Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 274
February 14, 2019
Aphex Twin (in Japan)
I do believe this may be the cover of the upcoming Japanese translation of my 33 1/3 book on Aphex Twin’s landmark album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Having spent much of the early 2000s working in manga, which is to say helping shepherd the translation into English of Japanese books, I’d say it’s nice to finally be sending a book back in the opposite direction.
Disquiet Junto Project 0372: Honeymoon Phase
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, February 18, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted shortly after noon, California time, on Thursday, February 14, 2019.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0372: Honeymoon Phase
The Assignment: Record a piece of music with (only) your most recently obtained instrument or music/sound tool.
Step 1: Locate the latest instrument, piece of music/sound software, or related technology that has come into your possession. (If there’s something inexpensive, like an app, you’ve been meaning to try out, this project might provide an impetus to do so.)
Step 2: Employ only the single thing identified in Step 1 to compose and record a short track.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0372” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0372” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0372-honeymoon-phase/
Step 5: Annotate your track 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, February 18, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted shortly after noon, California time, on Thursday, February 14, 2019.
Length: The length is up to you. Short is good.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0372” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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: Please for this project be sure 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 372nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Honeymoon Phase / The Assignment: Record a piece of music with (only) your most recently obtained instrument or music/sound tool — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0372-honeymoon-phase/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project adapted thanks to a Creative Commons license from a photo by Thorsten Sideb0ard:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sideb0ard/10364491865/
February 11, 2019
The Evel Knievel of Tape Loops
Like the old Evel Knievel stunts of long-ago prime-time television broadcasts — well, sort of — the experimental musician Amulets announced in advance that today he would let un-spool, live on YouTube, a cassette tape that would, a bit like in the Mission: Impossible episodes that aired around the same time Knievel was jumping big rigs, self-destruct. (Or perhaps a bit like the old Saturday Night Live skit, also from that era, in which a lobster’s fate hung in the balance.)
The Amulets tape — more specifically a tape-loop, a few mere seconds of sound going round and round — would be encased in a device jury-rigged to slowly “erode” the material on which the sound was recorded.
When the video first aired (I did, indeed, tune in live, though it’s now archived for repeat viewing, round and round), there was drama to the slow-moving affair: Just how degraded would the audio get? (Pretty darn.) Would it be recognizable half an hour or forty five minutes into the process? (Yes, actually.) Would it snap before the full, planned hour of decay had played out? (Quite surprisingly: nope!) What does happen is that the sound falls apart in stages, so slowly that it’s only really recognizable when one compares and contrasts snippets five to ten seconds apart. Fortunately for the curious, even when streaming live, YouTube’s embedded player allowed you to back up to earlier in the recording, and then return to the current, live moment.
In a separate video, the process behind the loop scenario is revealed. Turns out it’s the same challenge that the musician Hainbach responded to last week (see: “Sandpaper Is a Form of Change.”) Making this sort of an answer song.
Like the cassette tape technology itself, what with its newfound revival in recent years, the cassette that Amulets experimented with proved indefatigable. Writes Amulets of the process, “Through a lot of trial and error I was able to design a self-destructive, self-contained cassette that not only eroded the magnetic tape, but could also be reused and reloaded with different loops for continued future experiments.” Here’s to the sequel!
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at the YouTube channel of Amulets, aka Randall Taylor of Portland, Oregon. More from Amulets/Taylor at amuletsmusic.com and amulets.bandcamp.com.
February 7, 2019
My First Article for The Wire
If you like abstract electronic and other non-popular musics, you likely know this typeface in this weight and set at this column width. I’m excited to have been published in The Wire for the first time (the magazine previously had a nice write-up of the Disquiet Junto, and reviewed my book on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II). It’s a full-page review of the excellent Recombinant Festival (in San Francisco at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, with satellite operations at the Lab and a gallery called Ohio). Highlights included Herman Kolgen, Rrose, Electric Indigo, Semiconductor, and the audio-visual duo of Drew McDowall and Florence To. (It’s in the March issue, with Stephen Malkmus of Pavement on the cover.)
Disquiet Junto Project 0371: Concrete Ambience
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, February 11, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, February 7, 2019.
Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0371: Concrete Ambience
The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?
