Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 486
July 27, 2012
Ambient Poulenc (MP3)
From Martijn Comes comes Those Who Know Do Not Speak, Those Who Speak Do Not Know, released last month on the long-running Panospria netlabel. Among an impressive variety of slow works that range from low-key rhythmic invention (the percussively erratic “Thinking Machine”) to field recordings (the lovely “A Misty Morning”) is a cover of a piece by French composer Francis Poulenc, “A Snowy Evening” (MP3). To hear the occasionally maudlin-sounding work reconfigured as a drone-like slurry brings to mind the ambient adaptation that Brian Eno performed on his Discrete Music album (Three Variations on the Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel).
Download audio file (pan067-martijn_comes-6-a_snowy_evening.mp3)
Get the full release, nine tracks in all, for free download at notype.com.
July 26, 2012
Disquiet Junto Project 0030: Sounds from Silence
Each Thursday evening 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 to the Junto is open: just join and participate.
This week’s project tackles the concept of silence, which by most measures is in fact a relative term, a term in regard to perception rather than some actual objective absence of sound. The major 20th-century milestone in our understanding of silence is arguably the (perhaps apocryphal) story told by the late John Cage of entering an anechoic chamber, expecting to hear nothing, and instead hearing sounds emitted from his own body. In this project we will take recordings of perceived silence, push them until the noise within the silence reveals itself, and then make music from that noise. Cage, pictured above, would have turned 100 this year, and this project is in his memory.
The assignment was made late in the day, California time, on Thursday, July 19, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, July 30, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries as they are posted: disquiet0030-nonsilent.
Below are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). They appear below translated into four additional languages: German, Japanese, Spanish, and Turkish, courtesy of Allan Brugg, Naoyuki Sasanami, Norma Listman, and M. Emre Meydan, respectively.
Disquiet Junto Project 0030: Sounds from Silence
This week’s project deals with the concept of silence — specifically recorded silence. We will take a segment of audio that is intended to signify silence, and then from it make an original piece of music.
Step 1: Select a segment of recorded sound that would generally be perceived as silent. Examples include: the gap between tracks on a tape cassette or vinyl record, the noise your laptop’s headphone jack emits when nothing is playing, the quietest moment in an MP3, a radio signal when nothing is supposed to be heard.
Step 2: Amplify or otherwise magnify that supposed absence of sound until it makes a perceivable noise.
Step 3: Compose, perform, and record a new original piece of music that takes this sound as its sole source material. You can manipulate the original audio as you see fit, but you can’t add other pre-existing audio elements to it.
Deadline: Monday, July 30, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Please keep your track to between 2 and 4 minutes in length.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, please 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 “disquiet0030-nonsilent” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.
Linking: When posting the track please include this information:
More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
. . . . .
Instructions in German:
Disquiet Junto Projekt 0030: Klänge aus Stille
Diese Woche handelt das Projekt von dem Konzept der Stille — insbesondere aufgenommener Stille. Wir werden einen Audio-Abschnitt nehmen, dessen Absicht es ist, Stille darzustellen, um von dort aus, ein ursprüngliches Stück Musik zu schaffen.
Schritt 1: Wählt einen Abschnitt einer Aufnahme, der für gewöhnlich als Stille verstanden würde. Beispiele wären: die Lücke zwischen den Tracks auf einer Audio-Cassette oder Schallplatte; die Geräusche, die der Kopfhörerausgang eures Laptops von sich gibt, wenn nichts läuft; der stillste Augenblick eines MP3s; ein Radiosignal, wenn nichts zu hören sein sollte.
Schritt 2: Verstärkt oder vergrößert auf andere Weise diese angenommene Anwesenheit von Klang bis ein wahrnehmbares Geräusch entsteht.
Schritt 3: Komponiert ein neues, ursprüngliches Stück Musik, dessen alleiniges Quellmaterial dieser Klang ist, führt es aus und nehmt es auf. Ihr könnt das ursprüngliche Audio-Material behandeln, wie ihr es für angemessen haltet, aber ihr könnt keine anderen, bereits existierenden Audio-Elemente hinzufügen.
Abgabefrist: Montag, 30. Juli, um 23:59 Uhr, wo immer ihr seid.
