Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 424
February 25, 2014
Even Waveforms Have Terroir
Dave Seidel has released an album composed of sine waves, those near and about the ~60 Hz range. That’s the title of his album, ~60 Hz, and I was honored to be asked by him to write a liner note for the record’s release. The digital version went live today at irritablehedgehog.com, and CDs are for sale as well. The label, run by David D. McIntire, has released music by William Duckworth, Jürg Frey, Eva-Maria Houben, and Dennis Johnson, among others.
This is the music, streaming in full:
Dave Seidel: ~60 Hz by Dave Seidel
This is the text I wrote:
“The Waveforms in Your Neighborhood”
The operative information in the title is the tilde. The tilde means “sort of” or “nearly” or “in the neighborhood of.” What follows the tilde in the title are two digits and a pair of consonants, which collectively symbolize the neighborhood in question. What the “60Hz” refers to is a sine wave, categorically perhaps the simplest sound imaginable, a constant of equally balanced ebb and flow. The 60Hz does not merely refer to a sine wave. The 60Hz describes the sine wave succinctly. The contours of the sine wave are beside the point, because they are immutable, an eternal skatepark up and down and up that seems to have begun before time and that will continue after the heat death of the universe. What the 60Hz describes, however, is the nature of this exact sine wave, specifically what might more colloquially be referred to as its pace. The Hz in the title stands for the measurement Hertz, which is the number of wave cycles that occur in a single second. Thus, a 60Hz waveform cycles through 60 times in one single second.
60 per second of anything may signal speediness, but 60Hz proves quite lulling. The wave veers up and down, weaving sonic wool, a thick blanket of hazy warm noise that the ear succumbs to, and then the mind, and then the body. If the wave resembles the distant hum of a power line, that is because 60Hz is the standard frequency of the power infrastructure in the United States. If it does not sound like the whir of municipal undercurrent, that may be because you live elsewhere. Even waveforms have terroir.
The tilde in the title is the operative information because the tilde means that the sounds heard will, in fact, not stick to the 60Hz frequency. They will, instead, hover around 60Hz. What the little tilde means is that the listener will witness the resulting shifts and hedges, veering and layering, collisions and parallels as waveforms are added and set in contrast to each other. These contrasts will yield all manner of aural patterning.
In lesser hands, the patterns would have all the gee-whiz lab-coat charm of a 1950s stereo system vinyl test album. But these waves are not in lesser hands. They are in Dave Seidel’s hands. What we hear is the simplest sound form yielding myriad, tantalizing moiré patterns. Some of these patterns suggest the fervid activity of insectoid communication, others the humble drone of a mumbled mantra. There are pointilist percussive effects, and tones like nothing so much as a masterful solo organ recital. There are phase shifts like a Steve Reich violin piece, and torquing structures like an industrial rock band playing its third encore on the last night of a tour.
And there are echoes, of course, of science fiction. This is electronic music in the purest sense, electricity revealing itself as sound — science transmuted into art. One hears Bebe Barron and Louis Barron’s work on the Forbidden Planet soundtrack. One hears the note accrual inherent in the opening of the original Star Trek theme. One hears the hum of a lonesome space station while its inhabitants are deep in a timeless, cryogenic state.
For all the associative mind games, what is heard is simply a handful of notes taking the concept of minimalism at its word. The operative information in the title is the tilde, the tilde that itself rightfully resembles a tiny typographic sine wave.
Get the release at irritablehedgehog.com. More at Seidel’s website, mysterybear.net.
