Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 396
January 6, 2015
January 5, 2015
Lauren Redhead Explores “(Dis)located Spaces”
“(Dis)located Spaces” is a 2014 piece by Rob Canning for organ and electronics. It’s composed for eight channels, and is heard here in a performance by Lauren Redhead on “organ, recorders, voice, harmonica,” with “electronics” performed by Canning himself. It was taped on November 1, 2014, at the di_stanze festival in Leeds, England. The piece puts a delicately shrill organ lead amid and above a range of ancillary sounds, from haunting vocalizations to sudden, momentary keyboard trills. Often several of these elements overlap, yet the one true constant is this strong, forcefully held organ motif, like an extended pause in a Philip Glass piece, or a knowing, sideways glance at something by Olivier Messiaen. These additional materials generally deepen the root chord, adding to it rather than contrasting with it. No doubt the effect is all the more detailed and disorienting at the center of an eight-channel installation, but even in mere stereo it is mesmerizing.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/laurenredhead. More from Canning at rob.kiben.net. More from Lauren Redhead at laurenredhead.eu, and at the website of Canterbury Christ Church University, where she is a lecturer in the School of Music and Performing Arts (among her areas of current research are organ and electronics, digital opera, and the aesthetics of atonality). More on the di_stanze festival at distanze.org. Full program from the performance at distanzeleeds.wordpress.com.
January 4, 2015
On the Benefits of Being Incomplete
This is a short note at the start of the fourth year of the Disquiet Junto. Right now, as I type this, musicians around the world are working on the 157th consecutive weekly music assignment in the Junto. As of this writing, there are already 25 tracks in the project, by 25 different musicians from places like Murwillumbah, Australia; Norwich, England; Munich, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden; Bolzano, Italy; and, in the United States, Denver, Colorado; Brooklyn, New York; Montpelier, Vermont; and Iowa City, Iowa, just to name a sample of the locations.
The first project this fourth year is the same as the first project the very first year, and at the start of the series’ second and third years: “Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.” The point of repeating this same project at the start of each year is to note the ritual of it all, the macro annual ritual that wraps around the weekly ritual that is the Disquiet Junto, which itself suggests a potential model for the everyday ritual of making music, of producing creative work. Each Thursday there is a new project, and each following Monday there is a pressing deadline. Few combinations prove as effective in getting creative people producing new work as the trio of a firm deadline, a firm assignment, and the awaiting support of a collegial audience — in the case of the Junto, fellow makers of music.
Many months into the launch of the Junto, back in 2012, I came to recognize that one of the key factors in the group’s welcome acceptance by so many musicians — at this stage almost 500 actively participating SoundCloud accounts, over 800 email list subscribers, nearing 2,000 SoundCloud group members — is that the Junto provides a place where people feel comfortable risking failure, even pursuing failure. A deadline is both an impetus and an excuse, both a taskmaster and an alibi. The deadline is an opportune means to explain that a posted piece of work is unfinished, incomplete.
And speaking of incomplete, I started writing this note to mention something specific, which is that there should be no pressing sense on the part of any Junto participant that they do every Junto — all 52 — in a given year. The point of the Junto’s weekly schedule is that it’s there, dependably, when participating members have the time to drop in. The projects are structured, as well, so that they are self-contained. You can show up at any point between a Thursday and the looming Monday and start and complete the project. Occasionally there is a specific task that may take some time, such as visiting a shopping mall to make a field recording or recording oneself sleeping, but never does a Junto project require any time beyond the time frame of the given project. Almost every project can be started and completed within an hour or so, though many musicians give far more time to them.
Anyhow, this explanation is sort of having it both ways. On the one hand, I’m saying don’t worry about doing every project, week in, week out. On the other, I’m saying don’t worry that the work doesn’t feel done, which is to say don’t hesitate to post something. Either way, I hope you feel welcome.
From Japan, by Way of Germany
It’s been a year since Japan-born, Germany-based musician Miki Yui updated her SoundCloud page. And it’s been over a decade and a half since those two of those three updates were first released, back in 1999, as part of her 16-track album Small Sounds, from the Bmb Lab label. But they are lovely pieces, very much worth more attention than her mere 71 followers and low triple-digits plays suggest. “BeauWien,” in particular, with its mix of slow, analog, rhythmic motion and occasional moments of backward-masked reflection — two steps forward, one in reverse — are infused with a gentle, nudging quality that commands attention even if the sounds are, themselves, seemingly small and insignificant.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/miki-yui. More from Yui at mikiyui.com.
January 3, 2015
First New Marcus Fischer Track of the Year
The first sound uploaded this new year by Marcus Fischer is a tape loop experiment, the source material for which is just a metallophone and bells. The slow layering, the loose tape effects, like the brief slurring of recorded sound, and the evident crackle from seams and errant noises collectively make for an endlessly loopable listening experience: a loop intended to be looped. The track is accompanied by a photo of the employed tools, evidence of just how helpful such information can be in the appreciation of a recording. Note in particular how the length of the loop is accomplished by extending it beyond the recording device’s dimensions thanks to a pair of drinking glasses and what appear to be candles.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/mapmap and dustbreeding.com. More from Fischer, who is based in Portland, Oregon, at mapmap.ch.
January 2, 2015
Ambient Anxiety
“Mildly Shallow” is an artfully discomforting bit of ambient anxiety by Mytrip. About four and a half minutes long, it is the sound of dastardly activity heard down a long corridor, voices and actions at once both magnified and muffled. Clanks, once hard instances, yield subtle rhythmic chaos and nuanced tonal haze. Conversation take on the effect of fully composed choral parts. The first mention on Disquiet.com of Mytrip was back in the first half of 2011, and that track has since gone offline. The sense of eternal presence inherent in digitally distributed media is an illusion. Listen to “Mildly Shallow” while it’s still readily available.
