Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 406
September 29, 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
Detail of one of four posters (by Boon Design) for the sound course I teach.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
September 25, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0143: Tuning the Hood
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.
For the duration of the project new tracks will be added to this playlist:
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, September 25, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, September 29, 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 0143: Tuning the Hood
The Assignment: Play a live duet with the world outside your window.
The steps this week are straightforward, and fairly open-ended. You’ll be recording a live performance of between two and five minutes.
Step 1: Choose a single musical instrument that you feel comfortable performing on solo for an extended period of time.
Step 2: Position yourself near an open window.
Step 3: You’ll be recording your performance, as well as the sounds outside your window. Position the microphone in a manner so that, to whatever extent possible, the outside is at a volume level somewhat equal to that of your instrument. This might best be accomplished by using two microphones simultaneously, and adjusting the volume after the performance and recording process are complete.
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 participants.
Deadline: Monday, September 29, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your finished work should be between two and five minutes in length.
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 “disquiet0143-tuningthehood″ 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 143rd Disquiet Junto project — “Play a live duet with the world outside your window″ — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/09/25/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 Takashi M and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
via instagram.com/dsqt
Unintentional glitch is the best glitch. Setting up Ello account.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
September 24, 2014
Autechre Live from Poland
There’s a specific nature to the sound of a concert bootleg. Foreground and background are reversed. The cheers of the crowd seem like they’re an elbow away, while the music recedes amid the audience, as if heard in snatches, bobbing between heads and shoulders, glimpsed over ears and beneath the rims of baseball hats. Such is this recording, reportedly of a live Autechre show from Kraków, Poland, taped by Martin Mohyla and posted for free download — there’s an FLAC and an MP3 (320 kbps) available — with the permission of Autechre member Sean Booth (half of the duo, the other half being Rob Brown). The brief liner note at neuralcorrosion.com, where the audio is hosted, says it was recorded in the front row, but that’s less meaningful at an amplified concert, especially an electronic one, than at, say, a solo acoustic set. The speakers at a show like this aren’t at the front of the stage, which is why the best seats, from a sonic standpoint, are often midway back near the mixing board. Still, it’s a bracing performance, the muddy sound lending a grit and minimal-techno dankness to the music, balancing the increasingly digital brittleness that has marked the group’s output in recent years. The beats are pounding, often subaural, thudding machinations from deep below. Other elements interject, as if from a separate train of thought, including jittering higher-pitched percussion, rough noises, and hazy synthesized cloud formations. The music changes continuously, from horror movie anxiousness to blank ephemera, from pop minimalism to desiccated EDM, club anthems left in tatters. Presumably this was the September 20, 2014, show at the Forum Hotel that also included Battles, Darkstar, LFO, Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Patten, Bibio, and Plaid, the latter two in DJ sets. The event was one in a series to celebrate the Warp label’s 25th anniversary, more on which at warp25.net.
September 23, 2014
Random Access Beatcraft
The random-access beatcraft of Philly-based TLKE has more reference points than the appendix to a PhD disseration. It’s a constant flow of information, sometimes excitedly fractured, at others tribal in its processional metrics. It is always moving, always aborbing external sounds and from them making something new. Often as not the methods of production are turned into the sonic focal point, like the way vinyl textures and beat-loop seams are the cornerstones of “Moon Wrangles (Ripple Effect)” and how the unique skipping-CD flavor provides the salvo on “Exile Path.” Both those tracks are off the extravagantly titled The Abstract Reorganization of Subliminal Oneness by the Laughing Khokmah Ensemble, which is what the “TLKE” abbreviation expands to. The music brings to mind the abstract hip-hop of Arcka and Small Professor, TLKE’s fellow Philadelphians (both of whom, one directly and the other indirectly, introduced me to the music). Though it’s at times quite hypnotically intent in its almost solemn, deeply considered persistence, the album finds space for the kind of broken soul that Arcka and Small Professor often pursue. Just check out the glitchy claps and boomerang samples that make up “See of Time.” Tremendous stuff, throughout, all 22 tracks.
The Abstract Reorganization of Subliminal Oneness by The Laughing Khokmah Ensemble
Album originally posed at “name your price” at tlke.bandcamp.com.
September 22, 2014
Automation, Sound, Systems, Art
This short video documentary, Tristan Perich: Mind the Machine, by Russell Oliver, explores artist and composer Perich’s processes and thoughts on automation, sound, systems, and art. As Perich describes it, he’s interested in “where the physical world around us meets the abstract world of computation and electronics.” Perich speaks throughout, describing his approach to his work, and the video includes a studio tour — his studio being as much an electronics tinkering zone as it is a musician’s home recording space. He’s at work, for example, on a variation on the microtonal wall that consisted of 1,500 small speakers, and the studio is filled with clear plastic boxes to help him manage all his parts. He connects his own minimalist — “bare bones,” in his words — approach to that of his father, the artist Anton Perich. Like his father, Perich has explored an automated drawing machine, images of which open the film. There’s some especially glorious material toward the end in which a chorus of exposed speaker cones accompany pianist Vicky Chow in a live performance.
The video is a little over 17 minutes long and is streaming at vimeo.com. More on Perich at tristanperich.com.
