Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 320
November 1, 2016
Pulling a Cage on Cage
How is meta-chance different from chance? That’s a question that informs Greg Davis’ playful remix of John Cage’s back catalog. The 10-minute Davis track, “through the villagepleasant (John Cage remix),” submits the entire collection of Cage’s work from the Mode Records label into an aleatoric blender, and it yields as a result something that sounds very much like a Cage piece: flush with ideas, charmingly impatient. Davis reports that the piece was produced for a Mode Cage remix album that was cancelled.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/greg-davis. More from Davis at autumnrecords.net. View the expansive Mode Cage catalog at moderecords.com.
October 31, 2016
Tightly Wound Moments
This bit of distilled ambient music was posted by Microvolt a year ago, and it’s getting some new listens, at least in part thanks to a repost by Dave Dorgan. Spend five minutes in thrall of tightly wound moments of lower-case wonder. There’s nothing here that has more presence than a ghost echo from down the hall. It’s all gentle blood-in-the-ears tingle and passing-airplane drone. A keyboard sounds like it’s being played from several leagues underground, like someone is spinning Harold Budd vinyl all alone in a bunker, unaware that the sound is, ever so slightly, leaking out. The sharpest if not loudest element in the mix is an occasional flash of backward-mask effect, which seems to nudge the sound — or at least the listener’s consideration — into a nostalgic mode.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/mrmicrovolt. Microvolt is Sittingbourne, England–based Paul Randall, more from whom at twitter.com/PaulMicrovolt, youtube.com/mrmicrovolt, and microvolt.bandcamp.com.
October 29, 2016
Hour-Long William Basinski Video
Last week I posted a tremendous hour-long set of Grouper, aka Liz Harris, performing live. That performance was part of a double bill at MoMA PS1 in New York City on March 20, 2016. The other name on the marquee was William Basinski, famed for his use of tape loops toward otherworldly, time-altering effect. That Basinksi video, just under an hour in length, is also on YouTube. Hidden in shadows, aside from dark blue silhouettes and sparkly projections, a wool-capped Basinksi works through shuddering ambient textures in super slow motion, waves upon waves of protracted
glisten.
Video originally posted on the Boiler Room YouTube channel. More from Basinski at mmlxii.com.
October 27, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0252: Sonic Palindrome
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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, October 27, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 31, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0252: Sonic Palindrome
Make music that sounds the same backwards and forwards.
Step 1: Consider the palindrome, which refers to a word (e.g., “madam”), phrase (“Never odd or even”), or sequence (“5290330925”) that reads the same backward and forward.
Step 2: Consider the ways in which a palindrome might have a parallel in music and sound.
Step 3: Compose a short piece of music that is informed by a concept that arose from Step 2.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0252” (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. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/make-a-sonic-pal...
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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, October 27, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 31, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you. Two minutes feels about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0252” 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 252nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Sonic Palindrome: Make music that sounds the same backwards and forwards” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/make-a-sonic-palindrome...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Photo by Ian McKenzie, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
October 26, 2016
Jen Kutler’s Stationary Guitar
This living room concert features nearly a quarter hour of Jen Kutler eking a fantasia of droning metallic forms out of a stationary guitar. There are many alternative guitar practices, from playing with your teeth to preparing it, à la a Cageian piano, with paper clips and other small objects. In many ways, an electric guitar can be said to always be prepared, in that it is almost always having its signal routed through various effects pedals. In contrast with a piano, an electric guitar is almost never heard unaltered. For all the perceived rawness and realness of, say, a rock’n’roll guitar solo, that sound is heavily technologically mediated. Kutler’s performance has all the force of a great rock statement, all the roil and ecstasy, but it pursues it without the familiar, orienting substrata of rhythm or melody.
There’s something illustrative about how Kutler situates her guitar. It’s on a guitar stand, at rest. A lot of noise guitarists take a lap-steel approach, holding it sideways. Others telegraph the meditative quality of meter-less sound by placing it flat on the floor, a six-string savasana. Others lay it on a desk amid various cables and effects, akin to a synthesizer or a keyboard. Those horizontal approaches can be read as contrasts to the normal positions: over one’s knee or suspended by a strap. The horizontal positioning matches the ambient/noise approach to sound, that we’re not hearing a song, but instead a song inside out, the material of a song, the sounds not the tune. We’re listening to music from a perpendicular angle. In Kutler’s hands those sounds are akin to a Harry Bertoia sculpture, of thick metal rods swaying amid the very noise they are emanating.
