Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 371
July 1, 2015
Dub from Porto
Dave Wesley runs the record label Arctic Dub (Sursumcorda) out of Porto, Portugal, and also records his own music. The spectacular “Laranja Swadhisthana 67_5 Session v1″ is, in his words, “Constructed with the principles of sacred geometry and tuning… using parts of the north and the south… and with the fury.” The result is a slow driving pulse, around which harsh ghostly wisps come in and out of focus. Over its ten-plus-minute duration it builds to a filmic, almost orchestral expansiveness, yet it maintains a static core that marks it truly as dub. It is an example of that rare blend of meditative music to which head bobbing is as natural a response as is introspection.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/davewesley. More from Wesley’s label at sursumcorda.ning.com.
June 30, 2015
Pitchfork on My Aphex Twin Book
This sure was a nice way to start the week. Pitchfork yesterday published a list of “the 33 best” books in the 33 1/3 series. About 106 or so books have been published by 33 1/3, including mine on the 1994 Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2. Here’s what the “33 best” article has to say about it:
Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 was a puzzle when Aphex Twin released it 21 years ago: an anti-album that eschewed track names and introduced a spare sound that was in the process of either dissolving for forming. It was, in other words, an ideal release for the new forums of this thing called the Internet, whose members not only picked apart the music but helped define the album for subsequent generations. Marc Weidenbaum packs a lot into these 130 pages: a mini-biography of a ground-breaking artist, a capsule history of ambient music, and an example of how digital technology determines how we hear and interpret music.
The full article is at pitchfork.com. It was written by Stephen M. Deusner. (I think it’s supposed to read “dissolving or forming.”)
There are a lot of great subjects ahead in the 33 1/3 series. I’m especially looking forward to Andrew Schartmann on Koji Kondo’s music for the Super Mario Bros video game and to George Grella on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. There’s a full list of the books in the series at 333sound.com.
June 28, 2015
Retro-Futuristic Exotica
Another piece from Corruption, the prolific Japanese musician whose SoundCloud account generally veers between broken beats and industrial field recordings, and occasionally makes pauses for equally remarkable swaths of lounge-ready background tones, in this case pulsing, seductive, beading fragments of retro-futuristic exotica.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/corrption. More related to Corruption at the Damade label’s SoundCloud account and web page, damade-web.com, and at Corruption’s scrapbook of a Tumblr account.
June 27, 2015
When Les Paul Met Ukulele Ike
Back in 2002, the first issue of the short-lived magazine The Ukulele Occasional was published, and in it I had a short piece on Les Paul, widely associated with the development of multi-track recording and of the solid-body electric guitar. At the time, I was living in New Orleans, and he was playing weekly at a club in Manhattan, even though he was nearing age 90. I’d interviewed Les Paul once before, and was hankering for a reason to speak with him again when I stumbled on a bit of history I wanted to flesh out. The magazine was founded by Jason Verlinde, an old colleague from my Tower Records Pulse! magazine days, who went on to found The Fretboard Journal.
The two times I interviewed Les Paul, I was hunting for something that likely never existed. I dreamed that in his multi-track experimentation he had recorded things that were closer to noise music than the accomplished, jazz-tinged pop for which he is best known. Maybe such tapes are buried deep in his archives. But no matter. Speaking with him was always a pleasure. He passed away in 2009.
I’ve been slowly adding old material to this site. The post was uploaded to Disquiet.com on June 27, 2015, but backdated to mid-2002 to match the original publication date. Read the full piece in the archives.
What Sound Looks Like
One building, one door, one mailbox, two buttons, both the same model, but one new, one quite old, one labeled A, one with its previous label removed, the outline of the latter left behind like the adhesive of a bandaid on a child’s shin.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
June 26, 2015
David Torn, Live (Video)
The latest David Torn album, Only Sky (ECM), feels like the album he’s been striving for his whole recording career. It manages to find a place at home with his interest in deep, expansive atmospherics, and yet that place is one in which Torn’s pyrotechnic fluency with stringed instruments isn’t entirely put aside. In fact, the intensity of his actions feeds the equal intensity of the ambient foundation, often in the form tiny fragments set on repeat until they merge into a mist. The video follows his manipulation of the sounds, how the automation lets him trade instruments — between electric guitar and oud — without missing a beat. And better yet, at the end he speaks to the audience, apparently back in March 2013, two full years before the album’s release, at a TEDxCaltech event. What he’s playing is what became the album’s title cut.
Video at youtube.com. Found via Michael Ross’ great guitarmoderne.com website. More from Torn at davidtorn.net.
June 25, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0182: Diverge Converge
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 early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 29, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0182: Diverge Converge
Do a rendition of Ethan Hein’s laptop orchestra score by yourself.
Step 1: The following is Ethan Hein’s score for laptop orchestra. You will record a version that you will do by yourself — an orchestra of one:
Each performer loads a short, shared sample. It should have a distinct attack and decay, for example a bell or gong. It can be pitched or unpitched, musical or unmusical.
Each performer triggers the sample repeatedly, either as a steady loop or at any arbitrary time interval.
After a few repetitions, each performer manipulates the sample as they see fit, via pitch shifting, time stretching, filtering, or other effects. Transformations should be gradual and clearly perceptible.
Once the entire ensemble is playing altered versions of the sample, the performers begin to undo their manipulations, preferably in the reverse order that they were originally applied.
When all performers have resumed playing back the original sample, the piece ends.
Step 2: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 29, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work is up to you, but between one minute and four minutes is probably best in this context.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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 “disquiet0182-divergeconverge” 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).
Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 182nd Disquiet Junto project (“Do a rendition of Ethan Hein’s laptop orchestra score by yourself”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/06/25/disqui...
The piece is based on Ethan Hein’s score, more on which here:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/b...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
What Sound Looks Like
When is a doorbell not a doorbell? When it’s the doorbell next to your front door, that many years later — well over half a century — was rendered useless when a metal gate was eventually installed at the sidewalk. There’s another doorbell, quite plain, at the gate of our house. This ornate if hollow item just sits quietly. The vestigial doorbell. The emeritus doorbell.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
June 24, 2015
The Laptop Orchestra as Remix Engine
Friends who have attended creative-writing MFA programs have said the best thing about them is simply the unadulterated time during which to write. Friends who have done advanced programs in musical composition have stated even more practical concerns: That thesis or dissertation project may be the last time they’d ever hear their music performed by an actual orchestra (or chamber group, or chorus — insert your dream ensemble here).
Ethan Hein, a prolific writer on the intersection of music theory and sampling, among other subjects, expressed that sort of pleasure when he posted his “Divergence/Convergence Remix,” a rapturously chaotic mix of chance sonic encounters and hip-hop–derived syncopation. Hein writes of it:
My first legitimate composition to be performed by someone other than me. I was asked by Daphna Naphtali to write it for the NYU Laptop Orchestra. You can read about the process of writing the piece and see the score here: www.newmusicbox.org/articles/brahmss-...
The recording is the debut performance of Divergence/Convergence at NYU. While I was asked not to include dance beats in the piece, there was nothing stopping me from adding them to the version I posted here. I feel like they really tie the whole thing together.
There’s a more in-depth piece at newmusicbox.org in which he tracks his interest in the laptop orchestra, debates the aesthetics of classical music from John Cage to John Cleese, considers the role of pleasure in art, and then shares the rule set at the heart of “Divergence/Convergence”:
Each performer loads a short, shared sample. It should have a distinct attack and decay, for example a bell or gong. It can be pitched or unpitched, musical or unmusical.
Each performer triggers the sample repeatedly, either as a steady loop or at any arbitrary time interval.
After a few repetitions, each performer manipulates the sample as they see fit, via pitch shifting, time stretching, filtering, or other effects. Transformations should be gradual and clearly perceptible.
Once the entire ensemble is playing altered versions of the sample, the performers begin to undo their manipulations, preferably in the reverse order that they were originally applied.
When all performers have resumed playing back the original sample, the piece ends.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ethanhein. More from Hein at ethanhein.com. (Full disclosure: while writing about his piece, Hein refers to the Disquiet Junto as “the internet’s most happening electronic music collective,” which means a lot to me.)
June 23, 2015
This Week in Sound: Post-Alaska and ER Sonics …
A lightly annotated clipping service:
— Newest Yorker: John Luther Adams has been having a moment for several years now. The composer, who at the most fundamental level is appreciated as someone who artfully interweaves field recordings with orchestral arrangements, has been the subject of numerous profiles, including one on his obsession with baseball (“It’s ironic, isn’t it, that in my day job I keep score, and in my avocation I keep score, too?”). Now in the New Yorker, he writes at length about leaving his longtime home in Alaska, a state synonymous with his music, for a Manhattan apartment. Side note: It is remarkable to learn that two of your heroes were correspondents: “Here is my correspondence,” he writes, “with Edward Abbey, who first wrote to me after hearing my setting of the song of the hermit thrush over the radio.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/leaving-alaska
— ER Sonics: Even when stuck in the hospital due to what was initially suspected to be a stroke, author Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Trees, Gun Machine) is always listening: “Spend more than half an hour in an MRI and you will find yourself identifying every electronic noise from the last fifteen years of techno music. The MRI is the ursprache of the sound of the 21st Century.”
http://morning.computer/2015/06/medical-advice/
— Documenting Sound: The Image of Sound is a short film (under 13 minutes) by Amar Dusanjh profiling three sound professionals — Richard Addis (sound designer on the TV series Human Universe), Eddy Joseph (sound editor on Harry Potter and Casino Royale), and Dirk Maggs (who directed the radio production of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) — on the role of sound in media. (Found via http://designingsound.org/2015/06/new....)
https://vimeo.com/129969570
— Sound Branding: Kevin Perlmutter talks about the work Man Made Music does in sound and branding: “Despite all of the research about how sound impacts us, and massive changes in our behavior brought on by technology, many of us are still relying on the same brand identity pillars — visual and verbal — that have been in place for decades.”
http://www.manmademusic.com/facing-the-music-as-a-brand-strategist/
This first appeared in the June 23, 2015, edition of the free Disquiet “This Week in Sound” email newsletter: tinyletter.com/disquiet.
