Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 317
December 21, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
The complexities of the doorbell defy even the most learned magicians.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
What Sound Looks Like
Great illustration from a 1981 Webster’s Dictionary of the rare English word with no vowels.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
December 15, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0259: Signals Lost
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.
This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, December 15, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 19, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0259: Signals Lost
Summon up a horror story in sound.
Step 1: There is a cool recent short fiction collection of horror stories, all with sound as their subject. The book is titled Lost Signals, and it contains 24 pieces of fiction, one of them, “The Night Wire” by H.F. Arnold, dating as far back as 1926.
Step 2: We’re going to take a short segment of one of the stories and try to represent it in sound. The story is “Transmission” by T.E. Grau. It’s about a mysterious radio station. You can either use the following segment, or read the book and find a different section of roughly similar length:
“Max was pondering the important issue of how petrogylphs differed from hieroglyphs when the radio halted its roll at the very far end of the electronic dial. After a brief silence, the weak signal transmitted indistinct sounds, like whispers, intermingled with an odd chanting that faded in and out like a spectral dirge. Intrigued by this strange combination, and hoping for a broadcast of a lonely Indian powwow, Max turned up the volume, but the higher it went, the softer the voice and chant became, going silent. There was no apparent signal, but the radio scan was still stopped, locked in on something”
Step 3: Render the text in Step 2 (or that you choose yourself from the book Lost Signals). However, do not read the text. Just let the text inform the sounds.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0259″ (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track.
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-p...
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, December 15, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 19, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three to four minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0259” 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 259th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Signals Lost: Summon up a horror story in sound” — at:
The text that inspired this is from the book Lost Signals, from by Perpetual Publishing out of San Antonio, Texas. More details on the book at:
perpetualpublishing.com/product/lost-...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-p...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Philip Glass + Buddha Machine 2017 (Updated)
“Philip Glass + Buddha Machine. Jan 2017.” That single line of news popped up on Philip Glass’ Facebook feed two evenings ago, and simultaneously on the news page of Glass’ website, philipglass.com, and then an hour or so later on Buddha Machine’s own Facebook page.
What it means isn’t exactly clear. The base impression is there’s a forthcoming Buddha Machine featuring sounds from Philip Glass. Then again, it could be something richer still. Monolake, aka Berlin-based musician Robert Henke has, among others, done a full album of Buddha Machine remixes. Perhaps Glass has composed a piece with the Buddha Machine as an automaton collaborator.
Buddha Machine is the work of the duo FM3, which consists of Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian 张荐. The first one was released in 2005. The device is a small looping machine. It contains brief bits of music that play on repeat. Here’s a run through the sounds:
On the first device the only controls were on/off and switching between tracks. Later editions in the Buddha Machine line added the ability to change the pace, and thus the pitch, of the track. This would be one among the many celebrations of Philip Glass’ imminent 80th birthday. He was born on January 31, 1937.
This wouldn’t be the first Buddha Machine collaboration. They worked with Throbbing Gristle to produce the noise box named Gristleism back in 2009:
The third Buddha Machine, released in 2010, featured performances on the guqin string instrument by Wu Na 吳娜. And there was the Buddha Machine Secret Edition, produced for a French spa back in 2007 and 2008. In addition to the spa, there have been five official Buddha Machines. Glass is himself a gregarious composer whose numerous collaborations include work with Aphex Twin, R. Carlos Nakai, Richard Serra, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Simon, and Suzanne Vega.
You can hear the influence of Glass’ minimalism on the Buddha Machine, from the overall core function of looping, to the timbre and tonality of some of the tracks. The very first Buddha Machine’s second track, “Zheng – 箏,” in particular bears resemblance to the mediative arpeggios-as-reverb quality of many Glass compositions:
Buddha Machine 1-5 box set by Christiaan Virant and 张荐
There’s little if any other information currently circulating, aside from a reply that the folks behind Buddha Machine made to one of the Facebook comments. In regard to certain desired characteristics of the forthcoming Buddha Machine item, they replied: “We have changed factories so I hope the new unit meets your desires.”
While on the topic, at the top of my wishlist for future Buddha Machines is that they are CV-controlled, so that the volume, speed/pitch, and track can be triggered by my modular synthesizer. This video of a hacked Buddha Machine by Leicester, U.K.–based Stu Smith provides a proof of concept:
Here, in turn, is a room full of Buddha Machines, six in all:
This layering of multiple Buddha Machines has made the device a favorite of musicians who engage in generative music, in compositions that change over time as the result of artfully calibrated systems. Among the earliest major proponents of the Buddha Machine was Brian Eno, who reportedly bought numerous of the first edition. Eno today announced this his forthcoming album, Reflection, due out on January 1, 2017, on the Warp label, will also be available as a generative iOS app (more at brian-eno.net) that he developed with Peter Chilvers. Eno’s previous generative music apps, also made with Chilvers, include Bloom and Scape.
More on the Buddha Machine at fm3buddhamachine.com and buddhamachine.bandcamp.com. And, yes, there’s an iOS version.
(Thanks for the alert, Eric Vincent Guilmette and Michelle Milligan.)
Update (2016.12.20): The device is now available for pre-order at bleep.com and boomkat.com. Bleep says, “Set for release on his 80th Birthday, the new machine features variations on piano, organ and voice, and is sure to be possibly the most minimal, yet hypnotic entry on the Buddha machine yet.” Boomkat says, ” brand new Buddha Machine made in collaboration with Philip Glass, released to commemorate his’ 80th Birthday on 31st January 2017. Seven loops of distinctive and hypnotic works by Philip Glass featuring piano, organ & voice. Significantly improved sound quality and built in speaker as well as headphone output.” There appears to be no pitch/speed control on this one.
Philip Glass + Buddha Machine (2017)
“Philip Glass + Buddha Machine. Jan 2017.” That single line of news popped up on Philip Glass’ Facebook feed two evenings ago, and simultaneously on the news page of Glass’ website, philipglass.com, and then an hour or so later on Buddha Machine’s own Facebook page.
What it means isn’t exactly clear. The base impression is there’s a forthcoming Buddha Machine featuring sounds from Philip Glass. Then again, it could be something richer still. Monolake, aka Berlin-based musician Robert Henke has, among others, done a full album of Buddha Machine remixes. Perhaps Glass has composed a piece with the Buddha Machine as an automaton collaborator.
Buddha Machine is the work of the duo FM3, which consists of Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian 张荐. The first one was released in 2005. The device is a small looping machine. It contains brief bits of music that play on repeat. Here’s a run through the sounds:
On the first device the only controls were on/off and switching between tracks. Later editions in the Buddha Machine line added the ability to change the pace, and thus the pitch, of the track. This would be one among the many celebrations of Philip Glass’ imminent 80th birthday. He was born on January 31, 1937.
This wouldn’t be the first Buddha Machine collaboration. They worked with Throbbing Gristle to produce the noise box named Gristleism back in 2009:
The third Buddha Machine, released in 2010, featured performances on the guqin string instrument by Wu Na 吳娜. And there was the Buddha Machine Secret Edition, produced for a French spa back in 2007 and 2008. In addition to the spa, there have been five official Buddha Machines. Glass is himself a gregarious composer whose numerous collaborations include work with Aphex Twin, R. Carlos Nakai, Richard Serra, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Simon, and Suzanne Vega.
You can hear the influence of Glass’ minimalism on the Buddha Machine, from the overall core function of looping, to the timbre and tonality of some of the tracks. The very first Buddha Machine’s second track, “Zheng – 箏,” in particular bears resemblance to the mediative arpeggios-as-reverb quality of many Glass compositions:
Buddha Machine 1-5 box set by Christiaan Virant and 张荐
There’s little if any other information currently circulating, aside from a reply that the folks behind Buddha Machine made to one of the Facebook comments. In regard to certain desired characteristics of the forthcoming Buddha Machine item, they replied: “We have changed factories so I hope the new unit meets your desires.”
While on the topic, at the top of my wishlist for future Buddha Machines is that they are CV-controlled, so that the volume, speed/pitch, and track can be triggered by my modular synthesizer. This video of a hacked Buddha Machine by Leicester, U.K.–based Stu Smith provides a proof of concept:
Here, in turn, is a room full of Buddha Machines, six in all:
This layering of multiple Buddha Machines has made the device a favorite of musicians who engage in generative music, in compositions that change over time as the result of artfully calibrated systems. Among the earliest major proponents of the Buddha Machine was Brian Eno, who reportedly bought numerous of the first edition. Eno today announced this his forthcoming album, Reflection, due out on January 1, 2017, on the Warp label, will also be available as a generative iOS app (more at brian-eno.net) that he developed with Peter Chilvers. Eno’s previous generative music apps, also made with Chilvers, include Bloom and Scape.
More on the Buddha Machine at fm3buddhamachine.com and buddhamachine.bandcamp.com. And, yes, there’s an iOS version.
(Thanks for the alert, Eric Vincent Guilmette and Michelle Milligan.)
