROLLERBALL | Gerald Peary on CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON | Wayne Chambliss on THEM! and PHASE IV | Seth on WAR OF THE WORLDS | Matthew Daniel on FANTASTIC VOYAGE | J.C. Gabel on INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS | James Hannaham on FROM HELL IT CAME | Lydia Millet on VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED | Alison Fensterstock on ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW | Susannah Breslin on A CLOCKWORK ORANGE | Seth Mnookin on NUDE ON THE MOON | Kevin Obsatz on DEATHSPORT | Erin M. Routson on WESTWORLD | Adam Harrison Levy on BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES | Chelsey Johnson on THE BLOB | Heather Kapplow on SPACE IS THE PLACE | Marc Weidenbaum on COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT | Katya Apekina on A BOY AND HIS DOG | Tom Roston on SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE | Vicente Lozano on DAY OF THE DOLPHIN | Neil LaBute on 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA.
Check out the series at hilobrow.com. I’ll note here when mine goes live.
June 24, 2020
Every Year
Q: Oh, you’re into sound. You must love the Fourth of July.
A:
Feedback Light as a Fjærlett
This beautiful instrument from Norway feeds back through spring reverb, and then lets the player adjust the audio with a 10-band graphic equalizer. It was created by Kristoffer Gard Osen, who is based in Oslo. The resulting sounds range from ethereal drones to industrial clanging, and the drones have a metallic vibe while the clanging has a rich resonance. Which is to say, this instrument isn’t about either/or; it’s about the varieties of sound in between. The name of the instrument is Fjærlett, which apparently is Norwegian for feather, or feathery. Which is to say, as Osen has noted, “You have to play it as light as a feather.” While this video serves as a product announcement by a small, one-person company, I’m sharing it based on the beauty of the sounds made during the performance.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More on the Fjærlett at tilde-elektriske.com.
June 23, 2020
Overnight Field Recording
By definition, most field recordings are reflections of civilization, inhabited by the presence of whoever is doing the recording. Whether you’ve dropped a hydrophone into the bay or held a portable device up to catch the birdsong, you are there, physically connected to the recording tools. And the world that you are recording notes your presence. Animals avoid you. The wind curves around you. The device’s direction is determined by you.
But there are alternate approaches, such as Robert Rizzi’s. Rizzi, who is based in Kolding, Denmark, left his gear out in the wild, and then returned the next day to hear what his device heard when he wasn’t around. As he recounts:
Last week I dropped a rig again in the Solkær meadows/wetland near my home. I have a friend who owns a large chunk of land there and he took me on an inspection/expedition of the area. I went back later the same evening and set up next to the little waterhole in the picture. I left the rig there until the next morning…
Even with his active absence, however, civilization managed to intervene. As he explains, the nearly 20 minutes heard here required post-production to remove the presence of planes, to adjust sound levels, and to filter out unwanted audio:
This track is excerpts from the evening, night and dawn – it was pretty quiet so I have been fidling a bit with eq, compression and RX7 to enhance the result…(I’ll go back this week with my “big” rig to get a better recording hopefully without muchwork in post)
Right at the beginning you hear a deer? really close to the mics eating, and finally running away, there’s swans flying by, heron or cranes vocalizing, frogs blackbirds etc… quite a few planes, and even a helicopter, over the 9 hours of recoding – I edited those out
Nonetheless, the sounds are special. The animals heard chomping in the foreground early on do disappear, and when they do the meadow opens up, and the ear hears further than it did previously, deep into the night.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/rizzi. More from Rizzi at twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi.
June 22, 2020
The Sound of One Gallery Clapping
Like so many so-called “non-essential” businesses, art galleries largely sit empty right now. Some have been finding uses for the social distance, maintaining connections — and building new ones — through virtual events. The Fridman Gallery in Manhattan, for example, has been hosting live performances, under the title Solos, starting back on May 14. The gallery’s Vimeo page just yesterday uploaded a 12-minute video titled “SOLOS 04 – Room Noise Test.” Presumably it’s for the event scheduled tomorrow, June 23, at 8pm New York time (5pm here, I say to myself, as I enter it into my calendar). The footage, which is continuous and unedited, opens with actual room tone: near silence against the sheer absence of visible activity, aside from cars passing in the street just outside the distant glass front. Then a voice begins speaking and there is clapping, signals testing out the space’s reverberations (the sound of one gallery clapping, as it were), and the actual reverb on what must be the house sound system. There’s an extended bit of reverb right around 10:30, the echo so long and deep that sounds layer atop each other, spoken statements rendered unintelligible as the syllables cascade into a pile. The video is a strange thing, and a welcome one for someone who is used to spending lots of time in art galleries and who hasn’t been in one since February.
Video originally post at vimeo.com. More about the series at fridmanlive.com.
A Work Tailor-Made
A friend forwarded a story by Michael O’Donnell about the Aubrey-Maturin books of novelist Patrick O’Brian. The article, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week, opens, “I don’t know anyone but me who’s got a work of art that was tailor-made for him.” My friend wanted to know if the friends to whom he forwarded the article had a work they felt was tailor-made for them.
O’Donnell goes on: “Not tailor-made in the sense that the author or artist made a personal gift of it: I’m not referring to dedicatees. Nor do I mean favorites. Everyone has favorites. I mean stumbling across a film or novel that is pitched so finely to your particular sensibilities that encountering it is like discovering a twin sibling. You understand that it will be a part of your life from that point onward. The closest I’ve come to meeting another person who’s had this eerie good fortune was my grandfather, whose love for the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff was extraordinary to behold. He would sit in his rocking chair and close his eyes as the sound washed over him. From the expression on his face, you would almost think he was in pain. But those who knew him well understood that the look was rapture.”
I gave it some thought. Earlier in life this would have been an easier question to answer, an immediate one. At various stages of life I would have answered instantly: the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; or Brian Eno’s album Thursday Afternoon; or Dennis Potter’s TV mini-series The Singing Detective; or Don DeLillo’s novel Mao II; or J.S. Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; or Terence Davies’ film Distant Voices, Still Lives; or the Latin Playboys’ debut album (the album I pitched to the 33 1/3 series before I pitched Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II); or Fernando Pessoa’s prose collection The Book of Disquiet (yeah, yeah, which translation?); or Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet sound-art installation; or DJ Krush’s album Kakusei.
Short version: I don’t think I have one. I’m a serial obsessive art monogamist (SOAM for short). Right now the closest I could get is the Agnes Martin room at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Which of course, due to the pandemic, feels quite far away, even though it’s just across town.
