Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 475

What Sandy Sounded Like

The storm we’ve come to call Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States last night, and this morning I found myself looking at photos of the Victoria Secrets lingerie model (and Transformers threequel actress) Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. This was because my anxious pre-dawn searches on Twitter for updates regarding my hometown of Huntington, Long Island, were apparently yielding nothing of particular value.

I’d come, the night prior, to lean on Twitter for Sandy news because that first-hand reportage — the photos and brief summary statements — had provided a superior sense of what was going on than did the professional news reporting, which seemed, appropriately, to be more about what was happening in the sky (forecast) and less about what was happening on the street (aftermath). Or, more to the point: Twitter was showing me what was happening in the lives of people I care about who happened to be posting on Twitter; it (along with Facebook) provided a glimpse of certainty in a haze of geographically diffuse generalities. But when it came to my family, which isn’t on Twitter, suddenly the metaphorical picture got fuzzy, news on Huntington proving to be difficult to come by in any specific and meaningful way. (As this morning has proceeded, more Huntington-specific material has begun to be prioritized on the Twitter; Sandy has, fortunately, pushed Rosie back to the dark side of the search return.)

And then I did what I do every morning, which was to fire up SoundCloud, and to listen to what’s in my queue. The latest Disquiet Junto project ended last night at 11:59pm, and there were almost two dozen tracks to check out. But something else, something more pressing, was in the listening queue, as well: sounds of last night’s storm. SoundCloud is currently, forgive the description, flooded with sounds of the storm, and they are informative in their own way. Photos and text provide a sense of what people choose to focus on, choose to document, while sound gives a sense of something beyond their control. A lot of this has to do with the nature of the medium: one takes a photo and writes text, generally speaking, after something occurs. But audio recording is more like video, in that you elect at some point to hit record, but you have no idea what is going to occur from that moment on — will a tree fall, a siren roar, or will nothing of note happen? And video still suggests the individual has elected to point the lens in a direction, while audio is less directed — you hit record, and wait.

Particularly harrowing is this low-fidelity recording of the wind in Harlem, posted by HarlemGal. Every time it kicks into high gear, there’s the sense that it might not let up, even when there’s the relief that it does:

Lefteri Koutsoulidakis posted an eerie bit recorded in Astoria, where the sound of the storm is framed by some sort of fritzy whir, like a flourescent bulb on overdrive:

Electronic musicians, needless to say, were among the posters. This is Devin Underwood (aka Specta Ciera) recording the wind from Cambridge, Massachusetts:

This is from the accomplished field-recording individual Michael Raphael, aka Sepulchra, outta Brooklyn:

And for an ongoing sense of the storm, check out the efforts of Manolo Espinosa, who is described as SoundCloud’s “Head of Audio … focused on spoken audio and sounds.” He has been maintaining a set of these Sandy field recordings:

(Photo up top of the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, from the Facebook page of timeofdayfilms.com.)

The Drone’s Self-Definition MP3)

The word “drone” suggests a certain amount of stasis, an amount fairly beyond the ordinary experience of an everyday listener, a stasis employed through static, both figuratively, in the form of something that barely can be felt to move, and literally, in that white noise is often its substance, is often its effect. Drones appear alien to ears used to the structures provided by rhythm, melody, and harmony. But once you recognize those structures as just that, as structures, then you come to hear them everywhere, including in music that appears to refute them — music such as that encapsulated by the term “drone.” Vapor Lanes‘ “Matchbox Twenty” is such a drone, and like many drones it pushes at its drone-ness, pushes away from drone-ness, in its own manner. The odd thing about drones is that they are often defined by that effort that they make to be more than drone, more than what might be considered mere drone. In any case, here that effort is akin to the revving of an engine, moments when the drone seems to speed up, to get unforeseen momentum underway as it moves ahead, for even in its static form it has a sense of motion. The sole bit of framing information of consequence is a single tag associated with the track. The tag is a word, and the word is “oneiric,” which is to say dream-like.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/vaporlanes. The musician is based in Chicago, Illinois.

