Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 397
December 26, 2014
A Gamelan Wind Chime
This track is Stringbot trying things out in Numerology, the music software program that just saw its update to version 4.0 on November 25, a month ago. The software is self-described as being “all about building musical phrases by starting with simple patterns of repeating notes, and then manipulating the pattern with a set of easily applied transformations.” Among those transformations are “generative” capabilities — that is, changes that are not entirely predictable, such as engaging with chance operations or following evolutionary steps. I first learned about Numerology from Brian Biggs, who records as Dance Robot Dance. This track by Stringbot appeared in his SoundCloud feed on Christmas Day. It puts the chance capabilities to work in “Rando Gamelan,” yielding a gentle pattern that brings to mind a metal mallet instrument submitted to the operations of a wind chime.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/stringbot. Stringbot is Joshua Davison of Chicago, Illinois. More from him at twitter.com/stringbot and stringbot.com. More on the Numerology software at five12.com.
December 25, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0156: Audio Journal 2014
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 evening, California time, on Thursday, December 25, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 29, 2014.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0156: Audio Journal 2014
The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments.
This week’s project is a sound journal, a selective audio history of your past year. You will select a different audio element to represent each of the past 12 months of 2014. You will then select one five-second segment from each of these audio elements. Then you will stitch these dozen five-second segments together in chronological order to form one single one-minute track. There should be no overlap or gap between segments; they should simply proceed from one to the next.
These audio elements will most likely be of music that you have yourself composed and recorded, but they might also consist of phone messages, field recordings, or other source material. These items should be somehow personal in nature, suitable to the autobiographical intention of the project; they should be of your own making, and not drawn from third-party sources.
When done, upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud. Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, December 29, 2014.
Length: Your finished work should be 60 seconds long.
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.
Information: Please, when posting your track on SoundCloud, list the source of each of the 12 elements.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0156-audiojournal2014” 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 156th Disquiet Junto project — “Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/12/25/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 Tim Sackton used via Creative Commons license:
December 22, 2014
Helge Meyer Pushes the Drone
Helge Meyer refers to “North of Dust” as a drone, yet it has a serrated texture beyond the norm for that word. The pushing of the term’s meaning is welcome, because the word “drone” has become increasingly synonymous with a specific, dense, solitary sound, and the drone of “North of Dust” has a far more fractured, anxious feeling to it than one might initially expect. There is, certainly, an underlying, mantra-like current, of course, like a remnant of some ancient Terry Riley piece, but there is atop it this thorough screen of chattering noise, neither explicitly mechanical nor organic. It is static in both senses of the word. The track is off Meyer’s recent debut album, Vessel, on the Pleisto label.
Track originally posted for streaming at soundcloud.com/helgemeyer. More from Meyer, who is based in Hamburg, Germany, at econore.com. More from the label, Pleisto, at facebook.com/pleisto.
My Aphex Twin Book: a 33 ⅓ Bestseller for 2014
This is very nice news. I just learned this morning that my book in the 33 1/3 series, on Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, is one of the top 10 bestsellers in the series for all of 2014. That’s out of over 100 books. The 100th in the series, by Susan Fast, on Michael Jackson’s album Dangerous, came out in September. I’m especially happy that two largely lyric-less albums, mine and Ferguson’s Donuts, made the list. Also, Ferguson was one of the authors I brought in to work on those comics I edited for the recent Tokyo festival put on by Red Bull Music Academy. His comic was on Isao Tomita. Anyhow, below is the top 10 list of 33 1/3’s 2014 bestsellers in full. My book, which was published on February 13, 2014, and is now in its second printing, came in #5:
J Dilla’s Donuts by Jordan Ferguson
Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves
Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold
Michael Jackson’s Dangerous by Susan Fast
Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum
Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality by John Darnielle (featured in the New York Times review of Darnielle’s new novel)
Oasis’ Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven
Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper
Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan LeRoy
Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson.
News via the 33 1/3 blog at 333sound.com.