February 22, 2014
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
5 years ago this week Max Neuhaus died and I first wrote about Diego Bernal's music: http://t.co/zCD4N5tyKQ. 15 years ago I wrote on "NP." ->
Arvo Pärt cover ("Fratres") attributed to A Winged Victory for the Sullen and ACME Ensemble: http://t.co/ff7kAZMk4v. ->
RT @hecanjog: First listen to SAWII after reading the first half of Marc Weidenbaum's SAWII book! #nowplaying ->
Fun is writing about a live event only to have someone who attended chime in in the comments: http://t.co/yZYl2PwJV1 ->
Hopeful that Alexandre Desplat's Godzilla score is more Syriana and less Monuments Men. ->
We should read JG Ballard's High Rise as San Francisco's One City One Book 2014. (Last year it was @doctorow's Little Brother.) ->
Yes, I paused the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer for the trailer in order to get a glimpse of the raccoon. ->
RIP, Bob Casale (61) of Devo: http://t.co/onRDD0Plgj ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FrVmKgO1Mx ->
"A Rusty Obelisk Made Out of Angel Sighs": @editaurus has folks praise Aphex Twin SAW2 on its 20th: http://t.co/l3FEcCrkwh ->
Meant it more as a joke yesterday, but today just mean it: the 2014 One City One Book in San Francisco should be JG Ballard's High Rise. ->
My early experience of Devo was on tapes dubbed from vinyl by a friend. Years later I discovered the tapes were faster than the originals. ->
Happy to read that my Aphex Twin book is in stock at @sakistore in Chicago. ->
Most beatific smile I saw today was on the face of guy having a cup of coffee and reading a Star Trek novel. ->
RT @newbsradio: Listen to find out how you can win these books and bags to carry said books from @333books and @disquiet! http://t.co/3J5MX… ->
Reminder that I'm talking at Stanford's CCRMA facility tomorrow if you're in the Palo Alto area: http://t.co/Ccx521nshV. It's at 5:15pm. ->
Truly doesn't think you can fully get Cage and Feldman until you've read Frog and Toad. #hasa3yearold ->
Today's sound class: origins of the jingle; did advertising inventory shape song form? Plus: Reznor/Ross/Fincher, Dennis Potter, Southland. ->
Gave my first non-podcast, in-person public yap tonight at CCRMA. It was a great experience. Read a bit, but much more lecture than reading. ->
Also a first: signed my first book. A kid at Comic-Con once had me sign a copy of Shonen Jump, but this was my own book, which was cool. ->
Great moment: showed Disquiet Junto screenshot, and in the audience was a Junto member who appeared on that page. Had never met him before. ->
Weirdest thing about Aphex SAW2 after 20 years of listening and 1 year of writing: how familiar it is, having once been unknowable to me. ->
Those little Altoids Smalls cases sure do a fine job of holding and protecting a pair of earbuds. Bonus: minty fresh hearing. ->
RT @333books: Great 20th anniversary article on SAWII in @theQuietus by @NedRaggett with a nod to @disquiet's book: http://t.co/mNGi9sTBSF ->
RIP, Paul Colby (96), owner of the Bitter End: http://t.co/7PuejoZWfJ ->
RT @SactownMagazine: Former Tower Records magazine editor (@disquiet) writes the book — literally — on music legend Aphex Twin: http://t.… ->
I need to come up with a gesticulation that means “I’m reading a really long subsidiary clause right now." ->
"Hot new games + music to celebrate Black History Month" (From a Google Play Store email.) ->
This week's @djunto project is calendrical. ->
Photo of server room at Stanford's CCRMA facility, where I gave a talk last night on my Aphex Twin SAW2 33 1/3 book: http://t.co/mchfxlAyW9 ->
Photo of innards of a Yamaha GS1 retrofitted with an Arduino to allow for a USB connection, also at CCRMA. http://t.co/Hi2jzprpSH ->
I believe you've written my first blurb, sir. MT @robsheff "love how it evokes the way music circa 1994 was suffused with unknowable data." in reply to robsheff ->
Many of us Aphex SAW2 listeners go to sleep listening to an album Chris Morris used as background music for his menacing comedy sketches. ->
Hey, Alarm Will Sound is on Instagram: http://t.co/PGKZ34rVnE. #yieldtoartintransit ->
Whenever I see this sign I wonder why @AlarmWillSound isn't the headliner: http://t.co/CIbgxRsB8Q ->
"I have no more power ups." "They're attacking wooden posts." "4,000 Damage? One Guy? Dude." Conversation overheard in library. #gamestudies ->
I contributed #TheNewOldThing on @YahooTech: The Latin Playboys' 1994 (yes, Aphex Twin SAW2 fans) debut: @YahooTech: https://t.co/U70dfT1khy ->
It's possible to be pro-CC and pro-CCC at the same time. This "Artists’ Pay for Radio Play" stuff is important: http://t.co/RpkGAjUmpI ->
#wikipedia I wonder if I could get one of them to add my book to the Aphex Twin SAW2 page: http://t.co/fqwYHiDhRp #editathon ->
If (1) you have a 2013 Macbook Air and (2) use Google Hangouts and (3) video functions for you, please let me know. Thanks. #magicfail ->
I enthusiastically support performers being paid for their covers. But the acts doing damage on this cafe's radio shouldn't make a penny. ->
Is isn't Kiev, but with the right mix of caffeine and '80s rock covers I imagine people storming the counter and changing the radio station. ->
Oh yeah, the book's out. Updated that Twitter bio. ->
Hey, San Francisco Hive Mind: please recommend good Indian or Latin American restaurant near Caltrain stop between San Bruno + Belmont. ->
RT @derderdebonair: So psyched about this #Berio concert poster I made. http://t.co/VRsGSHiIpy ->
February 20, 2014
Aphex Twin SAWII Book in The Quietus, The Stranger, and More
I’ll post references to my Aphex Twin 33 1/3 Selected Ambient Works Volume II book on occasion. Here’s a batch that occurred during the book’s first week of publication. It came out on February 13, a week ago today.
. . .
The writer Ned Raggett at thequietus.com has written up an extended reflection on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II. He says, while pondering the wonderful track that has come to be known as “Rhubarb”:
If the ghost of figures like Eno inevitably hangs over anything that could be called ambient – much less a term that at the time seemed to only be a bad joke of a hangover, new age – what James did here, like others elsewhere, was to translate the impulse and suggest other ways to work with it. Miles away from ‘Digideridoo’, a whole universe away from ‘Windowlicker’ or ‘Girl/Boy’, it’s as close to ambience as gentle balm as one could want, but even then it’s not really that, enveloping in its stripped down beauty but so stately, so focused, warm and cold at the same time.
He also, thoughtfully, mentions my work:
A new entry in the 33 ⅓ book series by Marc Weidenbaum does deeper delving into the album than I can even attempt here, so I encourage you to consider that if you want something more rigorous, as well as this 2012 interview preparatory to its release, where Weidenbaum notes something key I’ve turned over a few times as well: “I want to probe the one thing that is pervasively understood about this record, the “fact” that is synonymous with Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which is the idea that it has no beats. This is commonly asserted about it, that it has no rhythmic content. I think this is, simply, false. Much of the album has rhythmic content, even a consistent beat, if not two or more beats working against yet in concert with each other. I want to explore the perceived tension between ambient sound and rhythm.”
Weidenbaum hits this point that’s easy to forget, yet is terribly clear — there is rhythm throughout the album, actual beats at points as noted, but more often creating the kind of intertwined obsessive exploration that seemed – at least to me at the time – to be matched solely by the work Robert Hampson was doing more and more via Main. Where that duo, and eventually solo act, had as its sometime motto ‘drumless space’, there was never absence of rhythms, the space was disciplined, shaped and mutated constantly, an ever shifting nervousness. James had his own approach, and comparatively SAWII is more recognisably a world of ‘songs’, shorter in length, focused on key fragments or elements that never departed. But the further you went in, the further it wasn’t drumless space indeed – it was often just space. A black cold space, seemingly antithetical to the white cold space of the sleeves, but just as alien, and just as unnerving.
There was such a strong series of reader comments on the Quietus post and over on a thread at Facebook, that Ragett did a follow-up post on his Tumblr account.
. . .
Rob Sheffield (Rolling Stone) has written what I think may serve as the first proper blurb of the book:
@_markrichardson @disquiet curious what you will think. love how it evokes the way music circa 1994 was suffused with unknowable data.
— rob sheffield (@robsheff) February 21, 2014
. . .
Over at Sactown magazine, Stu VanAirsdale interviewed me about the book. I lived in Sacramento at the time of the release of the album, back when I was an editor at the music magazines at Tower Records. The article reads, in part:
“Half, if not more, of the book is about what happened after the record came out—how it’s been used in culture,” says Weidenbaum, speaking via phone from his home in San Francisco. “It’s about how fans were responsible for putting names to the tracks, which were originally untitled. It was about how filmmakers and choreographers and comedians have used his music in their work, and how classical composers have taken the music and done things with it.”
In his book, Weidenbaum describes SAW2′s sonic quality as “vaporous”—“hovering waves of sound” that float and rise and roil in a kind of haze or passing mist. But even in its relative shapelessness, Aphex Twin (the nom de plume of English musician Richard D. James) helped shaped a perspective on music that Weidenbaum seeks to refine for the audience of novice listeners and ardent fans alike.
. . .
And over at The Stranger, Dave Segal constructed a reflection — with the absolutely splendid title “A Rusty Obelisk Made Out of Angel Sighs” — on the album on its 20th anniversary with his own thoughts (“perhaps the most interesting, strange, and affecting advancement of Brian Eno’s mid-’70s ambient strategies to date”), extended quotes from various musicians and DJs from the Pacific Northwest (including Lusine, Solenoid, and Jeremy Moss, among others), and a reference to my study:
In his new book-length study of SAW2 for Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series, Marc Weidenbaum accurately observed that it “is a monolith of an album, but one in the manner of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, one that reflects back the viewer’s impression…. It is an intense album of fragile music.” And it is seemingly impossible to get sick of it. So many people have told me that they would play SAW2 every day for long stretches of time.
Disquiet Junto Project 0112: Calendrical Score
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.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 project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, February 20, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 24, 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 0112: Calendrical Score
This week’s instruction is simple: Your past week’s calendar (February 13 – February 19) is your score. Each hour is a note or chord. Each quarter day is a measure. Please post an image of your calendar in the process — feel free, of course, to block out anything personal you don’t want to share.
Deadline: Monday, February 24, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your finished work should be between 2 minute and 5 minutes.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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 “disquiet0112-calendrical” 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, be sure to include this information:
More on this 112th Disquiet Junto project (“Turn your week’s dayplanner into music”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/02/20/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Photo associated with this project by Anita Hart, used via Flickr.com with a Creative Commons license:
February 18, 2014
Elizabeth Veldon’s Winter Drones
Elizabeth Veldon, a Glasgow-based musician, has been posting a series of winter-themed drones with titles like “glengoyne surrenders to winter and all the valleys fill with snow” and “a winter song for faze (sleep, sleep/ snow had fallen)” and “the lower levels of angels, even, are bathed in grace (for lilly).” They sound true to their titles: warm, long, hovering explorations of spaciousness and timelessness. They are luxurious things intended for immersive listening. The “glengoyne” one is 50 minutes in length, the others 30 minutes and 20 minutes respectively.
Track originally posted for free download at https://soundcloud.com/elizabethveldon. More from Veldon at elizabethveldon.tumblr.com, twitter.com/elizabethveldon, and elizabethveldon.bandcamp.com.
February 17, 2014
Track by Track: Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II
What follows are links to 25 distinct posts, each about a different track from the album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which Aphex Twin released in 1994, and which I published a book about, two decades later in 2014, as part of the 33 1/3 series. I posted theses pieces in reverse order, from track 25 to track 1, in the 25 days leading up to the February 13, 2014, release of my book. This post serves to put them all in one place. Each entry includes streaming audio, alternate takes, and some initial track analysis drawn from my substantially more detailed research notes. With the exception of “Blue Calx,” the tracks are all untitled on the official release, but as in the book I employ the “fan” titles, derived from the album artwork, here:
1 “Cliffs”
2 “Radiator”
3 “Rhubarb”
4 “Hankie”
5 “Grass”
6 “Mould”
7 “Curtains”
8 “Blur”
9 “Weathered Stone”
10 “Tree”
11 “Domino”
12 “White Blur 1″
13 “Blue Calx”
14 “Parallel Stripes”
15 “Shiny Metal Rods”
16 “Grey Stripe”
17 “Z Twig”
18 “Window Sill”
19 “Stone in Focus”
20 “Hexagon”
21 “Lichen”
22 “Spots”
23 “Tassels”
24 “White Blur 2″
25 “Match Sticks”
Get the book at amazon.com (paperback and Kindle) or wherever 33 1/3 books are sold.
Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.
A Winged Victory for …
A Winged Victory for the Sullen is the name employed by Adam Wiltzie (of Stars of the Lid) and composer Dustin O’Halloran when working in tandem. They have, together, committed wonderfully drone-informed explorations of what might be called contemporary classical, except to the extent that so many of its participants welcome the word “classical” with the same enthusiasm that might meet an invitation to a high-school reunion. In this live recording, performed with the ACME Contemporary Music Ensemble (here listed as ACME String Ensemble) live in Seattle (date and place left unspecified), they present the most subdued portion of “Fratres,” a famed and oft-revisited work by Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer known for his bracing mix of spiritual and minimalist intensity.
Minus the piece’s frenzied violin solo, it is a swell of sound that comes and goes like a playground swing kept aloft by the wind. The haphazard live-recording acoustics just add to its dusty figurations. O’Halloran and Wiltzie in effect proclaimed their modus operandi with the title of the first track of their self-titled album from 2011; the track: “We Played Some Open Chords.” A later track on the same album might also suffice: “Steep Hills of Vicodin Tears.” Along with the likes of Nils Frahm and Rachel’s, anong others, A Winged Victory for the Sullen are openly nostalgic and emotive in a way that brings to mind the heart-on-the-sleeve emotional awareness of much indie-rock. Pärt’s “Frartes” makes a natural choice for its role as retroactively adopted precedent to what A Winged Victory for the Sullen is currently up to. The association is as natural as Billy Bragg covering Pete Seeger or Alexandre Desplat giving the nod to John Williams.
Here’s the complete A Winged Victory for the Sullen, released by Kranky in 2011:
The Arvo Pärt track was originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/alliedee. More from the duo at awvfts.com. More from O’Halloran at dustinohalloran.com. More from Wiltzie’s Stars of the Lid at brainwashed.com/sotl.
February 16, 2014
Disquiet: 15, 10 & 5 Years Ago This Week (2014.07)
This would be roughly the week of February 10 through February 16.
5 Years Ago (2009): I feel like I’ve been listening to Diego Bernal’s tremendous atmospheric old-school hip-hop instrumentals for much longer than five years, and perhaps I have, but according to my searches, I first wrote about them five years ago this week; these days Bernal, who is a Texas-based civil rights attorney, is on the San Antonio city council, representing his district. He has less room in his life for music-making these days, but he collaborated this past September with Ernest Gonzales (aka Mexicans with Guns) on the album Atonement. … Also in the Downstream this week: raw materials from Peter Gabriel’s “Games without Frontiers”, great Red Bull Music Academy interviews (Wolfgang Voigt; Mario Caldato, Jr.), some Floridian field recordings from Michael Raphael. … I went back to the New Langton Arts exhibit I mentioned last week about graphically notated scores. … I quoted from Max Neuhaus’s obituary by Bruce Weber from the New York Times (he passed away five years ago on February 9):
The sound creates a space for itself with definite boundaries. You can only hear it within a few feet. But the main audible effect is not so much hearing it as hearing what it does to everything around it. It kind of slices up the sounds of that fountain splashing over there, for instance.
That’s Neuhaus pictured above at his Times Square sound installation. … And I noted an appearance by Otomo Yoshihide at an event in New York.
10 Years Ago (2004): I wrote at some length about the year’s Activating the Medium festival in San Francisco. … Downstream entries included a four-minute stretch of French desloation by Planetaldol, a video for Warp artist Req, video by Keith Fullerton Whitman, more video from Whitman, and an interview with Scanner.
15 Years Ago (1999): I wrote about the “NP” (“now playing”) bit people were adding to their email signatures. I mis-identified it as an emoticon, but heck it was 1999.
February 15, 2014
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
Duet for rain drops and distant siren. ->
rainy day -> Augustus Pablo ->
RT @touchmusic: Android version of Touch app now available here – http://t.co/JSH4ZNePsc ->
5 days, 5 tracks to go in Aphex Twin SAW2 countdown. Today, the Fourth World rhythmic aura of "Grass": http://t.co/78QEseDbae ->
still raining -> Augustus Pablo -> Dub Narcotic Sound System ->
Man, it's been 5 years since this incredible graphic-notation score exhibit at New Langton in San Francisco: http://t.co/jVvOLy248Y ->
It's fun looking back 5/10/15 years each week. Love this quote from Greg Egan's Schild's Ladder: http://t.co/25uQ3VYJDI ->
I'd pretty much go back to Japan for any reason, but this exhibit looks especially interesting: http://t.co/Rjx0zt8bUv ->
Anxiety: hitting unfamiliar command-key combination by accident, seeing no resulting action, wondering what you've quite possibly unleashed. ->
First of 5 posts I wrote for the 33 1/3 blog: RT @333books: Aphex Twin Week: The Aphex Twin Book I Did(n't) Write http://t.co/Vw20DZCXO7 ->