Step 1: Consider the concept of wallpaper music.
Step 2: Consider wallpaper designed to look like concrete.
Step 3: Consider what concrete wallpaper music might sound like.
Step 4: Record concrete wallpaper music.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0371” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0371” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0371-concrete-ambience/
Step 5: Annotate your track 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, February 11, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, February 7, 2019.
Length: The length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0371” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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: Please for this project be sure 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 371st weekly Disquiet Junto project (Concrete Ambience / The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?) at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0371-concrete-ambience/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
February 6, 2019
We Don’t Need the Human Touch
One possible definition of — or, perhaps, alternative phrase for — the increasingly employed term “generative” would be “Look, Mom, no hands.” That’s the route that many modular synthesizer videos follow: using various techniques that coax machines to be led by what seems to be their own initiative, devoid of any evidence of human touch. The result is work in which a machine’s lights are signs of life, in which no hands ever enter the picture’s frame. The absence of a human in “Koto Ward” by Chanse Macabre is signaled by the cars passing in the distance. There are people to be seen, or at least sensed, but they are far away, locked in other machines, and moving considerably more quickly than the music this placid machine has elected to emit. The gentle, rhythmic plucking of “Koto Ward” challenges the ear to listen for repetitions in the patterns, to find a moment where the loop begins again. That moment never comes, such are the slight variations that keep the bobbing, gently percussive apparatus moving in such a convincingly improvisatory, lifelike manner.
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube. More from Chanse Macabre, based in Houston, Texas, at chansemacabre.bandcamp.com and instagram.com/chanse.macabre.
February 5, 2019
Joe Colley’s Human-Scale Noise
Joe Colley (sometimes also known as Crawl Unit) is a master of human-scale noise. His noise is rarely of the industrial scope that so many bands aspire to. He probes and proposes intimate spaces, rather than massive ones — substructures rather than infrastructures. Which isn’t to suggest his noises are quiet. As evidenced by this recording — live from last October at the Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival — his exploration of desktop devices yields all manner of abrasive aesthetics.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More on the festival at 2018.luff.ch.
February 4, 2019
Fridman Études
The Fridman Gallery in Manhattan has recently uploaded a host of videos to Vimeo from its New Ear Festival, which ran in early January of this year. It had a great lineup, including Mary Lucier, Susie Ibarra, a workshop with the New York Theremin Society, and a screening of the documentary Milford Graves Full Mantis, about the accomplished percussionist. One highlight is a duo performance by frequent collaborators Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree. The half-hour set is built around the pair’s modular synthesizers, though it also leaves room at the opening for Vitiello’s electric guitar, a mix of long dreamy lines and anxious, muted plucking. The marvel of the performance is the ambient nature of their effort, which is to say: their collaboration is, in effect, purposefully less than the sum of its parts. The work is focused on nuance, on slight variations of tonality and layering. Gorgeous stuff.
Video originally posted at vimeo.com. More on the Fridman at fridmangallery.com.
February 3, 2019
The Non-Balladic Sounds of Buster Scruggs
(Spoilers don’t bother me, but they bother other people, so I’ll say at the outset: Spoilers throughout.) I caught the recent Coen brothers film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, during its its initial theatrical release. The movie — an anthology collecting six short stories — is available right now at home for free, or at least for the cost of a monthly Netflix subscription, but seeing it in a theater had its attractions, including the presence of a pretty good ramen shop around the corner. There were also demerits inherent in a public viewing — for example, the fellow matinee attendee, likely a Watchmen fanboy, who recognized the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley emanating from one character’s mouth and felt the need to not just speak them aloud, but to do so in advance of the character himself.
The key benefit, though: the theater’s speaker system. The Coen brothers craft everything in their films except probably the craft service, and that goes as much for the sound design as it does for the costumes, dialog, and camera angles. My living room’s TV doesn’t hold a foot-candle to a proper theater, and that’s as true of the sound as it is of the picture. Taking the film in in a theater made its sonic aspects all the more audible.