December 14, 2016
Encym’s Night Moves
The constantly churning vortex of “wider_Sens” by London-based encym is a disrupted field in circuitous search of stasis, foundation, norm, or some other semblance of periodicity. At nearly eight minutes in length, the track flanges through cycles of metallic noises, all rubbery sonics, scattered beats, and dubbed out effects. The sense of echo is purely digital, purely affect, removed from any sense of decay or decline, just a perfect echo of a perfect echo of a perfect echo, arpeggiations of tone that layer atop one another, in turn creating further layers of rapid-fire, deadpan background music for all manner of nocturnal shenanigans. Splendid stuff.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/encym-soundtracks. More from encym at twitter.com/encym_, soundcloud.com/encym, and encym.bandcamp.com.
December 13, 2016
And Disquiet.com Turns 20 Years Old
Twenty years ago today I purchased the URL Disquiet.com. Twenty years. Twenty. I’ve seen this anniversary coming for some time, and pondered things, big and small, to note it. For today, the plan is simply to look back. Some bigger plans are in the works, but for now I want to briefly reflect.
There’s some small irony — a kind of archival verisimilitude — to the fact that the anniversary occurs a few days into my semi-annual social media pause. I’m off Twitter and Facebook until January 5, which will mark the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Disquiet Junto, the weekly music-composition prompt series that I moderate. The Disquiet.com site launched, back on December 13, 1996, long before our current age of pervasive social media — several years, in fact, before the word “blog” (from “weblog”) came to describe, retroactively, what I and many others had been up to in those initial, heady post-Netscape years, the first broad taste of an Internet with a browser for a front door.
I won’t be noting the anniversary today on Twitter and Facebook, which is for the best, because it suggests a semblance of the period in which Disquiet.com was first launched, a period that felt rambunctious in its own way, the dawn of the consumer Internet — and like all revolutions, that seems quaint, somehow, when contrasted with the rambunctiousness of our current day. A period that was, in retrospect, quite quiet, quite sheltered, quite remote, largely free from the instant feedback and parallel, asynchronous-yet-insistent conversations that dominate our attention today.
When I bought the URL, I’d only recently moved to San Francisco from Sacramento. I was maybe a month into my first apartment in the city’s Richmond District. I live in the Richmond District today, though from 1999 to 2003 there was a spell in New Orleans, Louisiana. Shortly after arriving in New Orleans I had reason to call the office of one of the two senators that Louisiana has in Washington, D.C. The receptionist registered my message, and then asked where I was from — not where I lived, but where I was from. And I responded, without thinking, “Uptown,” which in New Orleans is both a neighborhood and an act of micro-regional identity. She replied, just as quickly, “You really are from New Orleans” — which is to say, not from Louisiana, but from a city that, as far as it might be concerned, just happens to be in Louisiana, much as it just happens to be in the United States.
Perhaps I go native quickly. I went native in San Francisco, and thanks in part to Disquiet.com, I went native online. The term “digital native” is often reserved for folks a decade or two younger than me, folks who grew up in an already digital world. Though I predate them by a generation, I like to think my early activity gets me grandfathered in, so to speak.
When I moved to San Francisco toward the end of 1996, I had just left Pulse!, the music magazine published by Tower Records. I joined Pulse! in 1989, a year out of college. I did many things at Pulse!, including introducing comics to their pages, and co-founding the classical magazine Classical Pulse!, with my friend Bob Levine (Robert Levine if you’re reading one of his pieces of music criticism), and founding in 1994 the email newsletter, epulse, which continued publication for a decade, right up until Tower’s completed bankruptcy finally ended its run. I learned an enormous amount at Pulse!, and glimpses of its legacy still pop out once in awhile. Just last week I received the great thinker Michael Jarrett’s new book, Pressed for All Time (The University of North Carolina Press), which is an album-by-album study of the production of classic jazz recordings, and which originated as an article in the magazine.
After seven years at Pulse! I moved from Sacramento, where Tower was founded and based (well, based in West Sacramento), to San Francisco to join what at the time was called a dotcom, and today is called a startup. My sense of identity was shifting. I was the editor-in-chief of a local website, and while music was part of its purview, I had no time to be its actual music editor. Launching Disquiet.com provided a means to maintain a specific space for my music thinking. When I’d joined Pulse! the main thing that attracted me was that the magazine covered all sorts of music — not just rock, pop, r&b, and hip-hop, not even just jazz and classical, but Christian contemporary, and world music, and new age, and film scores, and musicals. We had columnists assigned to each of those genres, and more — and we had local reporters in a dozen or more cities providing glimpses into local scenes.