1:13 of Rattle, No Hum (MP3)

It’s a short piece, a mere beat, really, barely a minute. It’s a rhythmic utterance, a rattle with an occasional flare-up. There’s a jittery sound, like a pair of dice being rolled in cupped hands, or a spray-paint can being shaken in advance of some mercenary street artistry, the potential evidence muffled by an oversized coat. It’s “Vncertainty” by Glia, the Virginia-based musician, and in this presumably unfinished form (it’s described in the accompanying note as a “warm up beat”) it serves less as a full listening experience than as something hinting at prospects, and also submitting itself for repeat listens, for looping, for the repetition that is, as we know well, a form of change. It’s worth listening for those changes, for the depth to be perceived between the downbeats, for the way the flares suggest sparks on a rail, for the tonal quality of each percussive element. It may just be a warm up beat, but sometimes practice is perfect.

More on Glia at mitaminelab.com and emetece.net.

Everyday Ambient Music (MP3)

The term “ambient music” by definition, in our post–John Cage world, is broad enough to include such a simple, unadorned thing as a quiet raw field recording of daily life — sounds that are loose and transparent enough to pass as background on second listen. That’s the “ambient” part of the equation. The “music” part would be the basic act of framing such a recording as a composition through the election to stop and start the tape at some point, and to subsequently make it available.

But why stop there? Then there is the next stage of field recording, that which is lightly augmented, so lightly that the emendations are nearly invisible. Take, for example, the lovely “Chun,” by Mola CL, which combines rudimentary elements (“Field recording, frog caller, bass guitar, buddha machine, tuning forks, sample,” reads the full text of the accompanying liner note) into something considerably less than the sum of those parts. It’s all small-bore sounds, elegant slices of everyday life and additional noisebits that are barely louder, barely more resonant or intrinsically memorable, than the jingle of change in one’s pocket. And yet the composite takes on the aspect of a sonic hologram, of pieces frozen in space, listened to as time passes as if one is moving around it and observing from various vantages. Just wonderful. It’s listed by Mola CL as a work in progress, but it sounds complete to these ears.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/mola-cl. Mola CL is Chase Lynn of High Wycombe, Britain.

Taking Shelter (MP3)

As a promotion for the forthcoming album Heathered Pearls from Loyal, the label Ghostly has made available for free download a track, “Beach Shelter,” that makes so much of so little it seems to recoil at being branded either minimalist or maximalist. It’s a threadbare loop that slightly overlays itself, turning the seam into a momentary braid of wispy figments. It has the sloopy motion of a moored raft in a light current. It’s minimalist in its materials and rhythmic rectitude, maximalist in its rich sonic spaciousness, and yet something else entirely in the way it makes epic gestures in tiny motions. Just beautiful.

Heathered Pearls is Jakub Alexander. Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ghostly and ghostly.com. More on Heathered Pearls at heatheredpearls.tumblr.com, soundcloud.com/heathered-pearls, and twitter.com/heatheredpearls, among other places.

Disquiet Junto Project 0043: Dazzled Machine

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.

The assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, October 25, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, October 29, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries as they are posted: disquiet0043-dazzledmachine. (Instructions below translated below into Croatian, Japanese, and Turkish by Darko Macan, Naoyuki Sasanami, and M. Emre Meydan, respectively.)

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).

Disquiet Junto Project 0043: Dazzled Machine

This is a shared-sample project. The goal is to take pre-existing field recordings and to turn them into something else.

The pre-existing field recordings are the audio produced by Disquiet Junto members for projects 0037 and 0038.

The “something else” is as follows:

The field recordings in question are documents of retail spaces, such department stores. You’ll will rework the audio from one or more of the field recordings to achieve something inspired by the following description: “There was the continuous roar of the machine at work, of customers crowding into the departments, dazzled by the merchandise, then propelled towards the cash-desk. And it was all regulated and organized with the remorselessness of a machine: the vast horde of women were as if caught in the wheels of an inevitable force.” The quote comes from the novel Au Bonheur des Dames, or The Ladies’ Paradise, by Émile Zola, originally published in 1883. Please pay special attention to the notion of everyday noises that in combination suggest machinery at work.

