Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 405
October 14, 2014
New Album from Makers of Buddha Machine
There is a new album coming from the creators of the Buddha Machine, the tidy little looping box that gained renown as a consumer-grade piece of sound art. This would be the China-based duo of Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, collectively known as FM3.
Titled Ting Shuo (or, in Chinese, 听说), the forthcoming album is a six-track collection, one track of which is currently available for download in advance of the November 2 full release. The initial piece of music to be shared is the title track, “Ting Shuo,” which layers slow-moving strings above a lightly pulsing beat. It plays like something from a particularly reflective moment in a Michael Mann film.
In an announcement about the record, FM3 notes that this is the group’s first full-length album in a decade, though of course in that same time they’ve introduced several generations of Buddha Machines and related devices. The Bandcamp page for the album shares the following information by way of listing instrumentation: “Cello, Steinway Grand Piano and a vintage Roland keyboard meet for this journey of melody, mood and meditation.” There’s also a brief note about the origins of the work: “Ting Shuo evolved during a series of concerts across China and Hong Kong in 2013-14. It was recorded in hotel rooms and studios along the way and mastered in Berlin by Kassian Troyer.”
More on Ting Shuo at buddhamachine.bandcamp.com. More from FM3 at fm3buddhamachine.com and twitter.com/buddhamachine.
October 11, 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
San Jose Museum of Art visitors checking out my Sonic Frame installation, part of the current Momentum exhibit.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
October 9, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0145: There’s a Lifetime In
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, October 9, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, October 13, 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 0145: Locked Haiku
The Assignment: Make a short piece of music inspired by a provided verse.
This week’s project means participating in another music community’s project. There’s a wonderful group called Naviar Haiku, at naviarlab.tumblr.com, that does weekly projects of music inspired by haiku poems. For the group’s current project, its 40th, I wrote the haiku. It reads:
There’s a lifetime in
between the first and second
clicks of the door’s lock
The instructions are simple:
Step 1: Please produce a short piece of music “inpsired by” the above poem.
Step 2: Post the track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud and to the Naviar Haiku group, which is at:
https://soundcloud.com/groups/naviar-...
Include the first line of the haiku as the title of the track.
Step 3: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow participants.
Bonus Step: Include the sound of a door lock in your piece.
Length: Your finished work should be between one and four minutes 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0145-theresalifetimein″ 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 145th Disquiet Junto project — “Make a short piece of music inspired by a provided verse″ — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/10/09/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 Geir Tønnessen:
October 8, 2014
October 7, 2014
The Hyperreal Field Recording
There is real and there is hyperreal, the figment whose realization has the presence of an instance of actual life, and yet in its narrative density, its seductive sense of simulacra, its heightened details, defies reality. Such is “Aggregate” from the Solo Andata album Ritual, released by Desire Path Recordings. It’s a perfect moment of insectoid warbles become drone-rock mantras, the collective voices taking on an orchestral grandeur yet never fully leaving behind their so very quotidian origins.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/desire-path-recordings. More on the album at desirepathrecordings.com. More from Australia-based Solo Andata at solo-andata.com and twitter.com/soloandata.
October 2, 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
Installation for my sound project at the San Jose Museum of Art: 21 scores for a silent film loop.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Disquiet Junto Project 0144: Eraser Head
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, October 2, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, October 6, 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 0144: Eraser Head
The Assignment: Remove parts from an unfinished composition to create a finished composition.
This week’s project achieves productivity by, in effect, doing less.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Choose a recent recording that you think of as “incomplete” or “unfinished.”
Step 2: Remove two things from that recording.
Step 3: The result is a “finished” piece of music.
Step 4: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud. If possible, include a link to the original “incomplete” or “unfinished” version of the piece.
Step 5: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow participants.
Length: Your finished work will be roughly defined by the length of the original, though it should optimally be between one and five 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0144-eraserhead″ 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 144th Disquiet Junto project — “Remove parts from an unfinished composition to create a finished composition″ — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/10/02/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
October 1, 2014
What Does This Poster Sound Like?
This marks the fifth semester that I’ve tought my course on the role of sound in the media landscape at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I love teaching this course. It’s an immersive, 15-week series of classes. We meet once per week for three hours, and then there’s nine hours of homework assigned each week. One thing I’ve wanted to do is to cross-pollinate with students from other departments, so it was suggested by the school that I develop some posters they could post while the registration is underway for the Spring 2015 semester. I came up with a series of questions that are at the heart of the course, and Brian Scott of Boon Design laid these out:
The course is touched on here on occasion with the “sounds-of-brands” tag. More from Boon Design at boondesign.com.
September 30, 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
Installation underway for a piece I developed for the San Jose Museum of Art.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Morton Feldman, Crate Dug
An instrumental hip-hop beat crafted from a snatch of “Triadic Memories” by the late composer Morton Feldman, who is beloved for his extended and extravagantly silent music? Why yes, thank you. This is “Memory” by Bstep. It’s barely a minute in length and takes a single, five-note segment — a splinter, really — of Feldman’s celebrated solo piano work, and then lays it above a spare metric pulse. The added beat is so spare, so old-school, it might have been something that Feldman, who died in 1987, heard during a visit to Manhattan for a concert premiere in his later years. What makes “Memory” work is how it teases out of that final note of the five-note figure a thin wisp of sound that then lingers over the beat like a fog.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/benstepner. More from Bstep, aka Ben Stepner, at twitter.com/bstepbeatz.
