Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 363
September 27, 2015
When Music and Sound Conspire
“Moreton” unfolds like a short segment from a wordless film. This is in part because the music in it consists largely of held chords on a synthesizer, just the sort of economical arrangement that merges with a film’s overall sound and insinuates itself into the action. And then there is that sound itself, which here presents a sequence of events: footsteps for an extended period, then what is almost certainly a gun being cocked and shot, and then a distant siren. Conch, to whom the piece is credited, says it’s the second track from a forthcoming album. Perhaps the full album with explain the mystery — or deepen it.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/srvll.
What Sound Looks Like
A modest little doorbell stands apart from the substantial mess it seems to have been called upon to help manage. First there is the original doorway itself. The street address, 634, appears on the door, behind a firm gate. Clearly the gate was installed after the door, because it duplicates the now partially illegible address number. That echo may be the facade’s most memorable characteristic. But it isn’t the only echo here. Note as well how the gate was formed to have holes for the pre-existing window and mail slot. The gate has, in addition, a knocker. At some point that knocker must have been deemed insufficient to the task, and the doorbell was installed, another echo, though more practical than the address number’s repetition, and less literal than the window and mail-slot passthroughs. It says something about the sheer visual density of the entrance that a visitor is likely to click on the doorbell without having taken a full inventory of the years of accrual the doorway represents.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
September 26, 2015
Hard-Wired Bit of Clanging Industrial
Sayuna lists “broke ears / nvr loud enuf” with #ambientmuzak as its primary, and sole, tag on SoundCloud. The track is neither. An abrasive, hard-wired bit of clanging industrial, it pounds its way through. It is half production-line monotony, half tribal dance ecstacy. The high-pitched squeal that provides the closest the piece has to a riff brings to mind the intense whine at the heart of Aphex Twin’s “Ventolin,” which is high praise. It wavers like some external source — a bad connection, humid weather, a faulty socket — is causing the line to arc wildly.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/darkmatter. There’s little information on Sayuna at the account page. Where most people list their location, it simply reads “zone transient,” and the space for additional information is given over to a variety of other SoundCloud accounts and keyword searches.
September 25, 2015
The Sound of Terroir / The Terroir of Sound
Dirt is both filtered and filter. It is the thing we sift through to get to something more valuable, and it is the thing we use, as in the case of charcoal for example, to extract something else entirely. We sift dirt out or we use dirt to sift something out. Often sound is described as “dirty,” which means it is tarnished somehow, has an edge, is perceptibly and concertedly imperfect. That concept becomes literal with a new modular synthesizer unit called the ERD, which stands for Earth Return Distortion. As depicted above, it sends a signal into dirt, and then extracts the signal from the dirt.
The developer of the unit notes that sound has its own, as they say in the wine business, terroir: “Local electrical and atmospheric signals can condition and distort the earth signal. Two jack connections are also included, optionally switching out the local earth block in favour of routing through local earth piles and forest sites.” Discounts are offered in exchange for exotic soil: “Edgar Allen Poe earth from Baltimore, vampire earth from Transylvania or Whitby.”
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/martin_howse. More on the ERD unit at 1010.co.uk. Found via a post by Chris Sloan, where there is some discussion as to whether or not the module functions as described, and synthtopia.com. Here’s some additional coverage at voltagecontrollab.com.
September 24, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0195: Chinasystem Soundsystem
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, 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.
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, September 24, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, September 28, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0195: Chinasystem Soundsystem
Make music for a Caochangdi Village National Day party.
Caochangdi is a Chinese village that is home to many artists, including Matt Hope and Naihan Li. In the afternoon and early evening of Thursday, October 1, which is National Day in China, there will be a party in Caochangdi utilizing the unique and sizable Laoban Soundsystem. Laoban is fully Creative Commons hardware, and was developed by Matt Hope. The Laoban Soundsystem crew has asked the Junto to create music for the party, which will run from 2pm to 7pm, that means our goal is 5 hours of music.
Please consider setting your track for downloadable, as streaming at the party may not function smoothly, because the Internet in China is heavily filtered, which means downloading of the track needs to happen before the event to insure proper playback.
Step 1: You are creating music for a long party and a big sound system. Keep this in mind. If possible, make a track that lasts about 10 to 15 minutes long.
Step 2: Create a track that moves through three stages:
The first stage should be brief and invoke sounds related to agriculture.
The second stage, the longest of the three stages, should invoke sounds related to artistic production and communal living. Slowly transition from the first stage to the second stage.
The third stage should begin abruptly and invoke rapid industrialization.
Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the early evening, New York City time, on Thursday, September 24, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, September 28, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be, if possible, between 10 and 15 minutes. However, if you want to make it shorter, that is certainly fine. We’ll just play it on repeat.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0195-chinasoundsystem” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
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).
More on this 194th Disquiet Junto project (“Make music for a Caochangdi Village National Day party”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/09/24/disquiet0195-chinasoundsystem/
Many thanks to Fabricatorz for encouraging this 195th Disquiet Junto project:
The event will be at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
More on Caochangdi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caochangdi
Image associated with this project from the schematics for the Laoban
Soundsystem:
Disquiet Junto Project 195: Chinasystem Soundsystem
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, 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.