You can use as many of the recordings as you desire, but you cannot add any other sound sources to them. You can use whatever tools you desire in your reworking of the original material.

The field recordings are located at these two search returns:

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

Background: The goal for this project is twofold. In the immediate sense, it is to explore field recordings for their rhythmic intent.

The project, however, has broader intentions. It’s being undertaken in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker. The exhibit will run at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan from November 15 – December 22, 2012. Sounds produced for this Disquiet Junto project will be considered to be played in the gallery as part of the exhibit, and will also be made available to Disquiet Junto participants and other musicians and sound artists for subsequent projects related to Walker’s exhibit.

There will be a Disquiet Junto concert at Apex Art on November 27 in conjunction with the exhibit.

This is Apex’s initial, brief description of the upcoming exhibit: “As Real As It Gets gathers fictional products, imaginary brands, hypothetical advertising and speculative objects, devised by artists, designers, and companies. We resist commercial material culture as inauthentic, phony, and less than legitimate, but should we? Presenting the marketplace as medium — while supplies last.”

Walker is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine and Design Observer, and the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (Random House: 2008) and Letters from New Orleans (Garrett County Press: 2005). Walker co-founded, with Joshua Glenn, the Significant Objects project.

Deadline: Monday, October 29, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be between 2.5 and 6 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 “disquiet0043-dazzledmachine” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: Please consider setting your track for free download.

Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:

This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan (November 15 – December 22, 2012):

http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker...

More on this 43rd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/25/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

. . . .

Instructions in Croatian

Disquiet Junto Projekt 0043: Očarani stroj

Ovo je projekt zajedničkih zapisa. Cilj je uzeti postojeće terenske zapise i pretvoriti ih u nešto drugo.

Postojeći terenski zapisi su audiji koje su članovi Disquiet Junta proizveli za projekte 0037 i 0038.

“Nešto drugo” je zamišljeno ovako:

Terenski zapisi o kojima je riječ su dokumentiranja trgovačkih prostora kao što su robne kuće. Trebali biste preraditi audio jednoga ili više terenskih zapisa kako biste dobili nešto nadahnuto sljedećim opisom: “Bučalo je neprestance poput uključena stroja, mušterije su se tiskale u odjele, očarane robom, zatim bivale gurane prema blagajnama. A sve je bilo organizirano i svime upravljano nemilosrdnošću stroja: nepregledna horda žena bila je kao uhvaćena u zupčanicima neumitne sile.” Citat je iz romana “Au bonheur des dames” (“Kod ženskog raja”), Émilea Zole, izvorno objavljenoga 1883.* Naročitu pozornost, molim vas, obratite na ideju svakodnevnih zvukova koji kombinirani sugeriraju mašineriju na djelu.

(*Prevedeno po engleskom prijevodu. – op.prev.)

Smijete upotrijebiti koliko god zapisa želite, ali im ne smijete dodati zvuke iz bilo kojega drugog izvora, U preradi izvornoga materijala smijete koristiti svako sredstvo koje zaželite.

Terenske zapise naći ćete pomoću ove dvije pretrage:

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

Tumačenje: Cilj ovoga projekta je dvojak. Onaj neposredni je istražiti ritmička svojstva terenskih zapisa.

No projekt ima i širu nakanu. Poduhvaćen je u suradnji s izložbom “As Real as It Gets” što je organizira Rob Walker. Izložba će se održati u manhattanskoj galeriji Apex Art od 15. studenog/novembra do 22. prosinca/decembra 2012. Zvukovi proizvedeni za ovaj Disquiet Junto

projekt ući će u obzir za izvođenje u galeriji kao dio izložbe, a bit će i stavljeni na raspolaganje Disquiet Junto sudionicima kao i drugim glazbenicima ili oblikovateljima zvuka za iduće projekte povezane s Walkerovom izložbom.

