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Stasis Report: August ✚ Fallout 76 ✚ Classic AFX

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music. The following five tracks were added on Sunday, November 18.

✚ “Pursuance” by David August, based in Berlin, Germany, off DCXXXIX A.C., released in 2018 on the 99chants label: davidaugust.bandcamp.com.

✚ “Visitation” by Gossamer off Imperishable, a 2018 album (on the Innovative Leisure label) also available in what might be called the Buddha Machine format: a small, battery-operated player with a built-in speaker. Gossamer is Evan Reiner of Los Angeles, California: gossameril.bandcamp.com.

✚ “The Mole Miners” by Inon Zur off the soundtrack to the Fallout 76 video game, released this past week.

✚ “In Absentia” is by Paula Matthusen off the album Matthusen: Pieces for People, released in 2015: innova.mu. A new Matthusen album, Between Systems and Grounds, a collaboration with Olivia Valentine, is due out on November 30 on the Carrier Records label: betweensystemsandgrounds.com.

✚ “Nanou 2” by Aphex Twin off his 2001 album, Drukqs on the Warp label. The song appears on the soundtrack to the new film Beautiful Boy, directed by Felix Van Groeningen.

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from Laraaji, r beny, and the duo of William Basinski and Lawrence English — are now in the Stasis Archives playlist (currently only on Spotify).

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Published on November 18, 2018 19:18

444 (Yes, 444) New Autechre Videos (Updated)

The British electronic duo Autechre appears to have uploaded some 444 videos to YouTube over the course of 2018, beginning in January. As such a sentence is often followed up: evidence surfaced to this effect on the Autechre board at Reddit in the past day. The full playing time is in excess of 13 hours. There are also discussions going on at watmm.com, a forum focusing in large part on artists from the Warp record label, home to both Autechre and Aphex Twin, among others.

The Autechre videos are linked to from the period at the end of the sentence “THIS STORE IS OPERATED BY BLEEP STORES ON BEHALF OF AUTECHRE.” on the About page at autechre.bleepstores.com. While the earliest of the videos date back to the start of the year, it is not clear when the link embedded in that period went live. (And, yes, there is a unique pleasure to typing the sentence “it is not clear when the link embedded in that period went live.”)

Each video displays an array of colors going through some sort of transformation, accompanied by a rush of fomenting drones. There appears to be a strong correlation between sound and image, suggesting there is a direct connection, perhaps the images and sounds sharing a single source, or one being the impetus for the other.

All the images seem to be reflectively bisected at the horizontal midpoint. The result brings to mind a neural network’s combination of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s horizon-view ocean photography and Brian Eno’s colorful light installations. As is the case with many an internet Easter Egg hunt, the communal scrambling to make sense of the ambiguous material is reminiscent of the mysterious Russian video footage at the heart of William Gibson’s 2003 novel, Pattern Recognition.

A substantial number of the 444 Autechre videos are brief, under a minute, though some are quite longer. Of the first ten, all but two are under a minute. However, continue deeper into the playlist mix and number 24, the longest in the set, is 7:10. One of the Reddit members posted a “Handy Dandy Sortable” Google spreadsheet, which among other things helps identify that of the 444 videos, 278 have a running time of a minute or longer.

The expansive playlist caps a busy year for Autechre, which consists of Rob Brown and Sean Booth. They released a massive box set, NTS Sessions 1-4, collecting an online residency they produced in April, and earlier this week shared production files of their own making for various pieces of widely used musical technology from the companies Elektron, Nord, and Akai (see: factmag.com).

Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus for having drawn my attention to it. View the playlist at the hidden YouTube channel. Interestingly, if you back up from the playlist to the account, attributed not to Autechre but to XH HX, none of the material, neither the videos nor the playlist, are viewable.

Updates: (1) Additional thread at watmm.com, focusing on the visuals in the context of other “ae_store eastre egg” (ae being a common shorthand for Autechre). (2) A website, 444.frm.space/scans, of scans from the 444 videos.

Updates: (3) I am reminded that “444” was the title of the final track off Incunabula, the Autechre album released in November 1993, or 25 years ago this month.

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Published on November 16, 2018 10:05

Disquiet Junto Project 0359: Broken Clock

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, November 19, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 15, 2018.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0359: Broken Clock
The Assignment: Use an image not as a graphic score, but as a graphic depiction of a remix.

Step 1: We’ve done lots of “graphic notation” projects in the Disquiet Junto over the years, projects in which an image is interpreted as if it had been intended as a musical score. This week we’re using an image to suggest a means of remixing/reworking a pre-existing piece of music.

Step 2: Look at the image associated with this project. It shows the top of a clock visible beneath a dense scrim of colorful striations. Compare this image to the original image, which accompanied Disquiet Junto project 0357, from two weeks ago. That image is available at disquiet.com/0357. Think about how this week’s image can be interpreted as aesthetic instructions for a remix. It might be informative to know that the 0359 image resulted from a glitch that occurred when I was rendering the “cover” image for project 0357.

