Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 378
April 23, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0173: Over Version
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at Disquiet.com, 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 late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 23, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 27, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0173: Over Version
Do an “over” rather than a “cover” of a pre-existing track.
In other words, create a palimpsest of the source material. These are the steps for this project:
Step 1: Download the Hermético track “Daisy Daisy (A Blinding White Light Remix)” from the InoQuo netlabel at this URL:
https://archive.org/download/inoquo06...
You can read up on the release at this page:
http://www.inoquo.com/release.php?&am...
Step 2: Listen to the track straight through.
Step 3: Record yourself playing on top of the original.
Step 4: Upload your track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, April 23, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 27, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be the length of the original, 5:39, or slightly longer.
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 “disquiet0173-overversion” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Set your track as downloadable, and allowing 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 173rd Disquiet Junto project — “Do an ‘over’ rather than a ‘cover’ of a pre-existing track.” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/04/23/disqui...
Source audio is the Hermético track “Daisy Daisy (A Blinding White Light Remix)” from the InoQuo netlabel:
http://www.inoquo.com/release.php?&am...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Photo associated with this project by Gareth, used via Creative Commons license. In the Flickr entry, he wrote of the photo: “The past is breaking through. As cranes go up daily in Sheffield city centre, traces of the past are breaking through at ground level – ignoring the double yellow lines.”
April 22, 2015
April 21, 2015
“The Ghosts of Pretty Cello Girls”
To say that Lena Griffin plays the cello on “The Ghosts of Pretty Cello Girls” is to only tell half the track’s story. This is because half the track isn’t cello. Half of “The Ghosts of Pretty Cello Girls” is the heavy, reverberant, spacious echo through which the cello is treated. It’s a slow-moving, piece, and perhaps without the echo these spaces between the notes would be distracting, but instead the track takes on a feeling along the lines of a very simple John Fahey recording, the repetition an invitation to consider the slight variations in the phrasing.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/moxiegriffin.
via instagram.com/dsqt
Doorbells are like snowflakes. #soundstudies #booktitle #ui #ux
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
April 20, 2015
Ambient Piano from Southend-on-Sea
“Dancing in the Rothko” so processes its evident piano source material, that it’s never quite clear we’re ever hearing the original audio, and yet we never get particularly far from that origin point. Notes are repeated by hand and by software, quick touches echoed until they resemble glass shards, chords leaving vapor trails into which repeated chords then merge. Standalone tones are left to linger like dust caught by a narrow ray of light. Absolutely stunning for four minutes that you wish would last an hour.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/countersilence. Counter Silence is Colin Ventura, based in Southend-on-Sea, Great Britain, more from whom at twitter.com/countersilence.
April 19, 2015
Play It in a Quiet Room
All fog horn hum, echoed up a synthesized coast, and wind, here in the form of light static, “At Winter’s End” by FernLodge is the sonic equivalent of a Polaroid photo that’s seen better days. The piece captures a moment, and yet the story it tells seems less that of its immediate subject, and more of what’s come of the object in the intervening years. It’s worn down, and weary, and all the more memorable for just how ephemeral it is. This is a beautiful track that will get lost in most everyday listening settings. Play it in a quiet room.
FernLodge is Joe Millar, who is from Prince Edward Island, Canada. The piece is one of seven that make up sommerhus, his album on the Game of Life label. Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/fernlodge. Full album at gameoflife.bandcamp.com.
April 18, 2015
Goldsmith-Ligeti EDM
I like the idea of Record Store Day, but something about it does remind me of that thing the TV character Murphy Brown, a recovering alcoholic, said about New Year’s Eve, that it’s for amateurs. I go to record stores so often, the idea that I should go on a specific day is almost confusing to me. I suppose I’d celebrate Earl Grey Tea Day, or Sichuan Food Day, or Inexpensive Notebook from the Corner Store Day, or Superfine Japanese Pen Day, but I do wonder at times to what extent Record Store Day — along with Independent Book Store Day — is equivalent to a holiday for people who only worship on holidays. In a general sense, as a way to get folks to rally around the community and cultural nature of record stores, it serves a purpose, but then again, the general idea of a commerce holiday makes me uncomfortable. To some extent Record Store Day is like a neighborhood picnic, but in other ways it holds up a small mirror to Black Friday.
In any case, Record Store Day does bring out some interesting packaging and material, along the lines of how annual independent comic book festivals provide milestones for comic artists to get something done. I do hanker for the new seven-track tape cassette (yes, tape cassette) release of Metallica’s demos recorded back in 1982 in Tustin, California.
And among the many Record Store Day exclusives this year is what can be heard as a deep tweak on EDM by Amon Tobin. Titled “Dark Jovian,” it has all the anthemic heft of EDM, but none of the comforting percussive milestones. Writes Tobin in an accompanying note, likening the work to a score for an imaginary movie, “Anyone who loves John Williams, Gerry Goldsmith or György Ligeti will hopefully see what I’m drawing from, and how it then sits in an electronic context.”
Amon Tobin track originally posted at soundcloud.com/amon-tobin. More on the release, which has eight tracks in all, at amontobin.com/darkjovian.
April 17, 2015
Old Folk, New Aesthetic
Ambient may be a “new” form of music to the extent that it’s largely predicated on ideas that Brian Eno synthesized and codified back in the 1970s. However, those ideas had endless pre-existing strains, strains in culture and in technology, from in and outside of music, all of which to some degree or another led up to Eno’s development. These range from bellows-powered bagpipes to raga and Indian classical music to Gregorian chant to the underlying hum of the electrical grid.
In this bit of self-described “weird folk” from the Sly and Unseen (aka Jonathan Lees and Katie English), “String Tail Fox,” an old Russian folk song, is transformed as old tools are used with modern intent, as the bellows-based Shruti box and harmonium, along with flutes, cello, xylophone and guitar, are brought to bear on a simple melody. The “weird” factor is more a matter of genre identification than outright headtrip, more a matter of exploring the ritual inherent in folk melodies, and how a disinterest in a flat-out cover version can yield something both delicate and trenchant.
The track is from the Halifax-based duo’s forthcoming album All Similarities And Technical Difficulties End Here, which was mastered by by Ian Hawgood.
There’s also a remix of “String Tail Fox” on the album that emphasizes percussive elements:
All Similarities And Technical Difficulties End Here by Spheruleus
Original version originally posted at soundcloud.com/theslyandunseen. More on the forthcoming release, due out by the end of May 2015, at theslyandunseen.bandcamp.com. More from Lees and English’s duo at the Sly and Unseen’s Facebook page, facebook.com/theslyandunseen, and at theslyandunseen.tumblr.com.
April 16, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0172: Digital-Analog Conflater
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at Disquiet.com, 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 late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 16, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 20, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0172: Digital-Analog Conflater
Do something analog, then do the same thing digitally, and then combine them.
These are the steps for this week’s project:
Step 1: Do something analog.
Step 2: Do the same thing digitally.
Step 3: Combine them. The end result of Step 3 is your finished track.
Step 4: Upload your track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, April 16, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 20, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be between half a minute and two minutes.
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 “disquiet0172-daconflater” 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 172nd Disquiet Junto project — “Do something analog, then do the same thing digitally, and then combine them” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/04/16/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Photo associated with this project by Jill Clardy, used via Creative Commons license:
