Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 3

White Noise with Narrative Intent

I don’t know much about Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, though I know more than I had since it became available on the PlayStation 5 earlier this month, over a year after its initial release. The game is heavy on the Iceland / Norse environs, which is why this hour-long ambience of a “frozen settlement” makes for especially grueling — intended as a compliment — white noise. The intense gusts of wind and snow are realistic, indeed: background listening with narrative intent. The video shows the game’s main character, Senua, standing there grimacing as the fierce weather does its best to knock her over. The video was uploaded to on YouTube on the Atmospheric Gaming channel, which specializes in this sort of thing.

LJ Holoman, Live

Went to Mr Tipple’s, a jazz club in San Francisco, again, a fantastic trio led by organist LJ Holoman. It was the final night of a two-week run of concerts featuring a Hammond B3 organ that, if I understamd correctly, previously belonged to the defunct Club Deluxe on Haight Street. The owner of Tipple’s is now co-owner of the soon-to-be-reopened Club Deluxe. When Deluxe reopens, this organ will move back there. Holoman and band were tight as could be. I need to get the names of the bass player and drummer.

Scratch Pad: AFX, Bandcamp, Airwaves

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 Polygon Window (aka Aphex Twin) album Surfing on Sine Waves, now coming out in an “expanded edition,” was the first thing I ever bought on Amazon. I was working for Tower Records at the time, and figured I should check out the budding retail competition.

▰ When did the Bandcamp collection icon change from a “heart” to a “stack”? Makes sense. I own music I don’t love. This is my browser on my laptop. The iOS app still has the heart.

▰ Fairly intense emotional response when you’re alerted that the email address of someone you’re aware has very recently died is removed from a mailing list you moderate. Means someone out there is doing some difficult digital tidying.

▰ Overheard on the street:

One dude: “The airwaves are everywhere — when you think about it.”

Other dude, after a pause: “Even when you don’t.”

▰ Reading: I read a lot, but I didn’t finish anything, which after a couple weeks of heavy duty reading is a sign that (1) I’m feeling better and (2) I’ve been getting back into photography after several years without a proper (non-phone) camera.

Stone Age Wisdom

Second in a (perhaps temporary) series of Friday quotations, mostly designed with Instagram in mind, but shared elsewhere, as well.

Disquiet Junto Project 0712: Zebra Code

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 0712: Zebra Code
The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code?

Step 1: Locate something you purchased or received that has a zebra code, or bar code, on the packaging.

Step 2: Interpret the bar code from Step 1 as a rhythm.

Step 3: Make music using the rhythm from Step 2.

This project was proposed thanks to Jason Richardson, who shared this Boing Boing post:

https://boingboing.net/2025/08/19/will-it-riff-turns-product-barcodes-into-heavy-metal-jams.html

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0712” (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-0712-zebra-code/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. 

Deadline: Monday, August 25, 2025, 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 712th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Zebra Code — The Assignment: What rhythm do you hear in a bar code? — at https://disquiet.com/0712/.

Faux Richter

Definitely enjoying getting back into photography. Current mode: faux Gerhard Richter.

Geo-Curious

I went for a walk at the end of the day, down to the Bay at China Beach, here in San Francisco, and I encountered two microphone installations toward the end of the road. There’s a lot of construction going on, both domestic and municipal, and these boxes appear to be either seismic or noise monitoring setups. Maybe both. The company employed to do the monitoring is Integrated Geotechnical Solutions, Inc. (more at igs-inc.com). I stood at both sites, contemplating aloud what they might be, fully aware I was doing so with microphones in plain sight, but also wondering if the mics were even concerned with signals audible to human ears. One of the boxes employs solar power. The power source of the other was unclear. I have a tiny little noise monitor, called the AudioMoth, and these seem to be sort of like large, industrial versions of that. I hope to learn more.

Two Views of Fuji

When you spend the week looking into cameras by watching YouTube videos, you frequently come across moments such as these:

Scratch Pad: Quiet, Architecture, Comics

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.

▰ If you really want your neighborhood to feel quiet, have it host three-day music festivals two weekends in a row. The Monday after is eerily still.

▰ It’s funny the library is all “be quiet” ’cause this rattly old book cart a librarian is pushing across the floor is loud as heck

▰ They say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture — but what does that mean for architraves?

▰ Trying a new format on Instagram. I’m generally not into sharing without adding some sort of context, even a grace note, so this treatment may wither on the vine, or evolve. We’ll see.

▰ Me watching TV before bed: Hey, I’m halfway through the second episode of Alien: Earth and maybe this isn’t good to watch before bed. Hey, there’s a new Tyler, the Creator video, “Sugar on My Tongue,” so I’ll watch that. Hey, what’s up with that knife? …

▰ Annoying: accounts that list all their photo gear.

Also annoying: accounts that list none of their photo gear, so I have to email them to ask.

▰ I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to remember it’s Harriet Walter not Harriet Walker, and then she plays a character named Walker on Silo, and I’m trying to sort out if this will aid or hurt my attempts to keep it straight.

▰ Books read this week: I finished the four most recent (that is, in English translation) volumes of Masakazu Ishiguro’s Heavenly Delusion (through v7), and I’m pretty hooked. The 8th should be out by the end of the year. ▰ I finished volumes 2 through 4 of Kazuo Umezz’s My Name Is Shingo, with one more to go … before I have to wait until the 6th/final volume comes out. ▰ I read Will McPhail’s In. (yes, there’s a period in the title), about a young urban professional suffering from anhedonia, in one sitting. I especially appreciated how different pages used not just the structure of the panels but the overall amount and shape of the white margins differently. ▰ I read Erik Svetoft’ Spa, about the dark — in a supernatural sense — goings-on at the titular location. ▰ I’ve been looking forward to DC’s Absolute series coming out as collected volumes. I read the first two, Absolute Batman (from writer Scott Snyder and illustrator Nick Dragotta) and Absolute Wonder Woman (from writer Kelly Thompson and illustrator Hayden Sherman). I’m not sure I entirely get the point of the Absolute books. They’re reboots of famous characters, so sort of like the classic Elseworlds titles, but somehow distinct from that line (aside from being ongoing, how exactly is unclear). The “Absolute” Batman, for example, isn’t rich, but since O.G. Bruce Wayne’s playboy persona was a cover, the difference from an ethical perspective isn’t as stark as it might seem — at least not so far. Now, the Wonder Woman volume, on the other hand, was really something. I’ve never, in the past, been very interested in the character, and her story here seems much richer than the isolationist myth of the classic version. In contrast, Absolute Wonder Woman was sent, as a child, to the underworld, where she was raised by Circe. I’ll say this: Sherman has immediately become one of my favorite comics illustrators. I’ll be digging into his back catalog immediately. The guy puts in the work. Every page, every frame, is rich with detail, and every line with texture. (There’s also a side story illustrated by Mattia de Iulis, and some chibi strips drawn by Dustin Nguyen.)

Tome Raider

File under “not clear on the concept.” The “organize yourself” title is icing on the communal cake.