Länge: Bitte haltet den Track zwischen 2 und 4 Minuten.
Information: Bitte fügt eurem Track, wenn ihr ihn auf Soundcloud hochladet, eine Beschreibung des Planungs-, Kompositions- und Aufnahmeprozesses hinzu. Diese Beschreibung ist essentieller Bestandteil des kommunikativen Austauschs, der Disquiet Junto eigen ist.
Titel/Tag: Wenn ihr euren Track der Disquiet Junto Gruppe auf Soundcloud.com hinzufügt, schließt bitte die Bezeichnung “disquiet0030-nonsilent” im Titel und als Tag mit ein.
Download: Wie immer, ihr müsst eure Tracks nicht zum Download freigeben, es wäre aber wünschenswert.
Verlinkung: Wenn ihr euren Track postet, fügt bitte die folgende Information hinzu:
More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
. . . . .
Instructions in Japanese:
Disquiet Junto Project 0030: 静寂からなる音
今週のプロジェクトは静寂をコンセプトとして扱います。具体的には録音された静けさです。無音であることを意図された音声の部分を取り出して、オリジナルの音楽を作ります。
ステップ１：一般的に無音と受け取られるような録音物の断片を選びます。例えば、カセットテープやレコードのトラックの間の部分、ラップトップコンピューターが何も再生されていないときにヘッドホンジャックが発するノイズ、mp3ファイルの一番目立たない部分、聞くべきものが何もかかってないラジオのシグナルなど。
ステップ２：その無音とされる部分を増幅、または別な方法で強調して、認知できるようなノイズにしてください。
ステップ３：その音素材が唯一の音源であるような方法で、新しい音楽を作曲、演奏、録音してください。音源はあなたが望むように改変してかまいませんが、元からある音素材を新たに加えないでください。
〆切：7月30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”disquiet0030-nonsilent” をタグとしてタイトルに追加してください
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：投稿する際には以下の情報を追加してください
More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
. . . . .
Instructions in Spanish:
Disquiet Junto Proyecto 0030 Sonidos del Silencio
El proyecto de esta semana trata sobre el silencio como concepto, específicamente el silencio grabado. En esta ocasión usaremos segmentos sonoros que han sido intencionalmente grabados como silencio para componer una pieza musical.
Pasos:
Selecciona un segmento de que haya sido grabado con la intención de silencio. Algunos ejemplos son lo espacios entre garabaciones de casets o viniles, el sonido de los audifonos de tu laptop cuando no estas tocando nada, el sonito de tu mp3 cuando nada esta tocando, la senal en el radio cuando se supone que nada esta tocando, etc.
Amplifica o magnifica, el sonido que sale de esa supuesta ausencia de sonido.
Compon, toca y graba una pieza musical que use este sonido como su único material. Puedes manipular el audio original como tu quiereas, lo que no puedes hacer es añadir otros sonidos a tu material.
Fecha limite: Lunes 30 de Julio a las 11:59pm del lugar donde te encuentres.
Duración: Favor de mantener tu pieza de dos a cuatro minutos.
Información: Incluir una descripción de tu proceso de plantación, composición, y grabacion. Tu información es esencial para la counicacion en Disquiet Junto.
Titulo: Por favor incluye el termino “disquiet0030-nonsilent” en el titulo de tu track cuando lo subas al grupo Disquiet Junto en Soundcloud.com, también usalo como tu tag cuando lo quieras buscar.
Descarga: Es preferible que tu mezcla se pueda descargar, pero no es necesario ( es tu decisión).
Enlaces: Cuando subas tu track, por favor incluye la siguiente información:
Mas información en Disquiet Junto:
http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disqui...
. . . . .
Instructions in Turkish:
Disquiet Junto Projesi 0030: Sounds from Silence (Sessizlikten Sesler)
Bu haftanın projesi, sessizlik kavramı –özellikle de kaydedilmiş sessizlik– ile ilgili. Sessizliği temsil eden bir ses parçası alıp, bu parçadan bir beste yapacağız.
