Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 25

My Nicolas Collins Review

It’s hard for me to describe what a huge impact Nicolas Collins’ sample-rich album Devil’s Music (1985) had on me, not to mention his later book, Handmade Electronic Music (2006), so it was a huge pleasure to be invited by The Wire to review his memoir, Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket, due out later this month, just in advance of his 70th birthday. It’s in the new issue, the one with Masma Dream World on the cover.

Junto Profile: Jimmy Lem

This Junto Profile is part of an ongoing series of short Q&As that provide some background on various individuals who participate regularly in the online Disquiet Junto music community.

What’s your name? Jim Lemanowicz. I use Jimmy Lem frequently online, as well as Blisterpop.

Where are you located? I’m from Massapequa, NY, USA. I lived in Queens for a few years as a child and I was born in West Germany on a US Air Force base.

What is your musical activity? Lately, I have been making more experimental, sometimes shapeless music with a willingness to delve into things I have felt uncomfortable with in the past. I started a wonderful habit of recording every day that helped me be more productive and, ultimately, I stuck with it until I believed in it, which took a while. In 2024, I released 6 albums on Bandcamp. At this point, I feel like I’ve fully broken through and away from the hyper-vigilance of it all.

I have been fascinated with recorded things and playing them back since I was at least 9 or so, getting a tape recorder of my own in 1975. I have dipped into garage-punk, eurorack, long-form vocal pop, noise, groove boxes, samplers/manipulation, playing instruments I could never figure out how to properly play, sound/loop collages, instrumental rock, softsynths, a series of improv groups, guitar pedals for days, a Christmas tape in 1995, some semi-improvised, spoken-word projects as well as many other points in between. I was big on 4-track tapes in the late ’80s until really breaking through with DAWs in the late ’00s. I was trained on 2″ tape at a studio/school in Farmingdale, NY, that was once a 7-Eleven.
Electro-magnetic-acoustic, whatever you want to call it. I have no idea what a genre is. I mean, I get it, but I don’t feel it.

What is one good musical habit? Getting out of your own way and avoiding hesitation. Looking backwards, much of what I see in my own musical past is so much more than what I actually followed through on, recorded, kept the recordings of, or somehow compromised by following other people’s dreams. Anyway, if you have a thing that makes sounds and you like those sounds, you could almost be sure that you are not recording as much as you could be. Just hit “record.” It’s easy! To expand on the earlier question, since around 2017, I have tried to record something every day, albeit with gaps. I intermittently will assign a number to one recording every day, and I hit Day 1552 on 24 Jan 2025.

What are your online locations? I have subscribed on and off to a number of Patreon and other membership communities — Hainbach, Sarah Belle Reid, Brian Funk, Simon the Magpie, Andrew Huang, Todd Barton, Omri Cohen, Amulets — on top of regular visits to the Junto playlists/lines & Naviar’s playlists. Lately, if I am not online, I am either out on a bicycle, sitting in the sun or listening to records or tapes or Creel Pone CDs or wishing the weather was better. My own sites are music.blisterpop.com and patreon.com/blisterpop with other destinations listed at linktr.ee/blisterpop. Between my own stuff and being in those communities, I am on Discord all the time. Lately, I have been removing myself from social media, but I consider Discord and Slack communities to be better for facilitating human connections.

What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? I’d say the first one I participated in in real time — the one for Project 0530: Minimally Viable Music. I had a relatively simple idea to subtract audio from a recording, and I was able to do it and then make an album out of it by the next week. You have to understand that up until that point, I had been watching the Junto from afar. This idea really caught my attention and… I thought how far could I go?… then, I just let it happen. Like I was saying before — getting out of my own way.

Could you think, for a moment, about the move you made toward what you term “shapeless” music, and describe in more detail why you headed in that direction and what the experience was like? For me, “shapelessness” means moving beyond traditional structures that give listeners familiar reference points — vocals, steady beats, clear bass and treble elements. While these frames helped many musicians and listeners, including my peers, I felt constrained by the pressure to maintain them. I also am drawn to them from time to time, like anyone else.

My journey began with controlled experiments — deliberately selecting random constraints and often omitting conventional elements like beats. I discovered the freedom in looking at things as “different” instead of “better.” This let me play around with how music could flow and change without relying on the usual building blocks. Each piece/album could find its own organic form rather than fitting a predetermined structure.

It felt really freeing to work this way. Now I create temporary musical spaces and let them reveal their natural shape. I can still craft specific forms when I choose, following where they lead until they feel “right,” then let them dissolve once an album is complete. The freedom from traditional structure has opened entirely new creative possibilities.

Recording every day is a great idea. Do you have any stories about days when you had difficulty doing so, and the pains you took to maintain your streak? My commitment to daily recording pushed me to find creative solutions. During Manhattan commutes or nice weather, I’d use my Android’s voice recorder to capture street sounds, train ambience, and household noises. This led me to explore more portable options — iOS apps, Volcas, MIDI controllers, and digital recorders. Learning Audiobus and AUM expanded my capabilities further. Learning modular helped me understand so much more, too.

I discovered that letting generative processes run while I was occupied elsewhere deepened my appreciation for the listening aspect of sound creation. Some of my albums grew from recordings made on bike paths, in Ubers, even eating lunch. As my practice evolved, I learned the limits and the importance of sustainable rhythm — setting aside one “non music” day weekly and working around social commitments while maintaining creative momentum.

Stroll

The illustrator Hannes Pasqualini and I revived our 2020 comics series in late December of 2024 and ran a second new comic last month. This entry in Frame by Frame is the first on our planned schedule: the first and third Monday of each month. See a full index of Frame by Frame comics at disquiet.com/fxf, which features a special index page just for the episodes. And check out more from Hannes at hannes.papernoise.net.

On Repeat: In the Wild

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

This week, all field recordings:

▰ George Vlad reports from a spot in Surrey, England, where he managed to record nature sounds without intrusion of passing cars and planes. He writes: “I recently discovered one such pocket of quiet while hiking in my local patch in Surrey. It’s a wooded valley nestled between two hills with a small brook at the bottom. There’s some farmland nearby but this time of the year there isn’t much activity, and the only road in the area isn’t too busy. It took me a couple of drop rig attempts before I could get the balanced perspective I had in mind. I wanted the natural geography to act as a kind of parabola, focusing the bird calls towards where my mic was. I also wanted to capture the subtle babbling of the water.” More detail at the link and from Vlad at wildaesthesia.bandcamp.com.

▰ The great Bandcamp account of freetousesound posted a collection of 28 short snippets of birdsong from Sri Lanka, plus two five-minute-long opening tracks.

▰ Seán Ronayne, late last year, posted a set that combines Irish and Catalan field recordings. The notes state “[E]very effort has been made to produce tracks free from anthropogenic (human-made) noise. However, traces may appear. I have chosen to let these rare instances through, rather than lose a track because of their minimal intrusion.” This strikes me as a wise, in the Solomonic sense.

▰ And for something far more urban, Jan Sampermans recorded, from a hotel rooftop, the honking and general bustle of Bangalore:

Scratch Pad: Johnson, Akimusire, Faithfull

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ The most off-putting score cue I’ve heard in a while occurs five minutes into the new TV series Prime Target. An adorable little girl and her mom fall into a hole after a bomb explodes in a Baghdad market, beneath which are ruins of an ancient tomb. The music gets all Da Vinci Code / Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I’m like, “Uh, a cute kid just died. And her mom.” The camera even pauses on the kid’s dropped ice cream cone, but mysterious music soon erases the deaths that occurred seconds before.

▰ RIP, New Orleans food figure Pableaux Johnson, whom I hung out with quite a bit during my NOLA days (1999-2003). He was the first person I ever saw burn a CD.

▰ The next two Frame by Frame four-panel comics I’m doing with Hannes Pasqualini are done. One comes out February 3, the next one after that on February 17.

▰ I’m a heavy user of Discogs to find appearances on other people’s records by musicians I like in supporting roles. Is it possible we’re almost a full month into January and there isn’t a single new record featuring Bill Frisell, Ambrose Akinmusire, or Eivind Aarset? (As someone tipped me off after I made that comment: a new Akinmusire album, honey from a winter stone, was announced and due to come out a few days later. I’m not sure why it’s not on Discogs yet.)

▰ Tired: is the Beat tour line-up (Belew, Levin, Vai, Carey) gonna record a live album?

Wired: are they gonna write new material?

▰ As I do each morning, I was looking over my notes from yesterday and, no kidding, there is one that reads “I somehow didn’t finish my” — and that’s it. I have no idea what it was going to say in full, not even with the context of the other notes around the half-sentence.

▰ Traveling virtually. Today, listening to sounds of Mexico City.

▰ Social media tips:

1: Post before you follow anyone.