Step 3: Listen to the tracks from that previous project. They are at

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0357

And there may be additional tracks at this URL:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0357-clock-work/17274/

Step 4: Choose a track from Step 3. If the track isn’t available (i.e., downloadable and posted with a license allowing for creative reuse), either choose another track or contact the original musician to ask for permission.

Step 5: Remix/rework the track you selected in Step 4 by applying the aesthetic approach you thought about in Step 2.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0359” (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 “disquiet0359” (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-0359-broken-clock/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, November 19, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 15, 2018.

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0359” 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 consider setting your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 359th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Broken Clock / The Assignment: Use an image not as a graphic score, but as a graphic depiction of a remix — at:

https://disquiet.com/0359/

Stasis Report: New Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith ✚ More

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music. The following four tracks were added on Sunday, November 11. All save one are recent.

✚ “Above” from Above_Between_Below by Lapalux on the Brainfeeder label: lapalux.bandcamp.com

✚ “Grain on the Wind” off The Endless Now — Music for Stagnation by Juha-Matti Rautiainen: juhamattirautiainen.bandcamp.com. The album is from 2016. Rautiainen has a new album out, Above Me Weeps the Sky, but it’s not yet on streaming services.

✚ “Kinematic Wave” is from the Initial Sounds collection in the ongoing Field Works series from Stuart Hyatt, this one by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: fieldworks.bandcamp.com

✚ “Deep Caverns” is from the album By the Ocean from Christopher Sky: christophersky.bandcamp.com.

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from Laraaji (remixed by Mia Doi Todd), Lori Sacco, Deep Listening Band, Hainbach, and Sarah Davachi — are now in the Stasis Archives playlist (currently only on Spotify).

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Published on November 11, 2018 22:07

Disquiet Junto Project 0358: Rhythm + Blue(s)

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, November 12, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 8, 2018.

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 0358: Rhythm + Blue(s)
The Assignment: An exercise in genre.

Thanks to Micah Stupak-Hahn for having proposed this project.

Step 1: Consider the term “rhythm and blues.” Not the genre, just the term.

Step 2: Imagine what you might think “rhythm and blues” meant in terms of music had you never previously heard “rhythm and blues” music.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music that expresses the idea of “rhythm and blues” that occurred to you in Step 2 above.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0358” (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 “disquiet0358” (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-0358-rhythm-blue-s/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, November 12, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 8, 2018.

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0358” 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 consider setting your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 358th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Rhythm + Blue(s) / The Assignment: An exercise in genre — at:

https://disquiet.com/0358/

The Webcam as Instrument

“Ghost Line” is a thoroughly compelling audio-video performance by Sideband (Lainie Fefferman, Jascha Narveson, Seth Cluett, and Mika Godbole) of music by Jeff Snyder, from Snyder’s forthcoming album, Concerning the Nature of Things. The album is due on November 9th on the Carrier Records label, with one preview track, the title cut, already up on Snyder’s Bandcamp page. But the real way to experience “Ghost Line” arguably isn’t the audio on its own; it’s the audio as a component of the video (on vimeo.com). In most music videos, the video part of the equation is either a complement (whether a narrative or just associative imagery) or a document (of the performance, whether simulated or live). In the case of “Ghost Line,” the 12-minute video is, quite literally, both performance and score. And while the images may tend toward abstraction, those abstractions directly inform the music we hear.

In Snyder’s creation, each of the members of Sideband creates sound by adjusting aspects of one of four parallel frames. Each individual is seen within their frame, sometimes rendered as through x-ray specs, sometimes as if colored in during one of Andy Warhol’s more flamboyant phases (say, circa his album covers for Billy Squier and the Rolling Stones). At times the figures disappear entirely, replaced by raster concoctions straight out of a Ryoji Ikeda installation. Throughout, the music is heard to draw directly from the consequences of those images: alternately strident and subtle, buzzy and tonal.

A brief liner note clarifies the goings-on:

Ghost Line … uses webcams as instruments, with the pixel data from the cameras interpreted as audio waveforms. The performers alter the sound by moving within the frame, or by processing the video stream (altering the x and y resolution, adjusting the focus, or changing the speed or direction of the image scan). Resonant just-tuned sonorities devolve into aggressive clusters of noise, producing a masterful mix of patient harmonic changes and dense, frenetic timbral shifts.

Snyder’s previous album was to Sunspots, performed by him on vintage Buchla synthesizers equipment. Concerning the Nature of Things is concert music, performed by a variety of ensembles. It’s available at jeffsnyder.bandcamp.com. Snyder is based in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Published on November 07, 2018 16:46

Stasis Report: Kelly Moran ✚ Classic Isham ✚ More

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music. The following four tracks were added on Sunday, November 4. Three are recent, one dates back to 1989.