1. Adım: Bir ses kaydından normalde “sessiz” olarak algılanan bir bölüm seçip alın. Örneğin; bir kasette ya da plakta şarkılar arasındaki boşluk, laptop’unuz müzik/ses çalmazken kulaklık çıkışından gelen gürültü, bir MP3′teki en sessiz an, bir radyo yayınında sessizliğin olduğu bir kısım — gibi.
2. Adım: Bu kaydın sesini, duyulabilir bir gürültü çıkana kadar yükseltin.
3. Adım: Bu sesi temel alarak bir beste yapın. Kayıt üzerine uygun gördüğünüz şekilde müdahalelerde bulunabilirsiniz, ama dışarıdan başka ses ekleyemezsiniz.
Son Teslim Tarihi: 30 temmuz pazartesi, 23:59 (bulunduğunuz ülkenin saatine göre)
Uzunluk: Lütfen bestenizin uzunluğunu 2-4 dakika arasında tutun.
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 “disquiet0030-nonsilent” kelimesini hem parçanın isminde, hem de etiket (tag) olarak kullanın.
Download: Her zamanki gibi; parçanızın indirilebilir olması gerekmiyor, ama öyle olması tercih edilir.
Linkler: Yaptığınız parçayı paylaşırken, lütfen şu satırları ekleyin:
More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:
http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
July 25, 2012
Music from the Forum (MP3)
The Internet giveth, and the Internet giveth. Yesterday I made note of a nicely recorded loop of a vinyl album’s locked groove, made by John Dombroski, who — in the process of archiving the 50 or so repeats of the skip as the needle passed over the same spot — noted that remixes of the audio would be appreciated. Shortly thereafter, Larry Johnson did just that. Interestingly, Johnson focused not on the skip so much as on the reveal, at the end of Dombroski’s track, when the music from the album suddenly flourishes, like it’s come out of hiding. In the original version, the music is a bit like a glass of cold water after a trek across the desert; it happens at the very end. In Johnson’s, the reveal happens repeatedly, in a more subdued manner, and out of a drowsy miasma that’s a deep filtering of the original recording’s beat. Here, Johnson has reversed the original, making the occasional reappearance of the musical material the track’s internal metronome.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/l-a-j-1. More on the source track: “Repetition Is a Forum for Change.”
July 24, 2012
Denver Disquiet Junto Concert Planned for August 19
This coming August 19, a Sunday, we’ll be hosting a Disquiet Junto concert in Denver Colorado at the Walnut Room. It’s billed as “An evening of musicians performing new compositions and improvisations for the electronically enhanced glass harp.” These fine Colorado ambient/experimental performers are featured:
• Offthesky
• Radere
• C. Reider
• Pillow Garden
• Ten and Tracer
• Cody Yantis
And there’s a special guest visiting from New Hampshire:
• Mysterybear
Doors open at 6pm, and the show begins at 7pm. The Walnut Room is located at 3131 Walnut Street in Denver, Colorado. The tickets will cost $10. More on the venue at thewalnutroom.com. Special thanks to C. Reider and Carl Ritger (aka Radere) for assistance in putting this together. Details will be added to this page as the event approaches. If you’d like to spread the news, please use this URL: disquiet.com/JuntoColorado2012. There’s also a facebook.com event page.
All the acts will perform two works: one drawn from the Disquiet Junto series of weekly projects, and a recent piece of their own they’d like to share with the audience and their fellow musicians. The Junto project involves treating the sounds of a glass harmonica, the instrument that held a special interest for Benjamin Franklin, from whose own Junto society ours borrows its name. This is the same format as the concert held in Chicago earlier this year, back in April, but with a whole new set of performers. Concerts are also in various stages of planning for San Francisco and Portland.
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Repetition Is a Forum for Change (MP3)
The track is rhythmic, like a municipal light rail passing in steady rain on a quiet street. There’s a crunch to it, the leaden beat of something hit repeatedly yet resilient enough to show little if any resulting damage. Through headphones, the noise expands; it comes to span the sonic periphery despite its inherent delicacy. You hear the beat, but you listen through it as well, first to the broader, textural noise, and then to the beats within the beat, to the shape of the beat. In time, the beat regains its centrality, and new questions emerge: Does the beat give a little, sway a little, on occasion? Is there a nudge toward development? What in fact is it?