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, September 24, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, September 28, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 195: Chinasystem Soundsystem
Make music for a Caochangdi Village National Day party.
Caochangdi is a Chinese village that is home to many artists, including Matt Hope and Naihan Li. In the afternoon and early evening of Thursday, October 1, which is National Day in China, there will be a party in Caochangdi utilizing the unique and sizable Laoban Soundsystem. Laoban is fully Creative Commons hardware, and was developed by Matt Hope. The Laoban Soundsystem crew has asked the Junto to create music for the party, which will run from 2pm to 7pm, that means our goal is 5 hours of music.
Please consider setting your track for downloadable, as streaming at the party may not function smoothly, because the Internet in China is heavily filtered, which means downloading of the track needs to happen before the event to insure proper playback.
Step 1: You are creating music for a long party and a big sound system. Keep this in mind. If possible, make a track that lasts about 10 to 15 minutes long.
Step 2: Create a track that moves through three stages:
The first stage should be brief and invoke sounds related to agriculture.
The second stage, the longest of the three stages, should invoke sounds related to artistic production and communal living. Slowly transition from the first stage to the second stage.
The third stage should begin abruptly and invoke rapid industrialization.
Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the early evening, New York City time, on Thursday, September 24, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, September 28, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be, if possible, between 10 and 15 minutes. However, if you want to make it shorter, that is certainly fine. We’ll just play it on repeat.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0195-chinasoundsystem” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
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). More on this 194th Disquiet Junto project (“Make music for a Caochangdi Village National Day party”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/09/24/disqui...
Many thanks to Fabricatorz for encouraging this 195th Disquiet Junto project:
The event will be at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
More on Caochangdi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caochangdi
Image associated with this project from the schematics for the Laoban
Soundsystem:
September 23, 2015
Slight Metric Discrepancies
OCP is João Ricardo of Porto, Portugal. “Polis II (excerpt)” is Ricardo’s minimalist rendition of tribal beats. The work is a mild cacophony, a breakbeat reverie, the rhythm purposefully tripping over itself at it proceeds. It eventually gathers some considerable layers, but for most of it the seeming complexity is the result largely just of small mismatches, slight metric discrepancies, ever so remotely delayed downbeats.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/ocp. More from OCP/Ricardo at joaoricardo.or and twitter.com/ocpptvu.
September 22, 2015
Music for Planetariums
Rhian Sheehan knows something about widescreen awe. He recently composed the score to Back to the Moon for Good, narrated by Tim Allen (“To infinity,” and all that). It’s a film designed for planetariums. It’s about teams competing for the Google Lunar Xprize. Sheehan has a history in this sort of immersive offworld tech documentary, having also scored We Are Astronomers (narrated by Dr. Who‘s David Tennant), We Are Aliens (narrated by Harry Potter‘s Rupert Grint), and We Are Stars (narrated by motion-capture innovator Andy Serkis). It’s unclear if the track “Otium” is related to any of this work, but since the word is Latin for “leisure,” we can presume this is his own music made on his own time. It’s moves comfortably from exhilaration to ease, from a brain-tingling, wide-eyed clarity to an attenuated stasis, all in the course of just four minutes.
Track orginally posted at soundcloud.com/rsheehan. More from Sheehan, who is based in New Zeeland, at rhiansheehan.com.
What Sound Looks Like
Many attempts to jury rig the fix of a doorbell would qualify as art as much as craft. Few such attempts achieve the full-on obsessive quality of this massive grid of mismatched hardware. The rusted splendor of the casing is straight out of an Anselm Kiefer sculpture. The muted buttons have the coded mundanity of a Joseph Beuys readymade. The fragile labels bring to mind the haphazard tape of Doug and Mike Starn. That the changes in color between buttons and tape do not directly correlate provides an element of visual counterpoint. Likewise, the sheer expanse of options hints at the considerable activity that is happening past this barely serviceable gate. As with any worthwhile work of art, the grid asks questions. Many of them are practical: Why the blank spot after 402? How many different label machines were used in the making of this artistic achievement? How much is the seeming discoloration of the buttons the result of the elements, and how much of it is the actual coloring of those items. And some questions are more metaphysical — what realm, for example, is accessed via the unlabeled button between 218A and 218B?
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
September 21, 2015
Nothing but Forward Motion
Digging five minutes of stereo-panning, anxiously flanging, cryptically indigenous, moderately upbeat electronic party music? You could do worse than the churning, hallucinogenic “Diving In” by Mystified, aka the prolific Thomas Park of St. Louis, Missouri. Aside from a dramatic silence a minute in a half in, the piece is nothing but forward motion, the highlight a frazzled bit of what sounds like a battered ram’s horn that gets more and more mechanical with each tasty repeat.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/mystifiedthomas. More from Thomas Park / Mystified at twitter.com/mystified131.
