Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 450
June 3, 2013
Four Summer Moods (MP3s)
Natalia Kamia goes by Kamikuma on her SoundCloud account. She has been posting a series there that she has called “summer moods” collectively. There have been four of these “moods” so far, numbered in succession: “Summer mood 1″ through “Summer mood 3,” plus the fourth with an additional provocation: “Very dark summer mood 4.” Each has at its core a specific source material, and each plays in a percussive space that is neither drone nor rhythm nor melody, but something entirely other. “Summer mood 1″ is made from “toy flute, industrial synth,” the gestural melodic material intermingling with ringing tones and shuddery noises. “Summer mood 2″ has another toy in its toolbox, a toy piano, in addition to field recordings of a garbage truck and “trash percussion processed”; the result is deeply sublimated, the sound of nocturnal activity. “Summer mood 3″ again has the gestural sensibility of recorded motion, an abused toy piano and more “trash percussion” at work. And as for the “very dark” “summer mood 4″, it is dark in intent, not tone, so quiet and remote that it sounds almost desperately frigid: summery, perhaps not, but most certainly a mood.
Tracks originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kamikuma. More from Kamia, who was born in Russia and is based in Gothenburg, Sweden, at nataliakamia.blogspot.com.
June 2, 2013
Karl Fousek v Karl Fousek (MP3)
The only thing better than an unexpected remix is one that occurs in such quick order that it happens while the mental echo of the source material is still in the process of receding, still remnant in the mind’s ear. Just two days ago here, focus was aimed at a bit of generative sound experimentation by Karl Fousek. The track, “cicada.pch,” was a short bit of light percussion, self-produced as the result of a project of Fousek’s. It turned out to be generative in more ways than that, because in turn it inspired “Small Sounds [Remix of Karl Fousek (analogue01)]” by Larry Johnson, who took material from “cicada.pch” and added in complementary sounds also produced by Fousek, namely the more slow-paced, ethereal “Musicbox Tape Drone”. This is the result:
Johnson’s reworking originally posted at soundcloud.com/l-a-j-1.
June 1, 2013
Dubai Sound Art (MP3)
From bird calls to rattling dishes, from muffled voices to rumbling industrial dissonance, the sounds that initially comprise “Stateless” by Zahra Jewanjee and Simon Coates are those that often go unnoticed. Even when gathered together, as they are here, these sounds are easily mistaken for background. You listen to “Stateless” and, except at the most dramatic moments, wonder whether the sounds, the overheard conversations, are part of the piece, or are things intruding from beyond your earbuds. That’s at least at the start. As time passes, as the piece proceeds, the voices get more determined, telling stories that are difficult to ignore, and the sounds get cut up, quick-edit bits of glitch and everyday media noise, advertisements and passing cars combining into travelogues.
Track originally posted for download as part of the Radius project at soundcloud.com and theradius.us. More on Jewanjee, who is from Pakistan, and Coates, who is from England, at jewanjeeandcoates.com. The pair live in Dubai.
