Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 62

On Repeat

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

▰ Wodwo is the alias with which Derbyshire novelist Ray Robinson signs his recorded music. Requiem, released earlier this month, is a collection of alternately somber and wistful instrumental works that each seem to emerge from a thick fog.

https://rayrobinson.bandcamp.com/album/requiem

▰ I’m a sucker for music that sounds like it’s melting, music that supplies an illusion that you’ll never hear it again, that each note is disintegrating in real time, such as in this live piece by the London-based musician who goes by Still Fades. (Of course, it doesn’t disappear. You can replay the video as often as you like.)

▰ Tuonela’s “S&S Drone” has the endlessly sawed strings of a Hollywood score, gaining in intensity as it proceeds, eventually becoming like a threatening swarm of insects. It’s both thrilling and frightening.

▰ “シミ” seems to translate as “stain,” and it’s the title of a new track from the tireless Japanese producer Corruption, who is rapidly reaching the 2,000-recording milestone. It feels like a sampled wooden flute sent through an exteme reverb, but there’s a lot more going on it its brief, half-minute length, what sounds like distant voices and pneumatic street work. As always with Corruption, it is enigmatic to the core.

Scratch Pad: Eno, Fog, Obsidian

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. I take weekends and evenings off social media.

▰ I love when a spam call comes through all glitchy and hard to understand, opening with a phrase along the lines of “This is an urgent message from …,” and it’s briefly like a Skynet warning from the future. Until, you know, it’s just spam about some fake loan.

▰ Among my memories of my grandfather is being left, on visits, to rummage through his desk, which always had many coins, many pairs of glasses, and pencils with erasers so old they’d become useless. I now have a desk full of many coins and pairs of glasses. In lieu of old pencils I have dead gadgets.

▰ Day 365 of Duolingo German. Not sure I’m gonna stick with it, but sticking with it for a year was interesting. We’ll see.

▰ Just been thinking about Steve Albini since the news broke. He was many things, but I realize that I think of him first and foremost as a guitarist.

▰ I get a little (a little) better at guitar when I practice guitar regularly, but I don’t get any better at installing firmware when I install firmware regularly, though I suppose my instruments get better.

▰ If you have trouble keeping a journal, I’d suggest starting a file called “tweets-not-sent.txt” and just put much of your negative thinking there rather than online

▰ More power to you keepers of handwritten journals. I’ve typed for too much of my life, starting with my fascination with my parents’ electric typewriter back in the days before my TRS-80. I’ve tried a handwritten synthesizer journal but I keep going back to markdown files with embedded images.

▰ No idea why I waited so long to really regularly use images in my Obsidian markdown notes, but in any case once you do it’s pretty great. The main thing I need to sort out now is a process for managing the images. Do I use one separate folder, or several, or project-specific, or monthly? I dunno.

▰ There’s a new (2024) Buddha Machine, and the creators, Christiaan Virant and 张荐 (Zhang Jian), who collaborate under the name FM3, put the loops up for free (aka “name your price”)

https://buddhamachine.bandcamp.com/album/buddha-machine-se

▰ OK, let’s see if I can get this podcast rolling again

▰ Obsidian (URL: obsidian.md) is, like, amazing, right? So useful. So efficient.

▰ Of course the fog horns piped up Thursday night: Friday, May 10, marks the birthday of the late Ingram Marshall.

▰ In case there was any doubt, the fog horns are still clearly functioning in the San Francisco Bay

▰ Steps:

make music

buy cables

search “cable management”

make music

buy cables

search “cable management”

[repeat]

▰ Who better to follow Brian Eno, godfather of ambient music, than Sleeping Beauty?

End of Week Notes

1: I’m going to see the Brian Eno documentary, Eno, this evening at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre here in San Francisco. As I’ve joked since the movie was announced, I feel like Dieter Rams should have composed the score, since Eno scored the Rams documentary by the same director, Gary Hustwit. Since every showing of Eno is a little different, due to the projection process Hustwit employs, I do plan to see it a second time, but at $40 a pop, I’m going to wait.

2: I’ve been trying to do one audio thing a day, just getting back in the swing of things after spending a way larger percentage of my modest music-making time on guitar practice. This week that included:

reorganizing one of my main modular synthesizer racksgetting my recently obtained Expert Sleepers ES-9 module hooked up with my laptop and iPadsending audio from the iPad to the synth with the ES-9 (in this case, running it through the excellent reverb module Bunker Archaeology)using some Jacklights to identify activity on some modules so technical their functions have eluded me thus farreminding myself how to use my H4N as an audio interface, and learning by chance that this can be done without batteries (the USB transfers sufficient power to it)I’m trying to get into the habit of ABR (“always be recording) but I’m not quite there yet.

3: I’m plotting the return of my Disquietude podcast. I sent requests out to artists whose music I want to feature, and I quickly (within an hour or so) heard back from most of them. I only feature music by artists who have themselves approved its inclusion, or whose record label or management provided approval.