It’s the sound of a locked groove on a vinyl recording, taped by John Dombroski not only for posterity, enjoyment, and analysis, but also with the intention that others might rework it, might make music from the absensce of music. We know from Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies card deck that “Repetition is a form of change.” In Dombroski’s gambit, it is also a forum for change. In his brief accompanying note he states:
Record player needle in locked groove repeats (~1.8 seconds) 55.5 times and resolves.
NOTE: (If you would like, go on and make a remix of this sound and share it – I’d love to hear).
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/johndombroski. More on Dombroski, who is based in Richmond, Virginia, at dombroskij.com.
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July 23, 2012
The Conqueror from Darmstadt
For gaping-maw, devil-in-the-machine, end-times background listening, you could do worse than “Conqueror” by Phirnis, a musician from Darmstadt, Germany, whose account on Soundcloud lists him solely as one K.G. The track is three and a half minutes of radio-static-during-a-windstorm chaos, all churning white noise and helpless rattling, and a slowly impinging malevolent howl that suggests all will not end well. It’s a welcome swatch of non-rhythmic industrial music, neither as formless as pure drone — are we entering the realm of the post-drone? — nor as descriptive as a proper song. It’s somewhere in between, not so much a soundtrack as the sound design of a dark, arduous, fictive scenario.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/phirnis. More on Phirnis/K.G. at phirnis.de and twitter.com/phirnis.
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Alphas (+ Infrasound) in Nature Magazine
The current issue of Nature magazine, dated July 19, 2012, features in its Books and Arts section an article I wrote about the TV series Alphas. (Note: those links lead to a paywall required to access the story, but for those without access, Nature is pretty well stocked by libraries.) The second season of Alphas begins airing on the Syfy network in the U.S. this evening, July 23. The piece is a Q&A with the series’ new showrunner, Bruce Miller (also of such shows as Eureka and ER); I was interested in discussing with him the scientific basis for the various powers that are explored in the show, from the synaesthesia-like sensory awareness of Rachel Pirzad to the endorphin-infused strength of Bill Harkin to the ability of Gary Bell (pictured up top in the same image that accompanies the Nature piece) to sniff data from the air.
Part of the realism of Alphas has to do, simply, with the fact that the characters don’t think of themselves as superheroes; they think of themselves as misfits who are more burdened than blessed with these unusual abilities. Rooting that anxiety is the show’s writers’ attempts to only depict powers that can be extrapolated from natural sciences. Thus, there is — at least so far — no time travel or, say, long-distance teleportation. Sound, of course, is among the numerous areas of scientific study that inform Alphas. Last season there was a blind man with dolphin-like sonar powers; he was played by Star Trek’s Data, aka Brent Spiner. This season, Miller explained, there will be at least one more audio-based storyline, one in which “infrasound” — those sounds considered to be below the spectrum perceived by humans — plays a role. He told me more than appears in the Nature story but if I’d written much more, it would have given away the episode.
The Nature story is available, unfortunately behind a paywall, at nature.com. More on Alphas at syfy.com/alphas.
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July 22, 2012
When a Synthesizer Isn’t a Synthesizer (MP3)
Despite the zone-out droning and ether-thin intonations, there’s no synthesizer per se to be heard on Arriving at Night in Ithaca, a project by the duo of Paiyatuma (MP3). That’s Thomas Park and Shane Morris, who together conjure up all manner of nocturnal moods. Reportedly the constituent parts are all wind instruments (including “trombone, flute, and found sounds such as bottles and whistles”), though they’re so deeply sublimated into the greater whole — a whole that also has its share of natural elements, including apparent insect song — that the effect is less of constituent parts and more of a deep rich texture.
Download audio file (kpu114-02-arriving-at-night-in-ithaca-radio-edit.mp3)
Kudos to the duo for releasing the music in a variety of formats — not only MP3 and Ogg Vorbis and the “lossless” FLAC, but also as a shorter radio edit. The version linked to from this post is but an eight-minute reduction of the longer work, which stretches out to three quarters of an hour. The release was originally posted at the kikapu.org netlabel. It’s housed at archive.org.
