Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 284
August 12, 2018
Stasis Report: Meg Bowles ✚ Abul Mogard ✚ More
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify, on Sunday, August 12, added the following five tracks.
✚ “Where Not Even” from the new album Above All Dreams by Abul Mogard, based in Belgrade, Serbia: abulmogard.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Love and Death” from the new album Exit Rumination by C. Diab, based in Vancouver, Canada:
injazerorecords.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Berceuse for a Star Child” from the new album Evensong: Canticles for the Earth by Meg Bowles, based in Connecticut: megbowlesmusic.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Voice of the Runes” from Runes by Kano (aka Don Campbell). The 1986 album has been reissued by Subliminal Sounds: subliminalsounds.se.
✚ “Mauna Kea” from the new album Hawaiki Tapes by M. Geddes Gengras: umorrex.bandcamp.com.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those tracks are now in the Stasis Archives playlist.
August 9, 2018
Disquiet Junto Project 0345: Sample Time
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, August 13, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 9, 2018.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0345: Sample Time
The Assignment: Make your own drum machine sounds, do something with them, and share them.
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for helping put together this project.
Step 1: Today is August 9th, meaning yesterday was August 8th, or as it has come to be widely named: 808 Day, celebrating the Roland TR-808. In slightly belated celebration of that day and that device, we’ll be devising our own drum machines.
Step 2: Think about making your own drum machine. What basic set of sounds would it come with? (If you would benefit from additional structure, consider one for each of these categories: Accent, Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Low Tom/Conga, Mid Tom/Conga, Hi Tom/Conga, Clave/Rim, Maracas/Clap, Cowbell, Cymbal, Open Hat, Closed Hat.)
Step 3: Based on your thinking from Step 2, create those dozen or so sounds that are the basis for your imaginary drum machine.
Step 4: Record a piece of music using your new drum machine. At the start of the track, before the music begins, put the full sequence of sounds you created in Step 3, one after another, with a little silent space before and after each. (For next week’s project, people will be making music with your imaginary drum machine.)
Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0345” (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 “disquiet0345” (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-0345-sample-time/
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, August 13, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 9, 2018.
Length: The length of your track is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0345” 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: It’s important for this project that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 345th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Sample Time / The Assignment: Make your own drum machine sounds, do something with them, and share them) at:
Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for helping put together this project.
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-0345-sample-time/
There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.
August 7, 2018
“Aida Facing Shimmy 353”
I have an old Sony MiniDisc recorder I’ve been meaning to sell or trade for the longest time. After watching one of the recent videos by the musician Hainbach, however, some hidden potential was revealed to me. Hainbach has been exploring unique characteristics of the MiniDisc, such as the granular quality of its fast-forward and rewind artifacts, its ability to easily break tracks into segments, and its gap-less playback.
The second and third of those three features are the ones I was most immediately interested in pursuing. That third one, the gap-less playback, isn’t present on all MiniDisc devices, though it was an impetus for Gescom’s ingenious 1998 album Minidisc — Gescom consisting of Autechre working in collaboration with Russell Haswell. Fortunately, my MiniDisc recorder, a Sony MZ-R50, has gap-less playback.
This simple little evening project turned out to be a learning experience in more ways than one. I wanted to record from my acoustic guitar into the MiniDisc, which seemed easy enough, but as it turned out I couldn’t find the microphone that originally accompanied the device. I spent some time looking on eBay and discovered that lots of people selling old MiniDisc recorders have also misplaced their microphones. I thought briefly about skipping the acoustic guitar for now and recording from a little iOS synth into my MiniDisc just as a proof of concept, which is when it occurred to me to record my guitar into an ancient iPod and to then record from the iPod into the MiniDisc. This worked fine.
The audio was me plucking and strumming a D chord on the guitar for about 30 seconds. I used a standard audio cable to go from the headphone jack of the iPod to the Line In of the MiniDisc. Once the 30 seconds were on the MiniDisc, I used the “T Mark” function on the MiniDisc to subdivide the track into little fragments. This took the one single track and turned it into about 25. After listening to it on shuffle/repeat, I whittled away and deleted a handful of silences, ending with about 19 pieces of varying lengths. In the end, the guitar material played out in little slivers and proved, to my ear, quite pleasing, as soft tones end suddenly and chance permutations render momentary melodies.