Kutler works with her own homebrew music technology, such as these MIDI-enabled umbrella and sewing machine:
Video originally posted at the YouTube channel of unARTigNYC. More from Kutler at jenkutler.com and soundcloud.com/jenkutler. More from unARTigNYC at unartignyc.com.
October 25, 2016
An Hour-Long Grouper Set
The prolific Boiler Room electronic-music content generation feed machine is often full of fish-eye views of sweaty DJs, but it veers at times down less beat-intensive corridors. This here is a nearly hour-long set of Grouper, aka Liz Harris, performing against a backdrop of footage by filmmaker Paul Clipson. It’s breathy stuff, her voice layered with keyboards, mere snippets of atmosphere given minutes to loop on end, the whole thing like veils giving hints of veils giving hints of veils. It’s all intonation and gauze, but the seeming softness belies a deeper tension. Much ambient music sounds — and is — peaceful, but there’s a tensile quality to Grouper’s music, like just past the threadbare scrim is something tough as nails, an unknowable intensity. The video gives glimpses of her at the mixing board, her fingers lightly adjusting signals, keeping certainty just out of reach.
Video originally posted on the Boiler Room YouTube channel. More from Grouper at this sites.google.com address.
October 20, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0251: Soothing Sounds for Parents
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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, October 20, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 24, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0251: Soothing Sounds for Parents
Remix some music for infants with parents in mind.
Last week’s project involved making soothing sounds for babies. This week the plan is to transform those sounds into something for parents (where Creative Commons licenses or other agreements allow).
Step 1: Listen through and locate a track from project 0250 that (a) is something you’d like to rework and (b) is available for reworking. If it doesn’t have an evident Creative Commons license allowing for re-use, consider contacting the musician for permission. Or just find another track. You’ll find them at disquiet.com/0250.
Step 2: Take the piece of music from Step 1, which was, à la Raymond Scott, intended as Soothing Sounds for Babies and transform it into something intended as Soothing Sounds for Parents. (Yes, yes, parents might certainly enjoy the original material, but please push it beyond the bassinet.)
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0251” (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. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/soothing-sounds-...
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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, October 20, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 24, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you. Four minutes feels about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0251” 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 251st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Soothing Sounds for Parents: Remix some music for infants with parents in mind” — 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/soothing-sounds-...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Baby monitor photo lightly adapted from one by mrplough, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
What Sound Looks Like
The chandeliers at this hotel I stayed at sure looked like Victrola horns.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
October 18, 2016
When a Guitar Isn’t a Guitar
The above video is a recent piece by R Beny, whose new album, Full Blossom of the Evening, I wrote about late last month (“This Is Glisten”). That record has a prominent string presence, as does this track. In the discussion that — politely and enthusiastically, unlike many public discussion spaces — accompanies the video, Beny mentions that the source of the sound isn’t a guitar but, in fact, one of the synthesizer modules. “It’s the second module you see: ‘Rings,” he explains in response to a viewer’s question, “that is able to produce those guitars and other string type instruments.” He’s referring to the second module in from the left. That tone is heard here as a fairly realistic element, a largely single-line melody that traverses, deep in a lightly warbly echo, an increasingly static-lined zone. The harshness of that latter, low-fidelity noise provides a contrasting atmosphere to the gentle tones of the guitar-like material. Beny is a master of deceptively simple music whose quietude is matched by its attention to detail and its emotional richness, and this live performance is a fine example of what he’s capable of. If this piece strikes your fancy, another live performance featuring the guitar-like module is his “Spring in Blue”:
Video originally posted at R Beny’s YouTube channel.. It’s the latest piece I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine “Ambient Performances.” More from R Beny, aka Austin Cairns of the San Francisco Bay Area, at rbeny.bandcamp.com and soundcloud.com/rbeny.