Mytrip is Angel S. of Sofia, Bulgaria. More at ijustwannabeabetterman.blogspot.com and twitter.com/angelxgodfree.
January 1, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0157: A Little Ice Music
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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, January 1, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, January 5, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0157: A Little Ice Music
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
Happy new year! This week’s project is as follows:
Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.
Step 2: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single-sentence assignment as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series on the first Thursday of 2012. Revisiting it a year and two years later, on the first Thursdays of 2013 and 2014, provided a fitting way to begin the new year. Now, at the start of the fourth year of the Disquiet Junto, it is a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a weekly habit. It’s beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.
Deadline: 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, January 5, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be between one minute and four 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 “disquiet0157-icemusic2015” 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 157th Disquiet Junto project — “Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/01/01/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 Michael Scott used via Creative Commons license:
1987 Was a Very Good Year for Music
A friend recently (on Facebook) unearthed my top 10 favorite albums and singles from 1987. With the exception of the Tom Waits, the albums are all things I listen to quite regularly to this day — well, I don’t listen to The Joshua Tree much, but I have a special affection for “Bullet the Blue Sky,” with its epic, filmic quality, and for the version of “Sweetest Thing” that appeared on the B-side of the “Where the Streets Have No Name” 7″ (not the cleaned up, perfected version of “Sweetest Thing” that appeared on U2’s The Best of 1980-1990). The Metallica, Cecil Taylor, and Ray Anderson albums, in particular, are my favorites by those musicians. I still remember plucking the Anderson from the shelf at the college radio station, WYBC, where I had a jazz show, and falling for it immediately.
The singles are very pop, and I have come to realize, in retrospect, that my ear was focused on the music’s mechanical impulses, from the Devo-esque stop’n’start intensity of the They Might Be Giants, to the produced precision of the George Michael and the John Cougar Mellencamp. The Cure is one of the most misunderstood pop groups, often poorly characterized as a synth act. Its “Just Like Heaven” is by far the most live-sounding of the songs on this list, while the rest are quite clearly studio concoctions, in particular the Prince and Celtic Frost.
I’ve had this particular year’s top 10 in mind for awhile. This is in part because compiling a top 10 has become less and less interesting to me as the years have passed, and I look back at past lists wondering how much they were acts of necessity or of habit, rather than expressions of true prioritized interests. I look at the 1987 list and I know it was quite an accurate depiction of what I thought. I started many lists to summarize 2014 and only finished one, which I have yet to publish. This 1987 list has also been on my mind because I’m especially keen on my sense, back in 1987, that the dense assemblage of M/A/R/R/S’ “Pump Up the Volume” was an invitation for others — for active listeners, as I’ve come to think of them — to join in the production process. The ridiculous bravado of my summary statement of the song is me trying out, I think, some of the rock-criticism writing I reading at the time. I hadn’t yet sorted out how to write like I want to write, and I was, so to speak, trying on other people’s clothes, awkwardly so. I was very sure, though, of what I wanted to listen to, and how I believed that music functioned, how it ticked. This list is reprinted from the February 1988 edition of Nadine, the student music publication where I attended college, Yale.
These are the albums:
Metallica, Garage Days Re-Revisited: The $5.98 E.P.
Cecil Taylor, For Olim
John Zorn, Spillane
Ray Anderson, It Just So Happens
Tim Berne, Fulton Street Maul
U2, The Joshua Tree
Power Tools, Power Tools
Alex Chilton, High Priest
Einstürzende Neubauten, Fünf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala
Tom Waits, Franks Wild Years
And these are the singles:
Roy Orbison and k.d. lang, “Crying”—one of many amazing, current remakes by the dark Elvis, the Elephantman of rock ‘n’ roll.
John Cougar Mellencamp, “Paper in Fire”
George Michael, “Faith”
They Might Be Giants, “Don’t Let’s Start”
Bourgeois Tagg, “I Don’t Mind at All”
Celtic Frost, “I Won’t Dance”
John Cougar Mellencamp, “Cherry Bomb”
Prince, “Sign O’ the Times”
M/A/R/R/S, “Pump Up the Volume”—I never quite got the ‘CD single’ idea til I heard this song. I don’t even know if it’s out in that format yet. But, someday I wanna be able to load every scrumptiously digital instant into my Macintosh, edit the fucker “my way” (in fact I may just use Frankie’s own voice), and add my M/W to their M/A/R/R/S.
The Cure, “Just Like Heaven”
December 27, 2014
Video from My San Jose Museum of Art Installation
The San Jose Museum of Art has uploaded this eight-minute video featuring the various folks who, like me, contributed works as “interveners” for its current Momentum exhibit, which celebrates the museum’s 45th anniversary. I talk in the video at 2:52 and 3:59.
My piece is “Sonic Frame,” a response in three screens to a video by Josh Azzarella. Each screen contains a unique set of seven different audio tracks composed to complement it, so each time the video plays anew it is accompanied by different sounds. Among the participating musicians are Taylor Deupree, Natalia Kamia, Julia Mazawa, Steve Roden, Naoyuki Sasanami, Christina Vantzou, Stephen Vitiello, and Scanner.
The Momentum exhibit runs from October 2, 2014, through February 22, 2015. More on the exhibit here (“How Sound Frames Vision”) and at sjmusart.org. Video hosted at youtube.com.