U Apex Artu će se 27. studenog/novembra održati Disquiet Junto koncert povezan s izložbom

Apex je ovako ukratko opisao nadolazeću izložbu: “’As Real As It Gets’ okuplja nepostojeće proizvode, izmišljene marke, hipotetske reklame i moguće predmete koje su osmislili umjetnici, dizajneri i tvrtke. Opiremo se komercijalnoj, materijalnoj kulturi kao neautentičnoj, lažnoj i nedovoljno legitimnoj, no treba li tako? Tržnicu predstavljamo kao medij – dok zalihe traju.”

Walker je redoviti suradnik The New York Times Magazina i Design Observera, te autor knjiga “Kupujem se: tajni dijalog između onog što kupujemo i onog što jesmo” (Naklada Ljevak, 2009.) i “Letters from New Orleans”. Walker je, s Joshuom Glennom, suosnivač projekta “Significant Objects”.

Rok: Ponedjeljak, 29. listopada, minutu do ponoći po lokalnom vremenu.

Trajanje: Neka vam snimci traju između 2,5 i 6 minute.

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 “disquiet0043-dazzledmachine ” u naslov snimka te u njegov tag.

Downloadiranje: Molio bih vas da omogućite besplatan download vapeg zapisa.

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

“This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan (November 15 – December 22, 2012):

http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker...”

Više o 43. Disquiet Junto projektu na:

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/25/disqui...

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

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

. . . . .

Instructions in Japanese

Disquiet Junto Project 0043: 眩惑の「機械」

　今回は共通のサンプルを用いたプロジェクトです。そのゴールは既存のサンプルを用いて、それを別の何かにかえることです。使用するのはDisquiet 0037と0038でメンバーが作った音素材です。

「別の何か」とは：

この回のフィールドレコーディング素材はデパートなどの量販店のサウンドのドキュメントですが、その成果物から１つまたは複数を選んで、以下の文章から着想した方法で完成させてください。

「買い物客で混雑するデパートには絶え間ない音が轟いていた。目もくらむような消費、そしてそれは精算レジのほうへ吸い込まれていく。それは「機械」的な無慈悲さによって規定され、組織化されていたーー大群の女性たちは不可避の力によって回る歯車にとらわれたようだった」

　この引用はフランスの自然主義作家エミール・ゾラにって1883年に出版された『ボヌール・デ・ダム百貨店ー淑女のパラダイス』という小説からとられました。毎日の生活が発するノイズと仕事場の「機械」とが関連する視座について着目してみてください。

　あなたがが望むだけの音素材を使用してもいいです。ただしこれ以外のいかなる音も追加してはいけません。音源を加工するにあたってどんなツールを使ってもかまいません。

音素材は以下のサーチ結果にあります。

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

背景：今回の目的は二つにまたがっています。端的に言うとリズムをモチーフとしたフィールドレコーディングの音を探求すること。

　もう１つ、このプロジェクトはさらなる意図があります。ロブ・ウォーカーによる《As Real as It Gets》展覧会との協同です。その展覧会はマンハッタンのギャラリーApex Artで11月の５日から12月の22日まで開催されます。Disquiet juntoのプロジェクトで作られたサウンドはその展覧会の一部としてギャラリーで再生される予定で、またその後もウォーカーに関連した展覧会でも、その他のミュージシャンやサウンド・アーティストと同様に使用されます。

　Disquiet juntoのコンサートは11月27日にApex Artで開催されます。

　Aphexギャラリーによる展覧会の序文は以下です“《出来るだけ本物らしく》ではさまざまなアーティストやデザイナー、企業によって考案された架空の製品、空想上のブランド、仮想の広告、理論の域を出ない物体などが集められている。私たちは贋物的で、いんちきで、まともでない、コマーシャルな物質至上主義に抵抗する。否それは妥当？　大規模量販店をメディウムとして提示するーーその供給が続くかぎり”

ロブ・ウォーカーはニューヨーク・タイムズ誌の寄稿者、デザイン評論家。『The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are 』(ランダム・ハウス、2008)、『Letters from New Orleans 』 (ギャレット・カウンティ・プレス、 2005)の著者です。Joshua Glennとともにthe Significant Objects projectの共同設立者でもあります。

〆切：10月29日月曜日11:59pm　あなたがどこに住んでいても

長さ：2.5～6分の長さにしてください

情報：あなたの作品をサウンドクラウドに投稿する際には、構想、作曲、録音の過程についての説明を加えてください。その説明がこのDisquiet Juntoグループで講評、コミュニケーションするために大事なものとなります

タイトル／タグ：Disquiet Junto groupに作品を投稿する際には、「disquiet0043-dazzledmachine」をタグとしてトラックタイトルに加えてください

ダウンロード：いつものように必ずしもダウンロード可能にする必要はありませんが、望ましい

リンク：作品を投稿する際にはあなたが使用した１つ、または２つの音源のリンクと以下の情報をを含めてください

This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in Manhattan (November 15 – December 22, 2012):

http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker...

More on this 43rd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/25/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

. . . .

Instructions in Turkish

Disquiet Junto Projesi 0043: Dazzled Machine (Gözleri Kamaşmış Makine)

Bu bir paylaşımlı ses kaydı projesidir. Amaç, varolan ses kayıtlarını

alıp onları başka bir şeye dönüştürmek.

Kullanılacak sesler, Disquiet Junto üyeleri tarafından 0037 ve 0038

numaralı projelerde yaratılan kayıtlar.

“Başka bir şeye dönüştürmek”ten kastedilen ise şu:

Bahsi geçen ses kayıtları, mağazalar gibi alışveriş mekanlarının

dökümanları. Bir ya da daha fazla kayıttaki sesi dönüştürerek şu

tanımdan esinlenen bir parça elde etmeye çalışacaksınız:

“İş başındaki makinelerin kesintisiz kükremesi duyuluyordu, ve

bölümleri dolduran müşterilerin — ürünler tarafından gözleri

kamaşmış, ödeme kasalarına doğru sürüklenen… Ve her şey bir

makinenin acımasızlığıyla düzenleniyor ve kontrol ediliyordu: muazzam

kadın kalabalığı kaçınılmaz bir gücün dişlileri arasına sıkışmış

gibiydi.”

Bu alıntı Émile Zola’nın “Au Bonheur des Dames” yani “Kadınların

Cenneti” isimli, 1883 tarihli romanından geliyor. Bir araya geldiğinde

bir makinenin işleyişini betimleyen gündelik seslere dair düşünceye

lütfen özellikle dikkat edin.

İstediğiniz kadar kaydı bir arada kullanabilirsiniz, ama bunlara başka

ses kaynakları ekleyemezsiniz. Kayıtlar üzerinde çalışırken

istediğiniz her türlü aracı kullanmakta serbestsiniz.

Kaynak olarak kullanacağınız kayıtları bu iki linkte bulabilirsiniz:

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

http://soundcloud.com/search?q%5Bfull...

Arkaplan: Bu projenin amacı iki aşamalı. İlk ve dolaysız olanı, bir

ses kaydını ritmik yönden keşfetmek. Ama projenin daha geniş kapsamlı

amaçları var. Proje, Rob Walker’ın düzenlediği “As Real As It Gets”

isimli sergiyle bağlantılı olarak ele alınıyor. Sergi 15 Kasım – 22

Aralık tarihleri arasında Manhattan’daki Apex Art galerisinde

yapılacak. Bu Disquiet Junto projesi kapsamında üretilen sesler,

serginin bir parçası olarak galeride çalınmak üzere göz önünde

bulundurulacak; ve bu parçalar aynı zamanda Walker’ın sergisiyle

bağlantılı olarak yapılacak ilerideki projeler kapsamında Disquiet

Junto katılımcıları ve diğer müzisyen ve ses sanatçılarının

kullanımlarına açık olacak.

27 Kasım’da Apex Art’ta sergiyle bağlantılı bir Disquiet Junto konseri

yapılacak.

Apex’in bu sergiyle ilgili kısa açıklaması şu şekilde: As Real As It

Gets, sanatçılar, tasatımcılar ve firmalar tarafından tasarlanmış

yapay ürünler, hayali markalar ve spekülatif objeleri bir araya

getiriyor. Sıradan, sahte ve meşruluğa uzak olduğu gerekçesiyle ticari

materyal kültürüne direniyoruz, peki ama gerçekten direnmeli miyiz?

Pazar alanı malzeme olarak sunuluyor — stoklarla sınırlı.”

Walker, New York Times dergisi ve Design Observer dergilerinde yazılar

yazıyor, ve aynı zamanda “Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What

We Buy and Who We Are (Random House: 2008)” ve “Letters from New

Orleans (Garrett County Press: 2005)” kitaplarının yazarı. Walker,

Joshua Glenn ile birlikte Significant Objects projesini kurdu.

Son Teslim Tarihi: 29 Ekim Pazartesi, 23:59 (bulunduğunuz ülkenin saatine göre)

Uzunluk: Çalışmanızın uzunluğu 2.5 ila 6 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 “disquiet0043-dazzledmachine” kelimesini hem parçanın

isminde, hem de etiket (tag) olarak kullanın.

Download: Lütfen çalışmanızı indirilebilir yapmayı düşünün.

Linkler: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, şu satırları mutlaka ekleyin:

This Disquiet Junto project was done in association with the exhibit

As Real as It Gets, organized by Rob Walker at the gallery Apex Art in

Manhattan (November 15 – December 22, 2012):

http://apexart.org/exhibitions/walker...

More on this 43rd Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/10/25/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

PR, Email, and the Eternal Deluge

A note about email. This is intended in particular for individuals and organizations who’ve sent me, or intend to send me, email about their music releases and not heard back from me. What follows is a snapshot of my email inbox as of 9:00am California time today, October 25, 2012. This morning feels representative, if a little on the light side — hence the time I feel like I have to take a break from the deluge and comment on it. First, some statistics:

Number of emails received: 113

Number of emails about album releases: 19

Number of emails about videos (streaming and DVD): 4

Number of emails about concert tours: 3

Number of emails about 7″ singles: 2

Number of emails about milestones in the lives of musicians and organizations: 7

These numbers (well, aside from the overall count of 113) don’t include additional press inquiries about video games, movie screenings, art gallery openings, club nights, mobile apps and other software applications, gadgets, and so on. Nor do they include artist and record-label newsletters I have myself actively subscribed to. Nor do they include personal/professional correspondence with musicians, artists, and related individuals. Nor do they in any way represent the fact that the significant majority of the music I write about is music I come upon through my own surfing, RSS-feeding, concert-attendance, social-network participation, general media consumption (magazines, TV, movies, books), and so forth.

This is, mind you, all by 9:00am. I assure you by the end of the day those 113 emails will have at least tripled, and most of these other stats along with them.

On occasion when I receive an overwhelming number of emails from one source that have nothing to do with what I am focused on, I send this quick summary statement:

For future reference, I pretty much focus my writing on “technologically mediated sound” — ambient music, sound art, experimental classical, hip-hop production, that sorta thing.

And on occasion, I send this form letter as a reply:

Hi. I don’t reply much to PR correspondence, even directly from musicians.

There’s simply too much of it, often as many as 300 emails per weekday.

The best way for me to state the situation is as follows: I receive an enormous number of inquiries about reviewing music, I listen to as much as I can without doing what I’m listening to the disservice of being too casual about it, and I write about what I find interesting.

Feel free to send me music email (as a link, not an attachment). Just please don’t take it personally, or even read into it any reflection of my (dis)interest in the music, if and when I don’t respond.

And yes, this is a form letter, as is most of the PR I receive.

Best,

Marc

marc@disquiet.com

(Photo of character from Mary Mapes Dodge’s classic story about the boy who put his finger in the dike found via thesubversivearchaeologist.com.)

Ukulele Ambience (MP3s)

Brian Biggs has posted three experimental duets that appear to have grown out of last week’s Disquiet Junto project. The project, the 42nd in the ongoing weekly series, involved participants employing the oldest and newest instruments in their practice to create a “naive melody.” Taking a cue from Talking Heads, the melody was accomplished by employing the oldest, more familiar instrument in the production of the backing track, and the newer one — on which the performer was, by definition, still something of a novice — in the production of the foregrounded melody. By coincidence in advance of the announcement of the project that led to that piece, Biggs had tried out a variety of modular apparatuses and approaches, in addition to his saxophone and ukulele, yielding three varied tracks:

He explains in brief:

Tracks created with a ukulele, a Harvestman Tyme Sefari (version 2), and a MakeNoise Phonogene. A little four-note strum in F went to the Tyme Sefari, another simple uke thing in A went to the Phonogene. The outs of the two samplers went to the audio input of a Cwejman MMF-1 filter, and then output and recorded to a Zoom H4N with reverb from the Motu 828 interface.

I was on the fence regarding keeping both the Tyme Sefari and the Phonogene until these tracks. The end-of-loop output of each module kept the other in “time” and being able to fool with each independently of the other is worth keeping both.

The technical information aside, especially recommended is the first of the three duets, which uses backmasking to create a sense of timelessness that merges well with the acoustic intonations of the instrument.

Set originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/dance-robot-dance. More detail on Biggs’ process at dancerobotdance.com, where the above image is sourced from.

Live Trio (MP3)

If ever the shape of a recording’s waveform presented the potential listener with a vision of an enticingly varied performance, the April 6, 2011, live concert by a trio of electronic musicians (Ted James, Erik Schoster, Brendan Landis) is a chief contender.

The waveform of the 20-minute set, as shown on Landis’ soundcloud.com/hey-exit account, seems to take every possible visual approach, from sharp changes in amplitude to staccato subsets to extended singularities, from tepid passages to richly dense ones. The instrumentation is loosely described in the accompanying liner note: James on “Synthesizers, Electronics,” Schoster on “Computer, Electronics,” Landis on “vox, guitar.” To begin with, the voice: this isn’t singing, not in the sense of words and songs and melody; the voice, as employed by Landis, is one instrument among many, one source of drones and noise among others. If it at times seems distinct from everything else because of its recognizability, so too is the occasional case with the guitar, which once in a while stops being an anonymous provider of sonic effluvia and comes to resemble what is more immediately recognizable as a guitar. In both situations, though, even when the sound sources become familiar, the music remains abstract, deliberately non-associative. There are, indeed, varied approaches here, from light percussive fields to attenuated drones, from subdued glossolalia to heady shimmers. Furthermore, these sounds are just a few among many others, and overall the performance is less about simultaneous collaborative effort, less about harmony, and more about concentration and communal pursuit, about music that unfolds, that develops, that moves forward.

Track originally posted on October 20, 2012, for free download at soundcloud.com/hey-exit. More on Schoster at hecanjog.com. More on Landis at heyexit.com. More on James at tedjames.info.

Scanner 4/4: God Sample the Queen

There is national music, and there are national anthems. There is music that is derived from regional culture, and there is music that is composed with the intention of encapsulating, of standing for, that culture. “God Save the Queen” is a template for national anthems, echoed throughout the globe in various of England’s colonies, vestigial and otherwise — it’s a palimpsest subsumed in the United States’ own “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” (not its national anthem, of course, but a close second).

“God Save the Queen” was also the source material for Scanner‘s “Anthem,” which subsumes the song even further still. Commissioned for the 2012 Olympics (and Paralymics), “Anthem” slows the British national anthem past the point of recognizability, until it is as thin as the material from which one might cut a flag. It’s ethereal rather than rousing. And, by Scanner’s own design, a bit renegade. The audio was installed at Lancaster House, which, as Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) explains, is a high-security building. He infused his work with a double sense of infiltration. First, he had it playing in the Lancaster bathrooms, assuring that every visitor was sure to hear it in an especially intimate manner. And he posted it online for free download, assuring that all who couldn’t penetrate the fortress would still hear its music.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/scanner. More on Scanner at scannerdot.com.