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
33 musicians (so far) interpret a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic score: http://t.co/Xvl7KKbIyL ->
The Long Island Railroad's symbol for "listen”: http://t.co/7vtnPJbkTj ->
I thought that profille looked familiar. MT @KenMcCandless: 1/3 of Daft Punk member waving. MT @disquiet LIRR symbol http://t.co/wKmkCldvW6 ->
Listening activity in playground, rusted edition. http://t.co/Azx5oTlmmw ->
Tinkertoy instructions from my childhood. http://t.co/KAyKLFAeIM ->
Evening sounds (at parents’ home): dishwasher drone, refrigerator drone, low level electric whine; no cars (suburb), no planes (insulation). ->
Wind chimes, rainy day, house of childhood friend. http://t.co/aUF7WKhJw1 ->
Jackson Heights rhythm moire: intersection of underpass, elevated train, through traffic, and LIRR. ->
The AirTrain to JFK sounds more future-modern than other regional rails, no clanking, just whir and drone. ->
The new emotion when one confirms one's cellphone's suggestion to add the unusual spelling of a friend's newborn to the phone's dictionary. ->
JFK -> SFO http://t.co/BZaUV4NloH ->
The '80s music playing in the JetBlue terminal at JFK seems more suited to time travel than to air travel. ->
Feels like Explosion in Toontown was the theme of Bay Area raves in the 1990s. ->
Blog spam isn’t the problem with search. The problem is every artist/musician of limited note shares a name with a sports figure of note. ->
Super cool. At HeroesCon on June 8 at 3pm, as part of a music’n’comics panel, Craig Fischer is presenting on my work: http://t.co/8EDuAogKw4 ->
That's what I'm talking about. RT @Steve_Hamann: @disquiet It's true. I believe I share a name with water polo olympian. ->
I am not surprised. RT @WonderlandK: @disquiet Ha! Yes. It is the bane of my new music copyediting/fact checking career. ->
That's what I'm talking about. RT @mrgavinedwards: @disquiet U Conn basketball center Gavin Edwards drank my Google juice. ->
We have a winner. (Or, perhaps, loser.) RT @vuzhmusic: @disquiet My poor brother shares a name with a famous skater AND a porn actor. ->
Cybercrime alibi central. MT @subgirl: share mine w/a race car driver, a camera bag company & a large national paint store chain. Screwed. ->
Some morning music: low-key minimal techno by ArnoDee/Castenada, fractured beats and broken atmospheres: http://t.co/fBiNMpO1Fo ->
The Toronto/mayor/crack thing is another reason I wish the Canadian TV series Intelligence, featuring Ian Tracey, was still on the air. ->
Reading Zoo City by @LaurenBeukes on the bus, wondering what everyone's familiars would be. ->
This week in @djunto we'll use the response to a music performance (applause) as the source material for music-making. ->
Information flows through this. http://t.co/zkwheMTNml ->
74th weekly @djunto project starts. Turn applause into music: http://t.co/pMKMv5bDQk https://t.co/oxoiMXzhip Due June 3 just shy of midnight ->
For folks doing 74th @djunto & having trouble accessing the source applause audio, this lo-fi version may suffice: https://t.co/sSgovxoCLE ->
Thanks, @notrobwalker, for the @YahooNews piece mentioning the @bldgblog/@djunto San Andreas Fault music project: http://t.co/L0z8N2gSBr ->
Articles posted online to be read for free about how it is stupid (among less polite terms) to post things online for free. ->
Can someone who's logged into freesound (.org) please download and share with me this track? http://t.co/ISu1a54JO1 Thanks. ->
May 31, 2013
The Cicada as Gadget Muse (MP3)
How better to connect with, to express, the sonic automata that is the cicada than with a piece of equipment that plays by itself? The track “cicada.pch” takes its name from the insect whose collective, hoard-strengthened whirring is an inspiration to white-noise musicians. The sounds of “cicada.pch,” developed by frequent SoundCloud contributor Analogue01, aka Karl Fousek, barely touch on the familiar cicada noise. It is there more as background, a sheer static, than as focal material. In place of that sound is a loop of light rattling, elegant bits of microsonic percussion. According to a brief liner note, the piece was recorded as a “[s]elf-playing patch” on the Nord Modular G1. It is, in other words, a generative work, a system that emits sound, not unlike a small cloud of insectoid life.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/analogue01. More from Fousek, who is based in Montreal, Canada, at karlfousek.com.
May 30, 2013
Cues: BLDG Notes, (33 1/3), Facebook Alarmism, …
◼ Faulty Notation: The 73rd weekly Disquiet Junto project was a collaboration with Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG. The Junto participants read segments of a map of the San Andreas Fault as if they were individual scores intended as graphic notation. In a post at his bldgblog.blogspot.com site, Manaugh discusses how the project corresponded with a course he taught this past semester at the architecture graduate school of Columbia University. The above image is an “architectural ‘instrument’ for the San Andreas Fault, designed and fabricated by student David Hecht.” More from Hecht at shareintent.tumblr.com.