In classic Coens manner, Scruggs is a heavily mannered film, as much an anthology about westerns as it is a collection of westerns. There is no narrative connection between the six Scruggs stories aside from the framing structure of a storybook, which the film returns to between each “chapter.” The plots range from wagon train to stage coach, desperado to prospector, and singing cowboy to a tragic traveling entertainment troupe, if the word “troupe” can be applied to just (barely) two men.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs takes its title from the opening story, a humorous tale of a gunslinger as keen on singing as he is blasé regarding the trail of blood he leaves behind. Later, we’re treated to additional songs, including Tom Waits, at the end of “All Gold Canyon,” singing in his trademark barroom growl (albeit amid nature so beautiful it feels like a Disney film come to life), and in “Meal Ticket,” to Liam Neeson’s minor-league theatrical impresario doing drunken injustice to “The Sash” around a campfire. In addition to which there is, as always, a rich score from the Coens’ regular composer, Carter Burwell.
But there’s as much sonic ingenuity between — and in one key moment, within — the songs of Buster Scruggs as there is charm and narrative heft to the songs themselves. The film’s sonic imagination is exemplified but not restricted to these four key moments:
1. Hollow Sentiment: In the tile story, which opens the film, the singing cowboy, played by Tim Blake Nelson (often resembling Gary Busey from the 1978 The Buddy Holly Story) is treated to increasingly absurd arrangements of his ditties, right up to the posthumous duet that closes the piece. For one instance, early on, we hear and see him from inside his acoustic guitar. The echo is simultaneously deeply artificial — witness the marvel of the sound-hole eye view — and natural, in that it has the muffled echo of a small wooden box. That balance between utter artificiality and naturalness is a hallmark of the Coens’ lengthy filmography, and this is probably its single greatest occurrence in this movie …
2. Audio Book: … but it’s not the only one, not close. Another example: When the camera pulls back at one point from the filmed drama to the interstitial moment of the book that contains each of the film’s stories, we not only see the page turn, but we hear the creaking of the chair in which the reader is seated. Like the acoustic guitar mentioned above, the instance is both artificial and natural: meticulously choreographed, and deeply folksy.
3. Bucket List: When a cowboy played by James Franco comes upon a lonesome bank in the middle of nowhere, in “Near Algodones,” we see and hear a bucket hitting the inside of a stone well. The presence of that thud marks the sheer emptiness of the location — and, as it turns out, sets us up for another stretch of rope later in the film.
4. Fowl Play: In “Meal Ticket,” perhaps the darkest of six often quite dark stories, Liam Neeson plays a traveling theater owner, whose sole actor, played by Harry Melling, is a haunting, indelible image: a man with no arms or legs, and yet the magnetic presence of a romantic poet. Neeson is the man behind the scenes, doing every other thing involved in his mobile theater except performing. He drives the coach that doubles as their stage, he collects tickets, and he feeds his star attraction. He also makes noises to accompany the performances (what came to be known as foley sound in the age of broadcasts and, later, filmed entertainment). We witness him at one point using a sheet of metal to summon up biblical thunder. Later on in the film, Neeson finds that his audience has been tempted away by, of all things, a novelty attraction featuring a “calculating chicken.” One thing we see the chicken do is peck at small bits of metal. In the O. Henry twist of the story, Neeson brutally ditches his young actor in favor of the chicken. In a deft moral touch, the movie forges this connection between Neeson and the chicken both being seen banging on metal to entertain crowds. The association — the way it makes Neeson so small, through the comparison — is almost as brutal to Neeson’s character as he is to his young, limbless actor.
February 2, 2019
Guitar Learning: Maybe (A minor on EBow)
This is the first attempt I’ve made to record something with my newly obtained EBow. It’s also about ten minutes into my first attempt to even use the EBow. The electric bow employs a magnetic field to strum individual strings for you, which explains the gorgeous and limitlessly held tones it is capable of. Here I layered three notes, one by one, from a single chord, an A minor, and then put a separate note on top of that — the device was so new to me, I didn’t even pay attention to what the fourth note was; I just listened for something that sounded complementary. The accrual process isn’t evident in this recording. I didn’t hit record until the chord was accomplished.
I did this all in a Ditto Looper, recording directly from my amplifier into my cellphone. I used Adobe Audition to limit the higher frequencies in the audio, and to introduce a fade-in and a fade-out. The track’s title is “Maybe” (adapted from the first two letters each from “EBow” and “A minor — E, B, A, M — backward).
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/disquiet.