December 20, 2014
Kate Carr’s Glasgow Daydream
Found voices bleed into birdsong, everyday noises meld with the echoed hush of an instrument’s slow fade. The journey marked by footsteps and railway announcements parallels the progression of the track built from these very sounds. This is “I Remembered It All Somewhere Near Glasgow” by the highly active sound figure Kate Carr, who runs the fine Flaming Pines label. The track is an extended, nearly nine-minute travelog, one that is both compressed and languorous. It is both a dense collation of accumulated sounds, and a slowly paced sequence that asks for the listener’s patience and attention and returns the favor. If there is one thing that marks exemplary sound art and experimental music, it is it’s ability to reward the imagination.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/katecarr. More from Carr at her gleamingsilverribbon.com website.
December 19, 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
My final Instagram shot for 2014: an especially self-conscious doorbell. #soundstudies
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
December 18, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0155: Mix Match
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 evening, California time, on Thursday, December 18, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, December 22, 2014, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0155: Mix Match
The Assignment: Take a track and its remix and meld them into something new.
This is the next to the last project of 2014. It’s a remix of a remix, and of the track the remix was based on. These are the steps:
Step 1: Download the following two tracks. The first is “Waiting…” by Yellow Salamand’r and the second is a reworking of it, titled “Waiting (A Yellow Salamander Re-hash),” by Colab.
https://soundcloud.com/yellow-salaman...
https://soundcloud.com/colab/waiting-...
Step 2: Create a new track that combines the two source tracks. Don’t add any new audio, though you can transform the source material as you wish.
Step 3: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Length: Your finished work should be between roughly 3 to 4 minutes long.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, December 18, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, December 22, 2014, as the deadline.
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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0155-mixmatch” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: For this project, due to the source audio, your track should be set with a Creative Commons license, such as CC BY-NC-SA 3.0, that allows adaptive reworking.
Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 155th Disquiet Junto project — “Take a track and its remix and meld them into something new” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/12/18/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Image associated with this project by Chris Beckett via a Creative Commons license:
December 16, 2014
December 15, 2014
PR Notice
My email account is pretty pummeled by music PR, which given that the PR involves lots of opportunities to listen to music for free isn’t really something that I expect much consolation for. Anyhow, the following is, for the record, the current version of the email I reply with, on occasion, the fifth or sixth time I get sent an unsolicited email with a faux-personal introduction, telling me how much they love my blog, and extolling the virtues of this pop-punk band, or that neu-soulful r&b diva, or some country singer with a moving personal story to share:
Hi. It’s really not up my professional alley.
I pretty much focus my writing on “technologically mediated sound” — ambient music, sound art, sound design, sound in the media landscape, experimental classical, hip-hop production, that sorta thing. And I write very little about what would traditionally be considered a “song.”
Thanks.
Best,
Marc
It’s amazing how many PR agencies use Constant Contact and MailChimp and other services without the permission of recipients. When I have the time, I forward the offending emails to the abuse accounts of the given service.
If Harold Budd Played Guitar
If you remember me then I don't care if everyone else forgets by Stijn Hüwels
Based in Leuven, Belgium, the musician Stijn Hüwels records solo work that sometimes sounds like what Harold Budd might have been up to had he favored the guitar over the piano. The slow instrumental pacing of “If You Remember Me Then I Don’t Care if Everyone Else Forgets” is just as murky, fluid, and ambiguous as fine Budd, with that sense of melodies that are likely to dissolve if you pay attention to them too closely. That’s especially the case on the opening track, “He Tried to Forget.” The eight tracks range from efforts in deep sublimation, like the muffled “Coalescence,” to the more song-like “Clouds as Seen from an Airplane,” in which gently plucked chords eke out tentative, lightly dissonant spaces. The digital release is also available as a limited (50-piece) cassette run from the fine Ghent, Belgium–based label Dauw.
Originally posted at dauw.bandcamp.com. More from Stijn Hüwels at soundcloud.com/steiner, twitter.com/stijnhuwels, and steinersteiner.tumblr.com. More from the Dauw label at dauwlabel.tumblr.com and soundcloud.com/dauwlabel.
