Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 468

The (First) 52 Weeks of the Disquiet Junto

Right now, around the planet, musicians are at work on the 52nd weekly project in the Disquiet Junto series. The projects began on the first Thursday of 2012 with a simple request: take the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it. The response was strong enough to suggest the projects be announced weekly, and that in turn has led to almost 1,700 tracks by almost 280 active contributors, and to concerts in 4 cities around the United States. The 52nd, in which three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel are being combined into one original work, is due, fittingly, one minute before midnight on New Year’s Eve — that’s 11:59pm wherever you are. The Junto will continue into 2013, right on schedule, with a new project next Thursday, January 3. Here is a recap of the projects from year one of the Disquiet Junto:

1: ice cubes • 2: duet for foghorn and steam whistle • 3: expanded glass harp • 4: remixing Marcus Fischer • 5: adding sounds to everyday life • 6: remixing archival Edison cylinders • 7: create through subtraction • 8: rework Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography • 9: cross-species collaboration • 10: remix a previous Junto track • 11: everyday mechanical rhythms • 12: cut and paste • 13: remixing wild Up playing Shostakovich • 14: sonic version of Matt Madden’s Oubapo story • 15: aural RGB • 16: sandpaper and dice • 17: transition between field and composed • 18: relative prominence • 19: graphic score (photo by Yojiro Imasaka) • 20: use the NodeBeat app • 21: the four seasons • 22: sonic decay • 23: palindrone • 24: a suite of sonic alerts • 25: remixing project 24 • 26: making music from your trash • 27: turm the instruction text into sound • 28: remix a netlabel release • 29: music from water, inspired by William Gibson’s Count Zero • 30: sounds from silence • 31: Revisiting a 1955 Yoko Ono Fluxus piece • 32: sonify the 2012 U.S. presidential election polling data • 33: making music with a turntable but without vinyl • 34: Use the theme song of the Radius broadcast as the source of an original composition • 35: Make music from a sample page of Beck’s Song Reader sheet music • 36: Reworking Bach into abstract expressionism • 37: The sound of commerce • 38: Make a fake field recording • 39: Combine three tracks from the Nowaki netlabel into one • 40: Turn a Kenneth Kirschner duet into a trio • 41: Dirty minimalism • 42: Record a “naive melody” with your oldest and newest instruments> • 43: Make mechanical roars from the sound of a retail space • 44: Transition from storm to calm using field recordings from Sandy 2012 • 45: Combine material from the public domain adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tom Sawyer • 46: Investigate a recording of the voting process for its “sonic fingerprint.” • 47: Turn the muffled voices of a distant party into the foundation of a recording. • 48: Celebrate the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works by remixing music from the Three Legs Duck netlabel. • 49: Make a track, 50% of which is the sound of a tape cassette deck in motion. • 50: Encode a word or phrase in Morse Code and employ that as a track’s rhythm. • 51: Create a 2012 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments. • 52: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel.

More on the Junto at its soundcloud.com page.

Disquiet Junto Project 0052: Bump Foot CC

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 early evening, California time, on Thursday, December 27, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, December 31, 2012, as the deadline. Below are translations into four languages in addition to the original English: Croatian, French, Japanese, and Turkish, courtesy respectively of Darko Macan, Éric Legendre, Naoyuki Sasanami, and M. Emre Meydan.

Disquiet Junto Project 0052: Bump Foot CC

This is a shared-sample project. Create a new piece of music by employing segments from the following three tracks. All were initially released on the great netlabel Bump Foot:

The first 20 seconds of “Bongo” off the Aguas Tonicas album Los Desposeídos:

http://archive.org/download/foot212/f...09-aguastonicas-bongo.mp3

“Broken Robots” off the Gridline album Red Music:

http://archive.org/download/foot211/f...03-gridline-brokenrobots.mp3

“The Cat in the Ocean” off the Pics Frunk album Low Voltage:

http://archive.org/download/foot206/f...01-picsfrunk-thecatintheocean.mp3

We’re doing this to pay thanks to the open-minded Bump Foot, which not only releases its music for free download but also employs the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. There are hundreds of netlabels out there, but only a small percentage allow for reworking. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution.

Deadline: Monday, December 31, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be between 2 and 5 minutes in length.

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 “disquiet0052-bumpcc” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: For this project, your track should be set as downloadable, and allow 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:

This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Bump Foot netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Bump Foot: “Bongo” off the Aguas Tonicas album titled Los Desposeídos, “Broken Robots” off the Gridline album titled Red Music, and “The Cat in the Ocean” off the Pics Frunk album titled Low Voltage. More on the Bump Foot netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://www.bumpfoot.net/.

More on this 52nd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . .

Project in Croatian:

Disquiet Junto Projekt 0052: Bump Foot CC

Ovaj projekt polazi od zajedničkog uzorka. Stvorite nov glazbeni komad koristeći segmente s iduća tri zapisa. Svi su izvorno objavljeni na sjajnoj netiketi Bump Foot:

Prvih 20 sekunda skladbe “Bongo” s albuma “Los Desposeídos” Aguas Tonicas:

http://archive.org/download/foot212/f...09-aguastonicas-bongo.mp3

“Broken Robots” s albuma “Red Music” Gridlinea:

http://archive.org/download/foot211/f...03-gridline-brokenrobots.mp3

“The Cat in the Ocean” s albuma “Low Voltage” Pics Frunka:
http://archive.org/download/foot206/f...01-picsfrunk-thecatintheocean.mp3

Ovo činimo u znak zahvalnosti širokogrudome Bump Footu, koji ne samo da glazbu stavlja na besplatan download nego rabi i Creative Commons licence kojima se dopuštaju derivirana djela. Netiketa je na stotine, ali samo mali postotak dopušta prerade. Nakana ovakvih Junto netiketnih remiks projekata je promicati prerade kao zaseban način glazbene distribucije.

Rok: Ponedjeljak, 31. prosinca, minutu do ponoći po lokalnom vremenu.

Trajanje: Neka vam snimci traju između 2 i 5 minuta.

Informacije: Kad stavljate svoj snimak na SoundCloud, molim vas dodajte i opis procesa planiranja, komponiranja i snimanja. Taj opis je ključan element komunikacijskog procesa koji je u srži Disquiet Junta.

Naslov/Tag: Kad stavljate svoj snimak na Disquiet Junto grupu na Soundcloud.com, molim vas da uključite “disquiet0052-bumpcc” u naslov snimka te u njegov tag.
Downloadiranje: Draže mi je ako omogućite download svoga snimka te ako je omogućen remiks uz citiranje izvornika (n.pr. licenca Creative Commonsa koja dopušta nekomercijalno dijeljenje uz navođenje izvornika).

Linkanje: Kad stavljate konačni snimak, molim vas da dodate sljedeću obavijest:

Ovaj Disquiet Junto projek načinjen je u čast napora Bump Foot netikete te u znak podrške njihovom korištenju licenci koje dopuštaju derivirana djela. Nakana ovakvih Junto netiketnih remiks projekata je promicati prerade kao zaseban način glazbene distribucije. Ovajsnimak je načinjen od tri glazbena komada što ih je sve izvorno objavio Bump Foot: “Bongo” s albuma “Los Desposeídos” Aguas Tonicas, “Broken Robots” s albuma “Red Music” Gridlinea, te “The Cat in the Ocean” s albuma “Low Voltage” Pics Frunka. Više o Bump Foot netiketi, kao i izvorne verzije zapisa možete naći na http://www.bumpfoot.net/. * This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Bump Foot netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Bump Foot: “Bongo” off the Aguas Tonicas album titled Los Desposeídos, “Broken Robots” off the Gridline album titled Red Music, and “The Cat in the Ocean” off the Pics Frunk album titled Low Voltage. More on the Bump Foot netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://www.bumpfoot.net/.

Više o 52. Disquiet Junto projektu na:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at/Više o Disquiet Juntu na:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . .

Project in French:

Projet Disquiet Junto 0052 : Bump Foot CC

Il s’agit d’un projet lié à un partage d’échantillons. Créer un nouveau morceau de musique en utilisant des segments des trois pistes suivantes. Toutes ont d’abord été publiées sur la grande étiquette Web Bump Foot :

Les 20 premières secondes de la pièce « Bongo » tirée de l’album Los Desposeídos de Aguas Tonicas :

http://archive.org/download/foot212/f...09-aguastonicas-bongo.mp3

« Broken Robots » tirée de l’album Red Music de Gridline :

http://archive.org/download/foot211/f...03-gridline-brokenrobots.mp3

« The Cat in the Ocean » tirée de l’album Low de Pics Frunk :

http://archive.org/download/foot206/f...01-picsfrunk-thecatintheocean.mp3

Nous faisons cela en remerciement à l’ouverture d’esprit de Bump Foot, qui non seulement publie sa musique en téléchargement gratuit, mais utilise également une licence Creative Commons permettant les œuvres dérivées. Il existe des centaines d’étiquettes Web, mais un faible pourcentage de celles-ci permet les oeuvres dérivées. Ces projets Junto de remix d’étiquettes Web visent à promouvoir le re-travail comme moyen de distribution de la musique.

Date limite : lundi 31 décembre, à 23 h 59 où que vous soyez.

Durée : Votre pièce complétée doit avoir une durée entre 2 et 5 minutes.

Information : S’il vous plait, lors du téléversement de votre piste sur SoundCloud, veillez à inclure une description de votre processus lié à la conception, la composition et l’enregistrement. Cette description est un élément essentiel du processus de communication inhérente au Junto de Disquiet.

Titre/mot-clé : Lorsque vous ajoutez votre pièce au groupe Disquiet Junto sur Soundcloud.com, veillez à y inclure l’expression « disquiet0052-bumpcc » dans le titre de votre pièce, mais également comme mot-clé.

Téléchargement : Il est préférable que votre piste soit définie comme téléchargeable, et permettant de la remixer avec attribution (soit une licence Creative Commons permettant une diffusion à des fins non commerciales avec attribution).

Lien : lorsque vous publiez votre pièce, S.V.P. inclure ces informations :

Nous faisons cela en remerciement à l’ouverture d’esprit de l’étiquette Web Bump Foot, qui non seulement publie sa musique en téléchargement gratuit, mais utilise également une licence Creative Commons permettant les œuvres dérivées. Ces projets Junto de remix d’étiquettes Web visent à promouvoir le re-travail comme moyen de distribution de la musique. Cette pièce est composée de ces trois morceaux, tous publiés initialement sur Bump Foot : la pièce « Bongo » tirée de l’album Los Desposeídos de Aguas Tonicas, « Broken Robots » tirée de l’album Red Music de Gridline et « The Cat in the Ocean » tirée de l’album Low de Pics Frunk. Davantage sur l’étiquette Web Bump Foot, et les versions originales de ces pièces, à http://www.bumpfoot.net/.

Plus de détails à propos de ce 52e projet Junto de Disquiet :

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disqui...

Plus de détails à propos du projet Junto de Disquiet :

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . .

Project in Japanese:

Disquiet Junto Project 0052: Bump Foot CC

　今回は共通のサンプルを用いたプロジェクトです。以下の３つのトラックを使って新しい音楽を作ってください。それらは素晴らしいネットレーベル『Bump Foot』からリリースされたトラックです。

The first 20 seconds of “Bongo” off the Aguas Tonicas album Los Desposeídos:

http://archive.org/download/foot212/f...09-aguastonicas-bongo.mp3

“Broken Robots” off the Gridline album Red Music:

http://archive.org/download/foot211/f...03-gridline-brokenrobots.mp3

“The Cat in the Ocean” off the Pics Frunk album Low Voltage:
http://archive.org/download/foot206/f...01-picsfrunk-thecatintheocean.mp3

　私たちは今回のプロジェクトにあたり、柔軟な『Bump Foot』ネットレーベルに感謝を表します。『Bump Foot』は作品をフリーダウンロードとしてリリースするだけでなく、クリエイティブ・コモンズ・ライセンスを援用して派生作品をつくることを許可しています。ネットには何百のネットレーベルがありますが、作品の加工を許可しているのは数えるほどです。Junto のネットレーベル・リミックス・プロジェクトは音楽の配布／伝搬手段としての加工やリミックスを視野に入れています。

〆切：12月31日月曜日11:59pm あなたがどこに住んでいるかかわらず

長さ：2-5分の長さにしてください

情報：作品をサウンドクラウドのグループに投稿する際には、あなたの採用した構想、作曲、録音の過程についての説明をつけてください。この記述がこのグループの本来の目的であるコミュニケーションに大事なものとなります

タイトル／タグ：Disquiet Juntoグループに作品を投稿する際には“disquiet0052-bumpcc” という言葉をタイトルとタグに付けてください。

ダウンロード：ダウンロード可能にする必要があります。そしてクリエイティブ・コモンズ・ライセンスのもとにリミックスを許可してください（例えば非営利、継承。cf. http://creativecommons.jp/licenses/）

リンク：投稿する際には以下の情報を含めてください
This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Bump Foot netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Bump Foot: “Bongo” off the Aguas Tonicas album titled Los Desposeídos, “Broken Robots” off the Gridline album titled Red Music, and “The Cat in the Ocean” off the Pics Frunk album titled Low Voltage. More on the Bump Foot netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://www.bumpfoot.net/.

More on this 52nd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

. . .

Project in Turkish:

Disquiet Junto Projesi 0052: Bump Foot CC

Bu bir ortak-sample projesi. Aşağıdaki 3 parçadan bölümler alarak yeni bir müzik parçası yaratın. Bu üç albüm de “Bump Foot” isimli harika netlabel’dan çıkmıştı:

Aguas Tonicas’ın albümü Los Desposeidos’tan “Bongo” isimli şarkının ilk 20 saniyesi:

http://archive.org/download/foot212/f...09-aguastonicas-bongo.mp3

Gridline’ın Red Music albümünden “Broken Robots” parçası:

http://archive.org/download/foot211/f...03-gridline-brokenrobots.mp3

Pics Frunk’ın Low Voltage albümünden “The Cat in the Ocean”:

http://archive.org/download/foot206/f...01-picsfrunk-thecatintheocean.mp3

Bunu yapma amacımız, sunduğu müziği ücretsiz olarak yayınlamakla kalmayıp aynı zamanda bu müzikten yeni çalışmalar üretilmesine izin veren Creative Commons lisansını kullanan açık fikirli Bump Foot’a teşekkür etmek. Yüzlerce netlabel var, ama bunların sadece küçük bir kısmı yayınladığı müziğin tekrar düzenlenmesine izin veriyor. Bu Junto netlabel projelerinin amacı, tekrar düzenlemenin bir müzik dağıtım yöntemi olarak yaygınlaşmasını sağlamak.

Son Teslim Tarihi: 31 Aralık Pazartesi, 23:59 (bulunduğunuz ülkenin saatine göre)

Uzunluk: Çalışmanızın uzunluğu 2 ila 5 dakika arasında olmalı.

Bilgi: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, lütfen bu parçanın planlama, besteleme ve kayıt süreciyle ilgili bilgi de verin. Bu açıklama, Disquiet Junto’ya içkin iletişim sürecinin önemli bir parçasıdır.

İsim/Etiket: Parçanızı Soundcloud.com’daki Disquiet Junto grubuna eklerken, lütfen “disquiet0052-bumpcc” kelimesini hem parçanın isminde, hem de etiket (tag) olarak kullanın.

Download: Bu proje kapsamında parçanızın indirilebilir olması ve “atfedilmiş (attributed) remix”e izin vermesi gerekiyor (orijinal sahibine atıf yapılarak ticari olmayan şekilde paylaşmaya izin veren bir Creative Commons lisansı gibi).

Linkler: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, şu satırları eklemeyi unutmayın:

Bu Disquiet Junto projesi Bump Foot isimli netlabel’ın çabalarını kutlamak ve yayınladığı müzikten türetilmiş yeni çalışmalara izin veren lisanslar kullanmasını desteklemek amacıyla yapıldı. Junto netlabel projelerinin amacı, tekrar düzenlemenin bir müzik dağıtım yöntemi olarak yaygınlaşmasını sağlamak. Bu parça, üçü de Bump Foot tarafından yayınlanmış üç şarkıdan alınan parçalarla oluşturuldu: Aguas Tonicas’ın albümü Los Desposeidos’tan “Bongo”, Gridline’ın Red Music albümünden “Broken Robots”, Pics Frunk’ın Low Voltage albümünden “The Cat in the Ocean”. Bump Foot netlabel’ı hakkında daha fazla bilgi ve bu şarkıların orijinal versiyonları için: http://www.bumpfoot.net

More on this 52nd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/12/27/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

International Bliss

The return of Kikapu, one of the earliest netlabels, continues to be as great an opportunity for new music as had been expected. Among the latest releases from Kikapu is After the Rain, credited to Wavespan & Nobuto Suda. It contains, if not multitudes, then certainly a plentiful assortment of contributions. In addition to the work by Japan-based Suda (“guitars & field recordings”) and US-based Wavespan (“bass, additional guitars, harmonium, and drum programming”) there is guitar from Gerard Egan, percussion from Jason Wehmhoener, and field recordings from Thomas Park (aka Mystified), and there’s a sample of a pre-existing recording, “Restless Legs” by the Rick Jensen Quartet. The cumulative work proceeds as a sequence of standalone elements heard above a slowly developing drone. Guitar is the most prominent of these, a mix of textural and sketch-like melodic fragments whose ease and elegance match well the underlying ambience. Kikapu mentions in a brief accompanying liner note that “we have what might be the single most inspiring and epic piece of music ever released on Kikapu,” and that may very well be the case (MP3)
.

Download audio file (Demona.mp3)

More on the album at and kikapu.org and archive.org.

Guitar Ephemera

Over at his soundcloud.com account, Machinefabriek has posted a free download of a bit of guitar-based ephemera — if something nearly 13 minutes long can be considered ephemera. Titled “Sluimer,” it was released a few years back as a 3″ CD. At the time of its release, Machinefabriek mentioned the track in the 12k.com forum as follows: “This 3 track mini cd has probably the most minimal music I`ve made, using (prepared) acoustic and electric guitar, and a laptop for editing.” Minimal it is, indeed — quite likely it could be listened to and only one guitar would be recognized, and the laptop editing not even considered as a component. It’s an elegant piece, steady in its unfolding, each note passing in a manner both passive and mechanical.

Track posted for free download at soundcloud.com/machinefabriek. One warning: it’s a massive WAV file, weighing in at about 128 megabytes.

More from Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt of Rotterdam, Netherlands, at machinefabriek.nu.

Another Near-Silent Night

The track’s title is “Is Born.” Clearly, even before listening, this is a truncation (a reverse-truncation?) of a familiar phrase sung this time of year. The song is “Silent Night” made even more silent. The lyrics are muffled, the melody all the more so, until it’s less a song than a memory of a song, thin layers of synthesized tone occasionally letting their source material edge toward recognizability.

The version is by Todd Elliott, who records as Toaster. The brief liner note accompanying the song says, “I did this for a compilation that I didn’t make it on. I am too dissonant for ambient Christmas.” It may not have made its intended destination, but it’s sure to find an audience.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/toaster-1. More on Toaster/Elliott at toaster.bandcamp.com and twitter.com/toddbert. Two other “Silent Night” renditions, one by Scanner and the other by Robert Fripp, were mentioned here yesterday.

Q&A at 33 1/3 on Aphex Twin

The book series 33 1/3, published by Bloomsbury, has become a remarkable repository of unique thinking on popular music, and I’m proud to be hard at work on my own entry. I’m currently writing a 33 1/3 book about the Aphex Twin album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in a little over a year. Mine was among 18 books recently announced as the next slate of releases, and the publisher has begun posting short interviews with the various authors about their projects.

First up was Pete Astor, member of such bands as the Loft and the Weather Prophets, who is writing his book about the Voidoids’ Blank Generation. Both his subject and mine were released on the same label in the United States: Sire Records. Blank Generation came out in 1977, and the Aphex twin in 1994.

My 33 1/3 interview, the second in this series, recently went live at the publisher’s blog, 33third.blogspot.com. Each interviewee is given a similar slate of questions, such as what drew them to their subject, what the application process entailed, what other books in the series we’ve read, and so forth. Here is one such back and forth:

33 1/3: Name a lyric from the album you’re writing about that encapsulates either a) the album itself, b) your experience in hearing the album for the first time, or c) your experience writing about the album, so far.

MW: This is difficult to answer because there isn’t much in the manner of a lyric on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II. It’s almost entirely instrumental, and to the extent that a voice is heard, it’s one that is muffled, clipped, edited, echoed until it serves an instrumental function—the voice becomes a sonic element, textural rather than textual, as the saying goes. To that extent, any such appearance here, like the semblance of a woman’s voice on the album’s opening track, encapsulates all three things you mention: One of the great benefits of a record with no words is how it doesn’t respond directly to your writing about it—it doesn’t purport to explain itself in the way that records that consist of words, such as a traditional rock and rap records, explain themselves. This is very enticing to me.

In the interview, I was asked about how I listen to music:

How do you listen to your music at home: vinyl, CD, or MP3? And could you tell us why?

I answered in brief in the published version, but this is a more thorough response that’s been on my mind:

I listen to generative sound applications, like Brian Eno’s recent Scape and Reality Jockey’s recently discontinued RJDJ, because of my fascination with the concept of generative sound, both from a compositional standpoint and as a means to confront the divide between consumer and performer that I mentioned in response to the previous question. Considerations of the development of generative sound — both as a practice and as an aesthetic — will play a role in this Aphex Twin book.

I have a cassette player. I’ve had it forever, and took it out of storage when the cassette resurgence was getting underway. I have a turntable, and I use it maybe once every week or two at this point, tops. I’ve had it for almost 20 years, and I need to replace it. I had three turntables until two years ago: the beautiful rosewood one I still own, plus a pair of Technics 1200s. Then my first child was born and certain things just had to be let go, so my Technics and mixer went to a nice coder from San Jose whom I met through Craigslist. I thought I’d miss my equipment, but I was never really a beat-matcher, per se, just someone who layered things, and I can do that well enough on my laptop. On occasion I do miss laying down two copies of the same piece of vinyl and endlessly moving back and forth between them, like the break in the instrumental version of “Don’t Feel Right” by the Roots. I may get a pair again in the distant future. I love playing with music on my iPad — including these generative apps I mention — but nothing in my experience has come close to that tactile quality. The iPad has produced other participatory pleasures, but not this one.

Anyhow, it was a pleasure to participate in the interview. It really helped get my brain going, as was my experience during other interview opportunities this past year at freemusicarchive.org, hilobrow.com, and soundcloud.com. I often interview myself (rhetorically speaking) as part of my writing process, and one of the things at this early stage of working on the Aphex Twin project is figuring out just what questions it is that I plan on attempting to answer in the book.

Read the 33 1/3 interview with me about my Aphex Twin book-in-progress at 33third.blogspot.com. Next up in the series is Darran Anderson talking about Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson.

Two Silent Nights

Covers have very much been on mind of late, especially as I was reviewing a recent book about the song “Hallelujah.” That song was written and initially recorded by Leonard Cohen, but was truly given life as others adopted it — to the extent that it’s arguably ownerless. The book makes the strong case that the ubiquity of “Hallelujah” can in large part be attributed to the absence of a single canonical recording.

Some ubiquity is seasonal, those songs that disappear for most of the year, and then appear briefly as the calendar dictates. Scanner just posted a cover of his own — not of “Hallelujah,” but of another populist bit of spiritual yearning, “Silent Night.” To the extent that there’s a vocal, it’s him, aided by Zarina Kadirbaks, with additional drum programming from Poppadom BomBom:

And (note: streaming only, unlike the Scanner above) then there’s this trinket, dating from 1979. It’s a cover of “Silent Night” by Robert Fripp, whose Frippertronics technique is an essential part of the development of live electronic processing. According to the YouTube page where it was posted, this first appeared as a flexi-disc in the magazine Praxis (volume 1, number 3), and as a Christmas card from the label EG Records. The audio here is from the King Crimson EP Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream, which was released in 1995. What’s especially interesting about it is hearing the composition-by-layering approach intrinsic to Frippertronics applied to a traditional melody:

Scanner cover originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/scanner, and the Fripp is streaming at youtube.com. (The latter located thanks to a Facebook post by Paul Ashby.)

Eastern Bloc Beats

One of the most dependable netlabels is Dusted Wax Kingdom, which regularly releases hip-hop instrumentals that balance old-school aesthetics with the clean aural space provided by digital technology. The music generally takes the form of lounge-oriented jazz source material that’s been cut and spliced into rhythmic, atmospheric goodness. The latest, Ribbonmouthrabbit‘s Follow the White Rabbit, is no exception, and key among its cuts is “Criminal Conspiracy,” its loping beat and cycling rhythm given a bit of narrative oomph from some underworld vocal samples (MP3). Ribbonmouthrabbit is Tamas Toth, who’s based in Miskolc, Hungary. Much of the Dusted Wax output comes from countries once part of the Eastern Bloc. One interesting thing about that geographic concentration is that the musicians can collectively, in some way, be heard to be employing compositional approaches that post-date the fall of the Berlin Wall to, in turn, rework musical material that originated during the Cold War.

Download audio file (Ribbonmouthrabbit_-_03_-_Criminal_Conspiracy.mp3)

Get the full album at dustedwax.org. More from Hungary-based at Toth/Ribbonmouthrabbit at soundcloud.com/ribbonmouthrabbit.

The Song, Not the Singer

There’s a new book out about the song “Hallelujah,” Alan Light’s The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah.” The song was written and initially performed by Leonard Cohen, but it is best known for its other renditions, most notably the late Jeff Buckley’s, itself founded on the arrangement of an earlier version by John Cale of the Velvet Underground. In more recent years, the song has become ubiquitous, appearing regularly in the background of TV dramas and the foreground of singing competitions. As someone currently at work on a book about an album, I was intrigued by the idea of a book simply about a single song. My college alumni magazine asked me to review it (the book’s author is a fellow alum, in fact a classmate). There are many lessons to be taken from the book, key among them something I focus on in the review’s final paragraph:

[S]tudents of the changing role of copyright in our post-Internet age will find much to learn from the song’s ascent. In Light’s informed opinion, it is precisely the absence of a singular, definitive, canonical recording that has left “Hallelujah” up for grabs, free for wide appropriation…

In the piece, I refer to the fans of the song as the “sizable ‘Hallelujah’ chorus.” In an earlier draft, I reserved that inevitable play on words for a different purpose: to consider the collective singers of the song as an asynchronous chorus, each previous rendition echoing in the background of one’s memory as a new version is heard.

The book is recommended reading. My sole misgiving about it is its focus on lyrics at the neglect of music. This is particularly odd for a song whose lyrics include their own note structure — “It goes like this / The fourth, the fifth / The minor fall, the major lift” — and is all the more ironic, given that the song includes this line: “but you don’t really care for music, do you?”

Read the full review: “The Song, Not the Singer”

Beat and Melody, Cat and Mouse

In “Par Manque de Temps” by Arbee Monkey, beat and melody play a cat and mouse game. There’s a deep synth tone, like something that might not have been out of place from a mid-1980s pop group, but it’s used for if not dirge-like effect, then certainly something atmospheric, even maudlin. It plays against a beat that’s only slightly more fleshed out than a click track. But as the piece proceeds, the roles change. At first the tone exerts a rhythmic intent, suddenly pulsing, and then the beat dissolves, eventually flanging and losing itself in its own atmospheric foray.

The piece is the opening of Arbee’s Libre Arbitre, released on Recycled Plastics. The full album is at recycledplastics.bandcamp.com, there’s a suite of remixes (by Darren Harper, among others) at soundcloud.com/recycledplastics, and a CDR at .

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/arbeemonkey. More from the musician, who is based in Québec City, Canada, at twitter.com/arbeemonkey.