Got Phil Kline in my head 'cause I'm walking past streets I only walk down during Unsilent Night. ->
Every February 10 I am reminded it is the birthday of both Carl Stone and Robert Henke. ->
You must! RT @robert_henke: @disquiet we ( Carl and I ) decided that some day we need to do a performance together on that day .-) ->
Forgive my book-release enthusiasms, but evidence of my Aphex Twin @333books in a library: http://t.co/Fgm2Eu9kcO. Thanks, @AmbientRushton. ->
4 days left of the Aphex Twin SAW2 countdown. Today's track is one of the two rarities, "Hankie": http://t.co/UjKqvuKyAJ ->
RIP Paul Ash, president of Sam Ash Music: http://t.co/lWQr44XX2b. And just a day after this Onion story: http://t.co/bAAruIY9xM ->
This week's class discussion of The Conversation will be more focused on character than in past semesters, which were more on technology. ->
Prominent mention of the @djunto (and wind chimes!) in my guest Aphex Twin post today at the @333books blog: http://t.co/HjEhdYe8Z0 ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FPYND6scRB ->
Tuesday noon siren, just one voice among many in packed Financial District tapas restaurant. ->
Recognition that things make more sense when you say "art market" in place of "art world." ->
RT @stringbot: Staged tableau for @disquiet http://t.co/KZV0PPU1J3 ->
Reading my students' notes on The Conversation, which none of them had seen before. Very much looking forward to tomorrow's sound class. ->
This app was not installed on your next-to-most-recent-generation iPod Touch because Android isn't the only OS with fragmentation issues. ->
Today's Aphex Twin @333books countdown is track #3 "Rhubarb"; 4 versions: original, reversed, acoustic guitar, remix: http://t.co/q6Y5wG00r5 ->
On Feb 19 I'm talking @ccrma (@stanford): Two Decades of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II: http://t.co/gFaMMASnkg in reply to ccrma ->
The URL gracenoises dot com is available. #justsayin ->
RT @freemusicarchiv: Rick Prelinger and The Internet Archive Offer These Public Domain Films for Free Downloading and Reuse: https://t.co/C… ->
RT @newbsradio: New episode is up! #NapoleonDynamite With author Marc Weidenbaum and @jongries! http://t.co/Oi3LZ1dvX7 @333books @AnotherMa… ->
Thanks to @newbsradio for including me on their podcast. Tune in around 1:11:00 for our yap about my @333books book: http://t.co/7liIDqAmd8 ->
“You have a certain way of opening the door. First, the key goes in real quiet, and then the doors come open real fast." #theconversation ->
Cliff Martinez's score to Severe Clear has been added to Rdio. ->
Today in sound class: how Hollywood shapes narrative use of audio; emphasis on The Conversation, Southland, score-as-laugh-track. ->
For the @333books site: "cultural afterlife is a form of change": How 20 years of listening alter how SAW2 sounds: http://t.co/qxDOHjyTWa ->
There's exactly one song attributed to Throbbing Gristle on Rdio, from a Cleopatra Records compilation. ->
YouTube ads are annoying but there's something Ballardian about a Scrubbing Bubbles ad before Throbbing Gristle's 20 Jazz Funk Greats. ->
Penultimate reverse-countdown Aphex Twin SAW2 track, which is to say: #2 ("Radiator"): http://t.co/ssJUKSalFW ->
RIP, Maggie Estep (50), slam poetry and Nuyorican Poets Cafe figure: http://t.co/wLILdnmzqq ->
The Merzbow Incident #noisemovies ->
Full Metal Machine Music Jacket #noisemovies ->
The Grey Wolves of Wall Street #noisemovies ->
File under #meta: @boondesign gridized cover + @ambientrushton library copy in top search results for Selected Ambient Works Volume II cover ->
Oh, and my Aphex Twin book (33 1/3) on Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 is officially out today. Not that I've been shy about this information. ->
The full first chapter (including egregious single-letter, but quite important, typo) is up for free on Google Books: http://t.co/Vtrrc6SrG1 ->
I considered misspelling "egregious" in that earlier tweet. ->
2012 was a big year for me: started Junto, created my sound course, did sound design with Taylor Deupree on a film, pitched the Aphex book. ->
It's been days, but still all I'm listening to is Brumes (from Portland): http://t.co/rQqSbvxefa. (Thanks @ooray for the recommendation.) ->
Today's Disquiet Junto will be a netlabel Creative Commons (adapt, share-alike) remix project. Been quite awhile since we did one. ->