✚ “Calm Before” from the album Glowing Pains: Music from the Gardens Between by Tim Shiel of Melbourne, Australia. And, yes, the next track on the album is titled “The Storm”: timshiel.bandcamp.com.

✚ “Water Music” from the album Ultraviolet by Kelly Moran: bleep.com.

✚ “Souvenir of Bliss” off the album Reveries by Phillip Wilkerson: phillipwilkerson.bandcamp.com.

✚ And this week’s archival track is “Part II” of the 1989 album Tibet by Mark Isham: isham.com.

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from Emily A. Sprague, Brian Eno (solo), and Eno with Kevin Shields — are now in the Stasis Archives playlist (currently only on Spotify).

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Published on November 04, 2018 21:36

Disquiet Junto Project 0357: Clock Work

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, November 5, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 1, 2018.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0357: Clock Work
The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours.

Step 1: Think about your previous 12 hours as of the moment you begin this project.

Step 2: Note one single thing that best summarizes each of those 12 hours. That is: one thing for each of those 12 hours. Each “thing” should be one strong association with that hour, such as what you did, what you felt, what you thought, where you were, and so forth. This step’s process will result in a list of 12 things in sequence.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music consisting of 12 segments that reflect each of the 12 items that surfaced as a result of Step 2. You might make transitions between the segments, or have them immediately follow one to the next.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0357” (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 “disquiet0357” (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-0357-clock-work/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, November 5, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 1, 2018.

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0357” 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 consider setting your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 356th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Clock Work / The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours) at:

https://disquiet.com/0357/

Listen to the Landscape

The experimental musician Michel Banabila worked with innovative kite filmmaker Gerco de Ruijteron on collaborations in which Banabila composed scores for Ruijteron’s all-encompassing landscape videos. The pair asked me to write liner notes for the album release of Banabilia’s music, Stop Motion. The above video, an example of their work, premiered at ambientblog.net.

These are my liner notes:

“Listen to the Landscape”

The landscape does not stand in opposition to the abstract. The landscape is itself a form of abstraction. The landscape presents geometries and colors and textures. The landscape, as seen in Gerco de Ruijter’s drone footage, encompasses us. We can touch the land but the landscape is beyond our touch. We are alienated from the landscape because its scale is beyond our comprehension. The lens of Ruijter’s camera must warp the landscape, must warp reality, in order to bend it to our attempts at comprehension. Our eyes scan the landscape, requiring memory to do much of their work, the work of imagining the whole. Our memories are patchwork semblances of the patchwork landscape.

Our ears, however, take in more than what is ahead of us. Our ears survey the landscape front, back, and side, above and below. Our ears know that the seeming correlations between sound and image are cursory, especially from such a distance. Our ears know that some of the sounds that Michel Banabila has mated to Ruijter’s images are real in the sense that they were captured in the place. Our ears know that other of Banabila’s sounds are real in that they express the musician’s sense of that place. Our ears don’t care one way or the other.

There is a music to the moving image, even when there is no sound. There are patterns and rhythms. There are movements. There is development.

And when there is sound, when Ruijter’s eye has met Banabila’s ear, the moving image becomes something else — not a recapitulation of the landscape, but something new, something comprehensive, something to be explored, something that rewards exploration.

Get the album at banabila.bandcamp.com.

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Published on October 31, 2018 14:36

Stasis Report: Saloli ✚ Kirby ✚ Classic Jon Hassell

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music. The following five tracks were added on Sunday, October 28. Three are from the past month or so, one is just under a year old, and one is a classic from 1977.

✚ “Hey Ahh” by Saloli (aka Mary Sutton) off the new album
The Deep End, released by the Kranky label on October 26, 2018: saloli.bandcamp.com.

✚ “Four Years Away,” the title track off the new SineRider (aka Devin Powers) album, released by the Sound in Silence label on October 26, 2018: soundinsilencerecords.bandcamp.com.

✚ “Moments” by Lucid Structure (aka Colin Mayo), off the December 2017 album We Were Never Here: lucidstructure.bandcamp.com. A new album, Measures, is due out November 22.

✚ “II” by John Carroll Kirby off the album Meditations in Music, released by Leaving Records on September 22, 2018: johncarrollkirby.bandcamp.com.

✚ This week’s archival track is “Blues Nile” off the 1977 Jon Hassell album Vernal Equinox: jonhassell.com

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from Field Works and Marcus Fischer; Tim Hecker; Seigo Aoyama; Klara Lewis and Simon Fisher Turner; and Geir Sundstøl — are now in the Stasis Archives playlist (currently only on Spotify).

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Published on October 28, 2018 22:20