The question then became: how to transfer the audio from my MiniDisc to my laptop, or back to the iPod for that matter. This isn’t as simple as it sounds. The macOS software Audio Hijack didn’t seem to recognize my headphone input, and neither did my iPod. As it turns out, that’s because the standard headphone jack is different from the sort that laptops and mobile devices recognize these days. The standard audio headphone mini-jack has two little lines on it, if you look closely. The jack of the now-standard (well, until the imminent Bluetooth apocalypse) headphone-with-microphone cable actually has three little lines on it. I need to order a converter for future recordings, but I wanted to finish this tonight. So, I used a cable to connect my MiniDisc player to my Zoom H4n recorder, and then took the SD card from the H4n and put it in my laptop. I used Audacity to lower the treble on it, and then — just to try it out, because the software is new to me — Adobe Audition to trim the close, where the track initially ended too abruptly.
The track’s title, “Aida Facing Shimmy 353,” is an anagram of the word “MiniDisc” and the model of my acoustic guitar, a Yamaha FG-335.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/disquiet.
August 6, 2018
The Echoing Guitar of Clara Engel
Eleven Passages by Clara Engel
The full Eleven Passages album from Clara Engel arrived on July 27th, but in the buildup to its release there were two excellent tracks freely available via the Bandcamp page of the releasing record label, Polar Seas Recordings. I spent a lot of time with both tracks, “You’re Not Wrong” and “All Kinds of Rain,” which showcase Engel’s penchant for heavily echoing electric guitar. Simple melodies played with deep attention emerge from thick bogs of their own lush overtones. The music is widescreen cinematic and, at the same time, closely felt. Fans of the country-infused movie scores of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis will appreciate the music. The former track is an elegantly stated single-note lead performed with every ounce of its phrasing emphasized, even as ghostly echoes shudder around it. The latter track explores a more complex approach to composition, the background tonalities given space to reveal their own intricacies.
Upon its release, the album’s other nine tracks came into focus. They range from a semi-abstract re-arrangement of “Hush, Little Baby” to an instrumental setting for a Paul Celan poem to plaintive efforts on the acoustic banjolele. A key track is “Walking in a Blizzard,” which has a reverberating guitar line that does David Lynch and Roy Orbison proud. In it, storm clouds circle while the melody holds the threat at bay.
Get the full release at polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com. Engel is based in Toronto, Canada, as is Polar Seas. More from Engel at claraengel.bandcamp.com and twitter.com/clara_engel.
August 5, 2018
Stasis Report: Pariah ✚ Orquesta De Las Nubes ✚ More
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify, on Sunday, August 5, added the following five tracks.
✚ “Before” from Occasus by Goldmund, on Western Vinyl: goldmund.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Pith” from Here from Where We Are by Pariah, on Houndstooth: pariahuk.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Para Que Pasen Las Termitas” The Order of Change by Orquesta De Las Nubes, on Music from Memory: www.musicfrommemory.com.
✚ “The Third Stone” from Song Lines by Simon McCorry, on Naviar Records: naviarrecords.bandcamp.com.
✚ “Missing” from Expanses (Teenage Synthstrumentals) by Ethan Gold, on Electrik Gold.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those tracks are now in the Stasis Archives playlist.
August 2, 2018
Disquiet Junto Project 0344: Careful Symmetries
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, August 6, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 2, 2018.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0344: Careful Symmetries
The Assignment: Explore palindromes in musical form.
Step 1: Consider how palindromes might be expressed in sound.
Step 2: Compose a piece of music employing multiple palindromes.
Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0344” (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 “disquiet0344” (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-0344-careful-symmetries/
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, August 6, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 2, 2018.
Length: The length of your track is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0344” 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: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 344th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Careful Symmetries: The Assignment: Explore palindromes in musical form) 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-0344-careful-symmetries/
There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.
Image associated with this project is by Sheldon Wood and used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:
July 29, 2018
Stasis Report: Éliane Radigue ✚ Daniel Aged ✚ More
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify, on Sunday, July 29, added the following six tracks. I’m really doing my best to keep this as restrained as possible. In recent years, the word “ambient” has come to mean very little in many contexts — in some cases it virtually just means “no voice,” or “quieter than regular pop music.” Sometimes it feels like a tag that someone has applied, whether lazily or cynically, out of a perception that it lends commercial or cultural viability. In any cast, this music in this ongoing playlist is intended as material that aspires to a state of stasis. Still, from the more overt melodic aspects of the Masayoshi Fujita track here to the harsher peaks of the Éliane Radigue, even that aspiration is being tested.