When I left Pulse! it was partially because, after seven years of aspiring to as wide a set of ears as I could, I’d come to recognize that I was interested in technologically mediated sound. I might interview a country singer, but what I wanted to ask her about was what it meant that she also sang all the background vocals in a song’s chorus. I might interview a classical composer, but it was in part to find out what it felt like to be sampled. I might interview a jazz musician, but it was largely to explore the tension between live improvisation and the amber confinement of a completed commercial recording.
And so I launched Disquiet.com in that aesthetic-philosophical juncture — at the intersection of sound, art, and technology. At first the site was simply a place to post old articles. Occasionally I’d receive emails from people asking when I’d post something next, and my reply was along the lines of, “Well, as soon as someone assigns me an article for a magazine and then enough time passes for me to post it online.” And then it occurred to me to write something simply to appear online, something digitally native, and I proceeded to. And then some time around 1999 — I’m purposefully writing this without using any reference material, just from memory, because it’s about memory — a friend, the great illustrator Jorge Colombo, suggested I add date-stamps to my articles. I wasn’t using a content management system, you see. I was updating Disquiet.com entirely by hand, including the index page. In fact, up until 2007, I was even coding the RSS feed by hand. In 2007 someone — a coder in Pittsburgh named Nathan Swartz — helped me port my hand-coded HTML into WordPress, and then a few years later a friend, Max La Rivière-Hedrick of Futureprüf, helped me get that WordPress theme into “responsive” mode, which is to say it automatically adjusts to phone, tablet, and computer dimensions.
The biggest change in 2007, though, was the addition of images. I was very straightedge about my music criticism. I virtually never asked subjects about their personal lives, just about the music. On Disquiet.com, I almost never posted images, except for the occasional album cover. Then as now I had a singular focus: listening closely in order to explore how things functioned, not how they were made, not how they were composed — how they functioned. But in 2007, the same year I joined Twitter, one thing did change: I broke free of the text-first approach, posting images from trips — the first being one to Japan — that represented sound, or that fleshed out ideas explored in my writings or interviews.
At the time the images and WordPress implementation felt like big changes, but in retrospect the biggest change had occurred the year prior, when in 2006 I had invited a bunch of musicians to contribute to a freely downloadable compilation album titled Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet. Brian Eno and David Byrne had just made stems from their album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts available for remixing and I invited musicians to have their way at them. What followed over the years was a series of such compilations, musicians responding to a musical prompt I’d develop. The projects were tightly controlled, maybe a dozen participants. In 2011 I challenged myself to open the project planning wider, and ended up with 25 musicians contributing to Insta/gr/ambient, a compilation in which each of them took one another’s Instagram photos and imagined them to be the cover of their next single — and then went on to record the single.
Insta/gr/ambient garnered a lot of coverage, but for better or worse I focused on what I perceived as negative commentary, in particular a suggestion that we’d simply benefited from Instagram’s own growing popularity. I disagreed, and felt that what really fed the project was the musicians’ mutual consideration of other musicians as their intended audience, combined with the energy of such an expanded number of participants toiling on the project at the same time, aiding and abetting each other on social media, not just with Instagram photos of their activity, but with comments on Twitter and Facebook.
And so, to test my communal music-making theory, I created the Disquiet Junto on the first Thursday of January 2012. I sent out a simple prompt — record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it — not knowing if anyone was even going to come to the party. We had fifty or sixty participants, as memory serves, and it’s been going weekly ever since. This coming Thursday’s project (the 259th) will involve a collection of horror stories that invoke sound. In two weeks we’ll do a year-end wrap-up, and on January 5, 2017, we’ll celebrate the anniversary by returning, as we do each year, to the ice project that started it all. As of today there are 1,100-plus members of the Disquiet Junto email list.
There are as many subscribers, more or less, to the Disquiet.com email list, which I don’t send out as often as I’d like, or as often as I once did, but I do love when I have time for it. I try to write at Disquiet.com every day, and plan to continue to. I often quiet down toward the end of the year, making plans for the one to come. Another year lies ahead, a year of more daily recommendations of online listening, of interviews with musicians, coders, and artists (three categories that exist in combination far more than they did in 1996), and field notes. If you’ve read this far — by which I mean this article, not for two decades — I just want to say thanks. It’s a central pleasure of my life.
December 8, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0258: Sonic Climate
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.
This project was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, December 8, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 12, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0258: Sonic Climate
Express your local weather in sound.