◼ Parenthetical Remarks: “So when Sigur Rós releases an album of songs sung in meaningless phonemes and abstract vocalizations, they don’t do so in a vacuum, but are part of an artistic tradition. I hope to locate the album in that tradition, and show where its aesthetics converge and, perhaps more interestingly, diverge from those of its predecessors.” That’s Ethan Hayden talking about his in-progress 33 1/3 book on the album () by Sigur Rós:
333sound.com. More from the author, also a composer/performer, at ethanhayden.com. (I’m currently writing a book in the same series. Mine is on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II.)
◼ FACE Time: “The chord is an F Major 7 (Fmaj7), which means it is composed of four notes: F, A, C, and E. That the perfect ping sound also spelled FACE was a ‘serendipitous discovery.’” That’s Alexis Madrigal writing about the recent alert tones on Facebook.com: theatlantic.com.
◼ Water Music: A website that plays nothing but the sound of rain — well, rain and thunder: raining.fm, via androidandme.com.
◼ Vuzh Feed: There’s a lengthy and in-depth podcast interview with frequent Disquiet Junto participant C. Reider, of the Vuzh Music and deriv.cc netlabels, at musicmanumit.com. Among other topics, it covers the meaning of “experimental” music and the benefits of a Creative Commons license allowing for derivative works. He, er, also says some nice things about this site (MP3).
Disquiet Junto Project 0074: Applause Rousing
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 assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, May 30, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, June 3, as the deadline.
Below are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).
Disquiet Junto Project 0074: Applause Rousing
This week’s project takes the response to a music performance and makes music out of it. Specifically, we’ll be using a recording of applause as the source material for an original piece of music. These are the steps:
Step 1: Download the 16-second recording of applause at this URL:
http://www.freesound.org/people/unfa/...
Step 2: Listen to it closely, to get a sense of its pace, timbre, tone, etc.
Step 3: Record yourself applauding for 10 seconds, keeping in mind how your own applause relates to the recording from step 1 above.
Step 4: Create a piece of music with the following structure:
i: For the first 5 seconds we should only hear the applause from step 1, unadulterated.
ii: At the 5-second mark, introduce your own applause, also unadulterated, alongside the continuing applause from step 1.
iii: At the 10-second mark, begin to loop and transform the recording of your applause into something more sonically interesting and musical. Do not yet alter the applause from step 1; just let that applause continue to play as is.
iv: At the 15-second mark, just as the recording from step 1 is about to end, begin to loop and transform it into something more sonically interesting and musical.
v: For the remainder of your piece, continue to loop and rework the two recordings of applause into a composition of your own making. Do not add any other elements, but feel free to transform both source recordings of applause as much as you would like.
vi: The final 5 seconds of your piece, whatever the length overall, should return to the unadulterated applause from step 1.
Deadline: Monday, June 3, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track should have a duration of between two and four 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: Include the term “disquiet0074-applauserousing” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free 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 74th Disquiet Junto project, in which applause is turned into music, at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/05/30/disqui...
Source audio of applause by unfa via:
http://www.freesound.org/people/unfa/...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Image up top adapted from one at flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold.
May 29, 2013
Beat Torpor (MP3s)
The SoundCloud account of the Fresno, California–based Foxwitit is a series of beats, mostly in an instrumental state. They run for a period of time and then fade. They are less finished compositions than raw material, perhaps waiting for a vocalist, perhaps waiting for someone to shape them further. But in their current mid-state, they are also delectable. By way of example, here are two. The track “Fearsome” is the spoken-sung word tweaked this way and that, stuttered to a trepidatious state, staggered to a melisma, all above a shuffling, anxious beat. “Legendary” is more lounge-oriented and soulful, a bit of beat torpor.