Very glad people find the Gracenote material in the Aphex book interesting: how hive-mind database mediates culture. ->
Maybe just maybe it's time to drop the net-. Just be a label that happens to use Creative Commons. Maybe. ->
111th weekly Disquiet Junto project begins: http://t.co/mYWPmW31JM #netlabel #remix #creativecommons Inspired by @dpnem's Acts of Silence ->
Just sent out the first http://t.co/A2xaR3KK3n email newsletter since November. I mean to do it monthly, even weekly. It's a start. ->
RIP, Ralph Waite of The Waltons — had his character on NCIS passed away yet? ->
RT @zeromoon: Let your fingers run through my hair with other strangers http://t.co/sppxybtMNM thx @ActSlnc #SoundCloud #remix ->
Happy birthday, Edith Eisler. We miss you. ->
Happy 50th birthday, Nonesuch. Perhaps my first #recordlabelcrush. ->
3 Feet High and Rising, 152 Megabytes Large and Downloading: http://t.co/gQIhccvvr5 ->
Hey, my Aphex Twin book is for sale in Germany (albeit in English): http://t.co/Y0PO719s2q ->
You're a pop-music journalist looking for fresh angle on Drake v. PSH? Please see p. 56 of my @333books Aphex Twin book (RDJ v. Cobain). ->
Gist of the RDJ/Cobain story: reportedly RDJ was to be on cover of major music mag, nixed by Cobain's death, and RDJ was "weirdly" relieved. ->
That's German for "collapsing new zombie hybrid soulmates." ->
Redoing that #noisemovies tweet 'cause I messed it up. ->
The Bride of Frankensteinstürzende Neubauten #noisemovies ->
#starshiptroopers ->
Previous tweet because I notice some people get vein-popping livid at mention of either Starship Troopers or hashtags. #starshiptroopers ->
If I make a Venn diagram of people who get mad at Starship Troopers or hashtags, do I add a circle for people who get mad at Venn diagrams? ->
My last day as @333books guest blogger: me writing about the Aphex Twin release I love second after SAW2, "Ventolin": http://t.co/IsWw8hBvM7 ->
Richard D. James has more pseudonyms than Jason Bourne and Fernando Pessoa combined. ->
I feel like Ventolin is Aphex Twin's Live at Leeds, after the extravagant (Tommy-ish?) Selected Ambient Works Volume II. ->
RT @stringbot: @valhalladsp @disquiet @333books Ventolin EP is all killer no filler ->
I use the "All My Files" sort in OS X Finder far more than I had expected to, specifically sorted by "Date Last Opened." ->
Preview and Mail stall so often in Mavericks. #magic ->
February 14, 2014
Aphex Twin @ 33 1/3 (5/5): Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2 (2/2)
The publisher of my Aphex Twin book, 33 1/3, an imprint of Bloomsbury, invited me to write blog posts this week to note the book’s official publication on Thursday, February 13, which is to say yesterday. The fifth and final of these five posts is up today: “Video Vault Part II: Aphex Twin Before + After SAW2.”
This is the opening of the piece, about half the post’s total length:
Richard D. James has more pseudonyms than Jason Bourne and Fernando Pessoa combined. So, it isn’t quite right to say he didn’t release anything after Selected Ambient Works Volume II for a full year. Quite the contrary, there was a steady flow of material, much from the close-proximate moniker AFX. However, the next official Aphex Twin album came almost exactly a year later: an EP of remixes of a track titled “Ventolin.”
The EP announced itself immediately as being as intentionally far from Selected Ambient Works Volume II as one might get. The opening whine of the first track is an intense, painful, irritating sound — deliciously irritating — and it doesn’t let up for the length of the song, or for the length of the release, which is a series of reworkings of the same material. Alongside that whine is a powerful rhythmic crunch.
In the video, the machine whine is initiated by the simple push of a button, an elevator button. It’s pushed by a businesswoman. Her plight — she’s stuck in the elevator for the length of the video — initially alternates with shots of the asthma inhaler from which the track takes its name. It is seen emerging from a box, the steady ascent reminiscent of space-rocket launches, a correlation strengthened by the slow-motion docking of the inhaler and mouthpiece later in the video.
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Read the full piece, and see the associated video, at 333sound.com.