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July 21, 2012
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
Kudos to @delicious for getting rid of "stacks." Tags are sufficient. #
Broke another pair of earbuds. I need a sponsor. #
If you could wear out MP3s, some tracks on this Quakers Instrumentals album would've been reduced to .ds files by now. #
Likelihood that the person who committed the horrible crime in Denver was insane & so many people saying horrible things now are sane. #
New track from Lee Scratch Perry's team-up with the Orb: http://t.co/LzIPX3Ud. Truly no disrespect, but I eagerly await the instrumentals. #
Beginning to confuse press releases about 7" singles and 7" tablets. #
Disquiet Junto project 29, inspired by @greatdismal's Count Zero, now live. Instructions went to email list and are at http://t.co/XdREURGZ. #
Gotta say, customer service at @ninjatunehq is top notch. #
Major congrats. Can't wait to dive in. RT @dizzybanjo: We did it! It's out!! The Dark Knight Rises Z+ App http://t.co/9xKDbUFZ #rise #rjdj #
Just got a correction. August 7 is the due date for @primusluta's excellent alien-signal call for submissions: http://t.co/VINKX82A #
Cool project. MT @primusluta: UPDATE: Open Call for Compositions "The Alien" – submissions close on August 17, 2012 – http://t.co/VINKX82A #
SoundHound routinely drops the ball at the taco truck. #
My interview in the 7/19 Nature issue about Alphas includes info on infrasound-themed episode: http://t.co/OcWbT36w #syfy #
New issue (7/19) of Nature has my interview with Alphas showrunner Bruce Miller on science of superheroes: http://t.co/l2znb016 #firewall #
29th weekly Disquiet Junto music project begins in about 30 hours. The theme is from the William Gibson (aka @greatdismal) novel Count Zero. #
Rules for Disquiet Junto project 29, inspired by a William Gibson comment, are with the translators. Get in touch if you wanna translate. #
The next weekly Disquiet Junto project, the 29th, will focus on a sonic observation by @greatdismal (aka William Gibson). #
Kickstart that salvage pronto. RT @aljavieera: Salvaged tsunami horns, for sale at Ohmega. CC @soundscrapers @disquiet http://t.co/wWXPnZj1 #
RIP, Brazilian musician Ed Lincoln (b. 1932), early bossa nova and easy listening figure: http://t.co/fFWcVWjY #
Weather bug (@DETXL). MT @drab_makyo: Dig sound of tires on wet pavement when haven't looked outside to know it's rain. Ditto crunch of snow #
July 25: Rumored date of new OS X arrival and, more importantly, date my favorite local dim sum place re-opens after two-week vacation. #
Near-simultaneous arrival of new No Doubt single and Orb/Perry teamup highlight the admirably wide reverberations that dub set forth. #
RIP, Turkish composer and producer İlhan Mimaroğlu (b.1926). via @pheezy #
Entirely my (dis)pleasure. RT: @misterunderwood: @disquiet Your RIPs are always the best / worst :( #
RIP, experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin (b. 1939); collaborated with composer Gavin Bryars on several works (via http://t.co/kzzqMQj8) #
Almost 30 tracks so far in this week's netlabel-remix Creative Commons project in the Disquiet Junto: http://t.co/EyVxz803 #
Finished Redshirts by @scalzi. So good. Yes, Cabin in the Woods in Space. Also: The City on the Edge of Forever remixed by Auster & Coover. #
Due to a series of events, my 22-month-old now thinks the appropriate way to order dim sum is to say, "More bun, hon." #
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July 20, 2012
Rural Murk (MP3)
The Chicago-based musician Cinchel doesn’t say much of anything about his recent posting at his soundcloud.com/cinchel account, but it certainly is lovely. The track, “20120718 acc2,” is a slow movement of light strumming, reverberant humming, and an underlying rhythm like that of a far away train rattling through a dense, moist forest. The following cultural reference registers more positively with some than with others, but trust that it is intended as fully appreciative when suggested that the track sounds, for all its sublimated pleasure, like Led Zeppelin just before it bursts out of its occultist haze and rocks out. Here, however, the rock never comes. There is just the lovely murk of songless ruralisms left to lull themselves to sleep.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/cinchel. More on Cinchel, aka Jason Shanley, at cinchel.com.
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