Tracks originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/foxwitit. Foxwitit is Seth Murray of Fresno.
May 28, 2013
Murk and Melody (MP3)
The melody here is less a melody, really, than it is a collection of touchstones of melody. The core tones of the piece, titled “Mem,” are concise, like those of a synthetic piano. Occasionally they are heard in brief sequences that suggest compositional impetus, even if those sequences fade out like a dream shortly after waking. As the tones proceed in their sequence of sequences, there is the hint at melodic development, but that development more likely proceeds in the mind of the listener than in the composition itself. And the notes have a good excuse for failing to achieve melody-ness, because they are throughout under a slow assault by a thick, coalescing drone. The deep murk and gentle notes shift for just over eight minutes before calling a truce.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/markrushtoncom. According to the brief liner note, “Mem” is “music created on Memorial Day 2013.” More on Rushton at markrushton.com.
May 27, 2013
Cues: le Carré’s Ear, Friedkin’s Foley, Modular Doc, …
◼ The (Eaves)drop: The following is extracted from the new John le Carré novel, A Delicate Truth. The book is, like almost any le Carré novel, a story of surveillance, and when le Carré pays attention to what it means to pay attention to sound, it is worth reading closely:
“Above the clatter of the wind came a clicking sound like dominoes collapsing: two sets of clicks, then nothing. He thought he heard a yell but he was listening too hard to know for sure. It was the wind. It was the nightingale. No, it was the owl. … A stray engine barked, but it could as well have been a fox as a car or the outboard of an inflatable.”
That things are not what they seem, even when one is paying attention, is at the heart of the novel. And it doesn’t give anything away to say that the closing moment in A Delicate Truth is a direct reflection of the bit reproduced above.
◼ Foley Connection: “Why was the crash sequence in ‘French Connection’ so dramatic? The smack of a hammer hitting an anvil was added to the ambient sound.” That is from Janet Maslin’s nytimes.com review of director William Friedkin’s recent memoir, The Friedkin Connection.
◼ Modular Doc: Trailer for I Dream of Wires, a documentary about modular synthesizers. Preorders end May 31, and it’s due out in June. Among the interviewees (in order of appearance in the video): Maggi Payne, Bernie Krause, Jack Dangers, Vince Clarke, Daniel Miller, Carl Craig, James Holden, Richard Devine, Flood, Trent Reznor, Chris Carter, Charlie Clouser, and Gary Numan. More at idreamofwires.org.
◼ Wind’s Voice: “I attempted to make and record my own Aeolian Harp. I began to notice parallels between the harp and the planes. Both gave the weather a voice.” That’s artist Dawn Scarfe, interviewed at earroom.wordpress.com.
◼ Jurassic Bark: “[T]o resuscitate the sound of prehistoric creatures by reconstructing their vocal tracts.” That’s designer Marguerite Humeau on her work, via bldgblog.blogspot.com.
◼ Sixth Digital Sense: “[A]n agent at U.S. Cyber Command who has a microchip implanted in his brain that allows him to access the entire electromagnetic spectrum.” Alphas may have been cancelled, but someone got Gary’s powers, via washingtonpost.com. This new series is titled Intelligence.
◼ Post Release: “All this focus on controllerism and interfaces and gestures is I think because it’s so important to connect thought and body – a challenge in ways that transcend even the question of technology.” That’s from some additional thoughts by Peter Kirn about the album, Music for Dance, that he previewed here on Disquiet.com earlier in the month:
createdigitalmusic.
◼ Fast Drone: Despite the association with stasis, the sonic drone moves. It generally moves slowly, the deliberate pace more an emblem of stillness than an actual realization of it. Occasionally we get to hear fast ones, such as the first minute and a half of this preview from Pillowdiver’s new album, Bloody Oath:
