Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 27

On Repeat: Loraine James, Aphex on Guitar

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.

▰ I was mistakenly under the impression that the great Loraine James wouldn’t have a new record out until 2026, but she does, and it’s due out mid-March, and the first song is already here under her Whatever the Weather moniker, “12°C.” Very interesting amalgam of field recordings and low-key glitch, and all the more interesting for mixing it up as it proceeds, never sticking to one idea for long before moving on.

▰ Simon Farintosh has a new transcription of an Aphex Twin song out, part of his third volume of Richard D. James adaptations. This is “IZ-US,” originally the closing track on the Come to Daddy album from 1997. I interviewed Farintosh back in early 2021 about his work.

▰ Marcus Fischer has posted a fascinating document of his sound installation Carry the Water from last year. The installation consists of 55 gallon water barrel, powder-coated jerry cans, concrete, transducers, and digital audio. As Fischer explains: “The installation is made up of a series of metal vessels, all of which could hold water but are in fact empty and only act as resonators for the amplified sound of water.”

▰ Gorgeous self-titled album of ambient chamber jazz from the Nighttime Ensemble. The group consists of Daniel Wyche (guitar), Brian J. Sulpizio (piano), Ro Lundberg (upright bass), Lia Kohl (cello, radio, objects), and Sam Scranton (drums, percussion). It’s one single track, almost an hour in length.

Scratch Pad: Passarell, Murata, Collins

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 wind is fairly intense today. There’s a buzzing outside the office that half the time is like the world’s largest fly, and sometimes like the dentist from Marathon Man moved next door.

▰ I feel like if my call was really important to this company, I wouldn’t still be on hold after 28 minutes and 49 seconds

▰ I was using speech-to-text in the car to reply to a message, and the system was stalling, I think because when I, myself, paused to formulate a sentence, the microphone picked up the podcast being listened to loudly one car over.

▰ Apparently the great musician Tony Passarell has died. While I have tons of his albums, I’m listening to Miles Davis’ Dark Magus in his memory. First time I heard it was at a party at Tony’s place back in the early 1990s. I wandered into a room and didn’t leave until the second side ended, and we bonded heavily over it. Tony’s music will never end so long as it’s out there — and he was, to his credit, always out there.

▰ A new Sayaka Murata novel, Vanishing World, is due out on April 15. I have never been this excited to pay my taxes.

▰ The TV show’s caption read “[gentle tense music]” and I wondered, is such a thing possible? Like, what’s “gentle tense”? Then the next show happened to have a similar caption: “gentle, tense music,” which made more sense, though this seemed to be using “gentle” as an unnecessary synonym for “quiet.”

▰ I’ve finished reading one book so far this year, and I finished it a week ago but forgot last Saturday to note it. It’s Nicolas Collins’ excellent new memoir, Semi-Conducting: Rambles Through the Post-Cagean Thicket, which comes out later this year. He’s best known for his book Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking. And so far this year I’ve read three graphic novels: Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures by Yvan Alagbé (translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith from the French), the first volume of Once & Future (by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Dan Mora), and the first volume of Ultimate Black Panther (by writer Bryan Edward Hill and artist Stefano Caselli). And while I haven’t finished reading a novel yet this year, I have read 300 pages of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (which I’m currently re-reading for the first time in at least a decade and a half) and 200 pages of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (which I’m reading for the first time), so that’s gotta count for sumthin’.

Ruehlen & Trejo at the Crown (Oakland)

I had a great time last Saturday night, January 11, catching a live performance by Cecyl Ruehlen and Chelsey Lee Trejo at the Crown in Oakland. I’d previously reviewed, for The Wire, a fantastic performance that Ruehlen was part of at the Luggage Store Gallery back in July 2023. It says something about the impression that concert made on me that I would swear it happened last year, not the year prior. He evidenced an incredible capacity to push the horn and the synth against each other. Usually when I witness acoustic instruments in an arrangement with synthesizers, the latter is processing the former, but what he was up to was more partnership, even confrontation.

Ruehlen, who lives in Arizona, as does Trejo, let me know in advance that they would passing through the Bay Area and performing here twice. He also warned me there was “no saxophone” in this show, because he knew it was his use of a sax in the context of a modular synthesizer that had so impressed me a year and a half or so earlier.

This set at the Crown was full-on drone, the sounds of his and Trejo’s instruments given extra roominess thanks to the space’s expansive and impressive green tile. Trejo played synth and bowed instruments of her own invention. Also handmade was Ruehlen’s remarkable six-guitar set-up, with one string on each guitar, and each with its own volume pedal, eBow (to sustain notes), and weights (to tune the strings).

You can get a sense of the the music from a recent album, Texture of Light, by the duo, though note the instrumentation on this is far more wide-ranging, including bass clarinet and, yes, saxophone:

Disquiet Junto Project 0681: Drama Course

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 0681: Drama Course
The Assignment: Record a piece of music to transform a walk or a run into something theatrical.

Step 1: Choose a length of time for a proper walk (or run), maybe 10 to 30 minutes.

Step 2: Think of how that walk might be experienced by someone if that person were made to feel as if they were in a thriller. As the composer, you can set the pace with a steady beat, and add music, and sound effects, maybe even bits of dialog. The idea is someone listening to your track while walking will have a much more dramatic experience.

Step 3: Record the piece of music you imagined in Step 2.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0681” (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-0681-theatrical-run/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long is the walk?

Deadline: Monday, January 20, 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 681st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drama Course — The Assignment: Record a piece of music to transform a walk or a run into something theatrical — at https://disquiet.com/0681/

Music for Airports (Trio Edit)

When I first began listening to this recording, a sliver of Brian Eno’s classic Music for Airports (1978), I just assumed it was the entire Bang on a Can ensemble playing it, because I saw pianist Vicki Chow’s name at the start of the list of performers, and because it sounded so rich. It turns out, though, that it’s just Chow and two additional musicians: percussionist David Cossin and guitarist Mark Stewart, also of Bang on a Can. And yet with that minimal available instrumentation, they’re able to flesh out the wholeness of the original piece. Now, the word “flesh” there is not entirely correct, because the source material is fairly sparse, famously so, but it’s sparse the way a very large room might be empty yet still be voluminous and communicate its volume, and this trio really gets at that spaciousness, thanks in large part to the sustain on Chow’s piano and the buzzing trail of Stewart’s electric guitar chords. The video was taped at the Ragas Live Festival at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, back in 2023, and was posted this week in advance of 2025’s festival, which is scheduled for October.

In fact, the full performance is also up on YouTube, and had been up since the middle of last year, part of a playlist of 20 videos from the festival:

Knuckle Tattoo

This image generator brought a smile to my face. The results also reminded me of that brief window of time — post-cellphone yet pre-smartphone — when I considered buying the URL 34778438.com, so people could (it made sense to me at the time — though, again, not so much sense that I actually bought the URL) more easily access my website from their mobile. (Image via knuckle.tattoo — thanks, Emenel!)

Audiobook

This is the second of our new batch of comics. The previous one was posted on December 30. The plan henceforth is to do one of these each month on the first Monday and third Monday.

On Repeat: Tasselmyer, Bushel, Mirror’s Edge

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.

▰ A short live video by Andrew Tasselmyer that I had on loop for quite a while, a beading ambient techno piece with chamber music overtones:

▰ I’m a sucker for lengthy collections of short snippets of experiments. Book of Golden Furrows
by Bushel is such a thing. A lot of it is like instrumental hip-hop sheared to within a millimeter of its life.

▰ I watch — and more to the point listen to — a lot of video game footage on YouTube. This particular approach, which a friend shared with me, is new to me. They are long-form videos intended to be watched by people while on exercise machines. The idea is, while you’re running, it’s like you are in Mirror’s Edge, which is one of my favorite games ever, even though I was terrible at it. Speaking of which: I don’t understand why playing the game gave me motion sickness yet watching the video doesn’t. The channel is named Video Game Run Club. Join in, whether vicariously, or “vicariously vicariously.”

Scratch Pad: LA, I Ching, Earthquake

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.

▰ I used to fly to LA a lot for work. I had a friend who’d often pick me up at LAX. We’d make that turn where DTLA comes into view and he’d tell me I’d gotten “that smile” on my face. He’d say, “You really do love this place,” and I was like, I sure do. My heart goes this week out to the people of LA.

▰ It’s a mumblecore James Taylor singalong at the barbershop

▰ Me: Nice to work in a cafe for the day.

Me soon after: Well, then there’s the guy humming to himself loudly across the room.

Me later still: I wish they’d turn off the music so I could record this.

▰ When Facebook loads in my phone’s browser, sometimes it takes a moment, and when that happens it looks like it’s casting a lot of I Ching throws simultaneously

▰ First time back at tai chi in almost half a year. That felt good. (Pro tip: Being incredibly clumsy makes it easy to maintain a beginner’s mind.)

▰ Just as a side note to my earlier note about The Conversation, I’ve been watching that The Lincoln Lawyer TV show, and while Manuel Garcia-Rulfo has a certain James Garner quality to him, he seems to be channeling Gene Hackman at times, notably his posture and facial expressions.

▰ This place serves iced ammonia. I’ll assume it’s iced ambrosia, but if this is my last post, you’ll have a good guess at what happened.

▰ Why set an alarm when there’s the option of the creaking of your cabinets during a 7am earthquake?

▰ I wanted to take piano lessons. I visited a teacher, who sat me at a piano and asked, “Which is more important, melody or harmony?” I sat there. The teacher waited, having asked me something ostensively rhetorical. I said, “I think you want me to say melody.” That was my first and last lesson. (This is years ago. I take guitar lessons now.)

▰ After two earthquakes this morning, I took a lie-down just to chill out, and was, of course, stirred by a third earthquake

▰ Statement: I can’t stand when electronic musicians list all the equipment they use.

Reply: You realize there’s a vast amount of classical music titled things like Concerto for Flute, Harp, and Orchestra, and Rondino for oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons in E♭ major?

▰ I’ve (temporarily?) turned off “reposts” in my Bluesky feed. Too much was endless reposts without comment or context. “Quote” posts will still show and “replies” and, ya know, “post” posts. Too bad “Experimental” isn’t about more experimental music posts. :) And yes the word “feed” is still gross.

▰ Whew. I took over a month off social media at the end of 2024, and I dunno if the first 10 days of 2025 have been especially insane, or if life was just better when I was more offline. Maybe both. I’m just glad it’s nearly the weekend.

Junto Profile: Andreas Kitzmann

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? Andreas Kitzmann

Where are you located? I was born in Vancouver, Canada. In my mid twenties I moved to Montreal to pursue graduate studies and after a few years I made my way through Europe, settling for a few months in Prague and Paris, before moving to upstate New York to be with my partner who was doing her stint at graduate school. After a while, I got on a plane and lived/worked in Eastern Cyprus for a year and a half and then up north to Sweden, specifically Skövde and later Karlstad for a period of 6 years. During that time my son was born and then we returned to Canada and made a home in Kitchener, Ontario, which is where I’m now based.

What is your musical activity? I grew up learning musical instruments — cello and piano — but then later drifted in alternative and experimental explorations during my university days. Today, I’m fortunate to be able to explore my interest in musical synthesis as a part of my academic profession, notably in terms of using it as a means to engage with and think about the connections between art, philosophy, science, technology, and engineering. I am by no means a professional musician, but rather see my collection of instruments as objects to think with and through. I seek out instruments that ask me to think about sound and music in different ways and that challenge me to pause and reflect on what is and is not possible.

What is one good musical habit? I don’t do this regularly enough, but one habit that I am trying to engrain is to spend concentrated time on one singular instrument and to go through it in a thoughtful, but not necessarily programmatic way. Explore what you have deeply but not only in terms of “outputs” (i.e., finished pieces). Think of your instrument as a partner as opposed to something that you control and master. It is a conversation that meanders in directions that cannot be anticipated. 

What are your online locations? I organize a local synthesizer society, which can be found at https://www.tricitysynthsociety.org/. There are corresponding Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube links, as well, which are all accessible on the main page. Some of my research efforts and those of my colleagues can be found at https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/ 

What was a particularly meaningful Junto project? That’s a hard one, as most of the projects resonate with me for one reason or another. I recall disquiet 0620, which was a collaborative effort, as being particularly engaging, mainly as a result of having the opportunity to engage with others. I used a sample of Emily Haines, from the band Metric, which I literally stumbled over while listening to an interview on the radio. There is something about how she speaks and the words she uses that I still find compelling as a source material. https://soundcloud.com/andreas-kitzmann-27370936/disquiet0620

The Tri City Synthesizer Society seems very interesting. Could you explain a bit about it? The TCSS was founded in 2023 to promote synthesizer-related activities and events in the region of Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, Ontario. We have organized a number of events, such as Electronic Music Open Mic nights that invites local synthesists to perform in a welcoming and inclusive environment; workshops at local libraries to showcase electronic instruments, presentations by artists and synth developers and workshops that focus on specific techniques and skills associated with synthesis and electronic music; makerspace activities where individuals build sound objects and synthesizer components. This summer we are partnering with Open Ears (https://openears.ca/ ) — a long-running experimental music festival — to organize workshops and performances as part of their lineup. 
Your bio on the website of York University in Toronto lists modular synthesizers as one of your areas. Could you talk about synthesizers as a subject of academic inquiry? For the past few years I have been using modular synthesis as a means to explore questions related to technology and creativity; modes of learning through practice; theoretical concepts related to the “idea” of modularity and generally using synthesis as a context to think about sound, music and the artefacts we use to express ourselves. Recent projects include the edited volume Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People (Routledge, 2024), eds. Andreas Kitzmann, Ezra Teboul and Einar Engstrom; a project that explores the relationships between preservation, access, community and authenticity with respect to historical musical instruments, specifically by building a small Buchla 100 system; and an ongoing makerspace project where participants build a complete modular system, learn how to play it and then connect with the community networks that focus on sound and synthesis that I have helped establish. I am also part of a research cluster housed at the Responsive Technologies Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University (https://relab.blog.torontomu.ca/ ) that uses synthesis to explore a variety of avenues, ranging from disability lead instrument design, using synths as a means to foster STEM based learning with under represented and at risk youth and community based efforts that focus on music, sound and technology. Many of these activities are described in https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/