✚ “Occam River I” is the opening track of the album Occam Ocean Vol. 1, compositions by Éliane Radigue, featuring Rhodri Davies (harp), Carol Robinson (reeds), and Julia Eckhardt (viola): soundohm.com. Released last year on the Shiiin label. It was released last year.
✚ “Bass.int” and “Breath2” are both off the self-titled new album from Daniel Aged.
✚ “Clouds” is from Music for Nine Postcards, a 1982 album by Hiroshi Yoshimura reissued last year on Empire of Signs: empireofsigns.com.
✚ “Fog” is off Book of Life, the new album from Masayoshi Fujita on Erased Tapes: erasedtapes.com.
✚ “Rebreather” is from Semblance, the new record from Forma, on Kranky Records: brainwashed.com.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those tracks are now in the Stasis Archives playlist.
July 26, 2018
Disquiet Junto Project 0343: Big Pun
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, July 30, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, July 26, 2018.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0343: Big Pun
The Assignment: What does a musical pun sound like?
Major (and minor) thanks to Ian Joyce for proposing this project.
Step 1: Record a piece of music that is a musical pun.
Step 2: Explain your joke for those of us who didn’t get it.
Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0343” (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 “disquiet0343” (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-0343-big-pun/
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, July 30, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, July 26, 2018.
Length: The length of your track is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0343” 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: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 343rd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Disquiet Junto Project 0343 / Big Pun: The Assignment: What does a musical pun sound like?) at:
Major (and minor) thanks to Ian Joyce for proposing this project.
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-0343-big-pun/
There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.
July 24, 2018
Piano Singles from Quebec’s Moderna Records
The Montreal, Québec-based record label Moderna recently launched a weekly Single Series, all the tracks thus far are instrumentals that focus on piano. The series began on July 10th with “Sarah” from Jake Lowe, pleasantly reminiscent of old Windham Hill releases. Lowe, the track’s composer, plays midtempo piano, accompanied by a pair of strings: Charlotte Jacke’s cello and Ruby Paskas’ violin. The arrangement of “Sarah” is by Ross Irwin, who treats Lowe’s composition as a kind of classical-flavored pop song, with the strings filling the role of vocalist.
A week later, on July 17th, came “Blocks” from Maxy Dutcher, performing solo on a combination of piano and unidentified synthesizer. It’s a blissfully upbeat track, the piano plucking along with a percussive quality, the minimalist melody unfolding like flower blooming. The synthesizer provides a swish of background haze, and only comes fully into view as the piano part fades toward the end.
The most recent, out today, is “Gate” from Julia Gjertsen, who is only credited with piano on the track’s Bandcamp page, though the piece appears to, like Dutcher’s “Blocks,” combine piano with a synthesized accompaniment. The piano, as with the previous entries in the Moderna series, is minimally melodic, and deviations from the main theme are tightly constrained. That restraint finds its match in the affectionately percolating rhythmic track that shares acoustic space with the piano.
It’s a great series. Here’s looking forward to next Tuesday’s entry. More form Moderna at modernarecords.bandcamp.com and modernarecords.com.
July 22, 2018
Stasis Report: Ekin Fil ✚ Sarah Davachi ✚ More
The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on Spotify, on Sunday, July 22, added the following five tracks. I seem to be adding work by around five artists each week, though the total number of tracks varies. This week introduces the third artist from whom an included track is titled “Interlude.” The previous two were Laraaji (as part of the debut Stasis Report playlist) and Julie Byrne. That seems to be a bit of a theme, the interlude often being the most peaceful moment amid a longer work, a moment marked both as transition and repose, or perhaps repose as transition.
✚ “Interlude” is from the 2017 album Ghosts Inside from Ekin Fil. She is based in Istanbul.
✚ “Evensong” is currently the only track on streaming services from Sarah Davachi‘s forthcoming album Gave in Rest, which is due out September 14th on the label Ba Da Bing. She lives in Los Angeles.
✚ “Ottomans” is off Everything Happens, for Some Reason, the 2018 album by Jet Jaguar, aka Michael Upton of Wellington, New Zealand.
✚ Rezzett‘s “Yunus in Ekstasi” is off its recent self-titled album, on the Trilogy Tapes label. Rezzett appears to be anonymous for the time being. It also appears to be a duo. The label is based in London.
✚ “Conclusio” is the final track, and the shortest, off the new album from Marta SmiLga (aka Liga Smirnova), Lunar Maria. She is based in Riga, Latvia.
Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those tracks are now in the Stasis Archives playlist.
