Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 6

Solo Roger Eno

A lovely solo piano piece from Roger Eno, “Alembic Distillation,” appears in advance of his forthcoming album, Without Wind / Without Air, due out October 31, 2025. The album features a host of collaborators (among them soprano Grace Davidson, sisters/vocalists Cecily and Lotti Eno, Jonathan Stockhammer conducting the Scoring Berlin strings, and musician/arranger Christian Badzura). This, however, is just Eno (younger brother by more than a decade to Brian) on his lonesome. I particularly love solo compositions that feel almost like sonic essays, and that’s what you hear here, themes explored for what they are: ideas in the form of sound.

Disquiet Junto Project 0717: Generation Gambit

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0717: Generation Gambit
The Assignment: Layer two eras of recordings, one of them imaginary.

Step 1: Imagine some long ago ancestor of yours, one who also made music. This doesn’t have to be a real person.

Step 2: Record a rough track that is supposedly by your ancestor from Step 1. It should be evident in the sound that this recording is quite old (e.g., warble, surface noise, degradation).

Step 3: Record something on top of the ancestor track from Step 2, so the result is a combination of your contemporary sounds and your (perhaps fictional) ancestor’s antiquated sounds.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0717” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0717-generation-gambit/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How many years have transpired?

Deadline: Monday, September 29, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 717th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Generation Gambit — The Assignment: Layer two eras of recordings, one of them imaginary — at https://disquiet.com/0717/.

No-Input Mixing from Raleigh, NC

There is no instrument quite like a no-input mixer, which to say: a mixer with no instrument going into it. That may sound like the end of the story, but it’s really just the beginning. By building sounds from feedback loops — that is, patching the mixer’s outputs back into itself — a no-input mixer, as in this extended live performance by Phonets, can create something from what might mistakenly be thought of as nothing.

In Phonet’s hands, it’s a carefully balanced progression of noise swells that edge slowly toward the abrasive, and combing discernible layers. Phonets says the results “are loosely inspired by plate tectonics, slow development, and the sense of being in a landscape,” and that the plan was “to play around with resonance and picking out harmonics from an underlying pitch set.”

If you’re interested in knowing more about no-input mixing, Phonets has a playlist of technique examples, including a basic overview of the process, how to use send/return, and deploying a small-size mixer.

More music from Phonets, who is based in Raleigh, North Carolina, at phonets.bandcamp.com.

Loving the Alien

As I mentioned on Saturday in advance of its publication, I wrote another little piece for hilobrow.com. The current Hilobrow series is 25 short essays on “our favorite sympathetic villains.” The series is named for Endora, from Bewitched. Other entries include Clarence Boddicker (Robocop), Skeletor (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe), and Alexis Carrington (Dynasty). I chose to write about the xenomorphs from Alien. I proposed the entry in advance of the Alien: Earth TV show, and have been quite happy to see the business-suite shenanigans of the earlier storytelling take center stage in this latest serial.

My piece begins: “A corrosive line runs through the Alien franchise, and I’m not talking about the acid blood of H.R. Giger’s famous monsters. I refer to the grim corporate future.” To borrow a phrase from David Bowie, this is a short essay about me loving the alien.

The Speed of Ambient

Despite a lingering reputation for stasis, ambient music does not all necessarily proceed at the same pace. Even putting aside ambient recordings that engage with a pulse or a beat, there is ambient that sounds like time is standing still, and there is also ambient that sounds like time is rushing by — and everything in between. This live performance by Nick Lisher, who records as Lesjamusic, edges toward the latter. The video has an internal momentum that, in combination with a gently grating form of sonic processing, suggests the whir of countless small machines making extended and continued work of some intractable problem. A hovering drone amid the delicate noise is almost a soundtrack to the soundtrack: a shadow of the frantic sounds.

I wrote previously about Lesjamusic back in early May.

On Repeat: Norway, Spain, Ukraine

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ A fantastic Norwegian trio — Arve Henriksen: trumpet, piano and electronics; Eivind Aarset: guitars and electronics; Terje Isungset: drums and percussion — explore on Uncharted Waters varied territory, from mellifluous jazz (“The Drowned Beat”) to Fourth World atmospherics (“Echoes from the Shore”) to propulsive improvisation (“Jazz for Drowned Cities”).

▰ The two tracks of En Mi contain heightened soundscape drones from Spanish composer Susana López, part of the Fifteen Minutes of Anonymity postcard series.

▰ Ukraine-based Fedir Tkachov processing a cello, including extruding percussive elements, for a beautiful solo performance.

Scratch Pad: Harmony, Scale, Aliens

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Are we ever gonna get another Mountain Man album?

▰ Morning trio for power saw, passing bus, and washing machine

▰ Little known fact: guitar pedals were originally created to make practicing scales sound more interesting

▰ According to Discogs, there is currently no band on record, so to speak, named Dense Fog Advisory. Just sayin’.

▰ The great hilobrow.com site is running a series of short essays on “our favorite sympathetic villains.” Mine, about the Xenomorphs from Alien, is up next. I’ll mention here when the piece goes live. Here’s the list to date. Super fun.

▰ Read a ton, finished nothing.

Decades

Me in high school:

The Beatles: 24/7
The Who: a close second
The Rolling Stones: don’t get it
Led Zeppelin: I’m scared

Me decades after high school:

The Beatles: been a while
The Who: who?
The Rolling Stones: hell yeah
Led Zeppelin: pour it into my veins

Disquiet Junto General Instructions Update

A pretty straightforward project this week. Should be fun. There is one clarification I wanted to note first. The instruction template for the Junto projects has been slightly adjusted. The instructions on uploading tracks now reads:

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Previously it read:

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

And that about covers it. I am, as has been far too often the case, behind on email. I am catching up.

Disquiet Junto Project 0716: Dense Fog Advisory

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0716: Dense Fog Advisory
The Assignment: That’s your band’s name; now record something.

There is just one step this week. You’re now recording music under the name Dense Fog Advisory. Record a new track, appropriate to your name.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0716” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0716-dense-fog-advisory/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long will this seasonal fog last?

Deadline: Monday, September 22, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 716th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Dense Fog Advisory — The Assignment: That’s your band’s name; now record something — at https://disquiet.com/0716/.