Step 1: The Junto is international, with participants all around the globe. For some it is winter, for others summer. Winter, in turn, means one thing in one place, and another elsewhere. Same for summer, and everything in between. Think about your climate this time of year, and the sounds associated with that climate.
Step 2: Record a short piece of sound that expresses your local climate this time of year.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0258″ (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track.
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-0...
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, December 8, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 12, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three to four minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0258” 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 258th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Sonic Climate: Express your local weather in sound” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-0...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project is Rebecca Siegel, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
December 5, 2016
Liner Notes for Rupert Lally’s Fictions
Rupert Lally, the Britain-born, Swiss-based musician, asked me to write liner notes for his new album, Fictions, which arrives to mark his 40th birthday. There are 40 tracks on Fictions, one for each of the years he has spent on the planet. With his permission, I’m posting the full text of my liner notes here. The album is available at rupertlally.bandcamp.com. The download includes a beautiful PDF of these notes, and a detailed description by Lally himself about his process.
“Truth Amid the Fictions”
Orchestral grandeur, regal and ornate, follows terse click-track synth rhythms. Classical guitar, layered in a light blur of reverb, follows pert, spelunky chiptune pop. Upbeat minimalism, swept through with violins and a driving lead six-string, gives way, in an instant, to a dreamy, warpy spacetime: part disturbing alien landscape, part enchanting bedtime story.
These are just a few of the varied delights amid Rupert Lally’s expansive Fictions, more than three dozen tracks total, an album whose December release helps to bring the tumultuous 2016 to a close and, simultaneously, mark Lally’s 40 hyper-productive years on the planet. Happy birthday to him, happy listening to us.
There’s a track titled “August Fire” that begins with a slow-motion, broken-country vibe, all rattlesnake guitar, before descending into murky densities, the assuredness of that old-hand instrument finding an uneasy truce with impure, dark, forbidding sound design.
There’s another notable piece of close-listening material shortly thereafter in the album’s anthology-like unfolding. Titled “The Machine Breaks Down,” it provides a welcome industrial satisfaction. Its white-noise rhythm pounds away, in the distance, beneath skronky bleats that suggest an uploaded brain’s idea of an avant-noise saxophone. And yet for all the track’s admirable compactness, there’s still room for a gentle little melody that brings to mind ancient synth pop but never retreats into nostalgia.
We have access to objective timecodes, so why not employ them? Listen at around the 2:37 mark of the aptly titled “Cloudscapes” for some of the set’s most cinematic work. To call it textural is to miss the thin layers from which it’s composed. Then again, why restrict the term “cinematic” merely to music that can slip into the atmosphere. Every piece of music here seems to tell a story, perhaps some more intimate than others. “At His Bedside,” a dozen tracks earlier, plays a Satie-esque piano part atop digital strings. It’s heartbreaking, especially at 2:01 when its volume momentarily peaks, before quickly reverting to the solemn mean.
The variety on Fictions is as much a source of enjoyment as are the distinct elements of any of the individual compositions. These days the idea of a “multi-instrumentalist” — and thus of the alternate option of instrument-specific devotion that the term suggests — is somewhat antiquated, what with our age of tablet-based music-making, of laptop-powered home studios, not to mention virtual chamber-ensemble libraries and Internet archives filled to the FLAC rafters with open-source recordings. Clearly the guitar is Lally’s go-to, but the sheer range here is a testament to his desire to use the right tool toward the desired end. That isn’t just the instinct of a composer or a performer. It’s the instinct of a storyteller.
The lovely truth of Lally’s album is that the Fiction of the title is, in fact, an autobiography. There are 40 tracks here, one for each of his years thus far. These tracks may each suggest stories — of alien coyotes and subterranean adventures, of interstellar intrigue and post-singularity redemption. However, what the fictions belie is the simple fact of Lally’s singular talent and imagination. These are all him, every layer, every guitar, every synth, every texture, every beat.
Get the album at rupertlally.bandcamp.com. More from Lally at twitter.com/rupertlally
December 1, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0257: Remember Noisevember
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.
This project was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, December 1, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 5, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0257: Remember Noisevember
Make some noise.
Step 1: This past month was Noisevember, which is described as “an artistic challenge exercise where the aim is to post sound pieces for every day of the month of November.” There are more details at noisevember.wordpress.com and twitter.com/noisevember.
Step 2: Noisevember ended yesterday, but why let the calendar get in the way of a good time? For this week’s project, make some noise.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0257” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track.
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-p...
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
This project was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, December 1, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 5, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three to four minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0257” 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 257th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Remember Noisevember: Make some noise” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-p...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project is by mediachef, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