2: Stick to a beat (sports, music, books, your profession) or be entirely personal.

3: Whichever option you decide for step 2, do a little of the other for balance.

4: If none of this is appealing, get out while you can.

▰ Current mood

▰ The evolution of my matzah brei over the years:

1: made basic matzah brei

2: added salsa

3: swapped out matzah for tortilla chips

4: swapped out salsa for chili crisp

I said it was my matzah brei, but I then realized it is the matzah brei of Theseus. (And yeah, I realize it’s become chilaquiles with Chinese hot sauce on it — which is to say, as always, what matters is the journey, not the destination.)

▰ Sentence I just wrote as part of a longer message about dealing with music PR: “Your name is a field in a database and your email address is like a number on a bathroom wall.”

▰ Reading update: I made a lot of progress on Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (I’m 54% of the way through, having completed the chapter where WWII-era Waterhouse meets the love of his life in Brisbane) and some more progress on George Eliot’s Middlemarch (which is about a lot of people hoping to meet the loves of their lives, and it’s going more slowly for them — and for me). And I finished reading one graphic novel, The Prague Coup, written by Jean-Luc Fromental and illustrated by Miles Hyman. It’s a fictional — more to the point, hypothetical — retelling of a visit that Graham Greene actually took to Vienna while writing The Third Man. (Fun fact: illustrator Hyman is a grandson of author Shirley Jackson, whose “The Lottery” he previously adapted into a graphic novel.)

In Bloom with Brian Eno & Peter Chilvers

The Bloom app developed by Peter Chilvers and Brian Eno hasn’t been updated since 2024 but there’s a new half-hour-long video of it playing on YouTube. Maybe something new is coming? (Update: per David Mead below and Deb Chachra on Mastodon, it’s related to the Eno documentary, and on Facebook I benefited from the indefatigable Bruce Levenstein drew my attention to an even longer version of this audio that is available through music streaming services, more on which below.) The video is titled “Brian Eno x Bloom – Bloom: Living World (Video Edit),” and it is one of several such recordings than Eno has posted over the past year or so. The Bloom app is available for iOS and Android, and it also runs on macOS. I often have Bloom going in the background as I work, set in “Listen” mode rather than “Create,” so it can do its chill thing automatically. The app is a generative marvel, the circles appearing and disappearing in sync with the soft beads of sound that slowly come and go in relative prominence.

Here is descriptive text about Bloom: Living World from Eno’s Instagram:

Brian Eno has reimagined Bloom as a studio work, applying treatments to an hour long recording and adding subtle sonic touches. It is accompanied by Bloom: Small World, which encapsulates the whole experience into a concise 5 minutes and thirty four seconds. Accompanying the music is an original video edit, also generated from the app.

In Eno, the new film about his creative life, Brian explains that his approach to making each piece of music is to think of it as creating a new world. In Bloom: Living World this is illustrated with elegance and simplicity.

Disquiet Junto Project 0683: Space Shot

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0683: Space Shot
The Assignment: Combine reverberant and non-reverberant.

There is just one step to this project. Record a piece of music in which half of the material is recorded in a highly reverberant space (or has spaciousness applied to it through effects) and half of the material is just sound in isolation, devoid of any sense of space or place.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0683” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0683-space-shot/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you.

Deadline: Monday, February 3, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 683rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Space Shot — The Assignment: Combine reverberant and non-reverberant — at https://disquiet.com/0683/

Learning from and With

This paragraph is from the email I’m sending out tomorrow, January 30, to the Disquiet Junto email announcement list for the weekly projects:

The Junto has been around for well over a decade now, starting way back in January 2012, and a lot of people have come and gone, some returning, some pausing, and many have stayed for extended periods once they’ve joined. No matter the specific duration, frequency, or cadence of those individual presences, in combination they have formed what can be termed, for lack of a less overused word, a community. I really can’t do justice to the sensation I experience (to the way I am both inspired and touched) each week (683 consecutive weeks to date) when musicians take these rough ideas (from the stringent to the open-ended) for music composition prompts (some my own, some in collaboration with others) and make music from them. It’s quite something, and I never take it for granted, not your efforts, your insights, or your time. The year is still quite young, and who knows what will come of it, but we’ll keep making music together, and learning from and with each other.

Pipe Up

The most insane pipe organ in San Francisco? I love stopping by. (Decorations left over from the holidays.)

Live Rust

Ring my* bell

*not actually my bell