4: If you haven’t seen the new Paul Simon documentary, In Restless Dreams, I recommend it so far — by “so far” meaning I’m about halfway through the first two episodes. It mostly takes place in the present (and yes, he is quite old, and yes, he seems to be becoming Mel Brooks — and yes, he can still play and sing, boy can he), as a summary of his recent album, Seven Psalms, but also threads a simple chronology of his life. The director is Alex Gibney (The Inventor, Going Clear, We Steal Secrets, Taxi to the Dark Side). There are some exceptional moments, like a hand-drawn grid of the relative chart movements of the top 20 singles made by Art Garfunkel when he was a teenager, a moment when Simon (off screen) tells us he is crying (“weeping”) after summoning up a simple memory, and an instance when Simon recounts going deaf in one ear in October 2023 and at that moment in the film the audio gets muddy in a way that brings the audience into a semblance of his experience. The effect isn’t subtle, but it’s still quite well done. The Garfunkel chart, by the way, is straight outta the “Great Rock and Roll Pauses” section of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (and the related material in The Candy House).

Disquiet Junto Project 0645: Speed Trap

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 appear in the .

These following instructions went to the group email list (via juntoletter.disquiet.com). 

Disquiet Junto Project 0645: Speed Trap
The Assignment: Record something, slow it down, and then record over it.

As always, it helps to read the instructions in full before proceeding, and considering the steps as a whole.

Step 1: Record something to serve as roughly half of a complete track.

Step 2: Slow the result of Step 1 to half its original speed.

Step 3: Record something in addition to the result of Step 2 to complete the track.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0645” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

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.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0645-speed-trap/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you.

Deadline: Monday, May 13, 2024, 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 645th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Speed Trap — The Assignment: Record something, slow it down, and then record over it — at https://disquiet.com/0645/

Chris Hanlon’s Attenuated Rhythm

A glistening scintillate largely constitutes the ethereal substance of Chris Hanlon’s “Long While,” which joins a growing amount of recording these days that blurs the line between ambient music and ambient sound. The melty bits of warped tape here, simulated or otherwise, further that instinct by lending a nostalgic quality. But what really makes the piece, what distinguishes it, is a sequence of occasional muffled thuds, something like footsteps, or a cane on a carpeted floor, or even distant bombs going off. These are almost — almost, but not quite — far enough apart to not count as rhythmic, but there is a pace to them, and that’s the point: just enough time for each pair of thuds to frame what comes between, and to make you wait for the next. The element is a welcome addition. Hanlon is based in Belfast, Ireland.

Heavy Metal

A glimpse of the rear of a synth PCB before the module goes back into the slightly rearranged case. This one looks like the map of a city metro line. Oddly, the name of the module, the Bizmuth, was a word in the New York Times Strands puzzle today, May 7, 2024.

The Memory System Modules Are Live

The four free software modules that make up the Memory system for the also free VCV Rack virtual modular synthesizer became available earlier today. At their core, the modules enable a musician to record music and access the audio with different virtual tape heads that, per the documentation, “move independently within it.” The quartet of modules popped up in the VCV Rack online library as part of the Stochastic Telegraph brand, which has previously released five other modules, including a linear function generator called Drifter, a trigger utility called Fuse, a programmable sequencer (among other things) called BASICally, a note-taking blackboard called Fermata, and a value logger (TTY). The new modules are Depict, Embellish, Memory, and Ruminate:

These are the modules by Mahlen Morris that I’ve mentioned here twice previously. To support the appearance of the modules in the VCV Rack library, Mahlen has also released a new video in which he does a walk-through of the various parts of the ensemble and some of what they’re capable of:

Tantalizingly, he opens the video by saying that the Memory system consists of four different modules “at the moment” — suggesting more modules may be in the works, in addition to potential upgrades of the existing modules. And, I’m pleased to report, some of the opening example features guitar recordings I made for Mahlen.

On Repeat: Schulz, Opstad/Richter, Oval

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

▰ The ever prolific Jeannine Schulz just released NØinmi TwØ, which, based on its typographic and cover treatment, seems to be (maybe?) part of an ongoing series of hers. As is often the case, there is a strong presence of processed field recordings. One track, “twØ​,” stands out with its brittle, infinitesimal beat.

https://jeannineschulz.bandcamp.com/album/n-inmi-tw

▰ The score to The Veil, the new spy thriller TV series, features original music by Jon Opstad (Bodies, We Hunt Together) working from themes by Max Richter (The Leftovers, Arrival, Ad Astra). It’s a post-classical effort, with the presence of some choral vocal parts, as in “Exploring the Camp,” that distinguish it from a lot of TV scores.

▰ Now / Never / Whenever, Vol. 7 is the latest in Oval’s occasional series of short, pay-as-you-like releases (you can get them free, but paying a small amount keeps them in your Bandcamp library, which is useful in the mobile app). The second track, “September Scab,” is particularly lovely. Apparently it’s a “quasi-cover,” as Oval puts it, of the A.R. Kane song “Scab.” Oval refers to this version as “faux jazz,” and I don’t myself really hear the jazz in it, but it’s a nice combination of disintegrating keyboards at atmospheric whirring.

https://oval.bandcamp.com/album/now-never-whenever-vol-7

Scratch Pad: Journal, Tabs, Sugar

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. I take weekends and evenings off social media.

▰ If you have trouble keeping a journal, write down the most mundane aspects of your day. The things we take for granted are often the things that, down the road, experience a change that is otherwise hard to track back in retrospect — or foresee in advance. Just noting those items, duties, processes, and instances can cement thoughts and provide a foundation for something to linger on and write about.

▰ Yow, 30 MPH gusts are something else

▰ The Punisher does a bit of time-sensitive acoustic deduction in the first issue of the new run (with a new title character) by David Pepose (author) and Dave Wachter (illustrator):

▰ My guitar teacher, looking further ahead in the score: “And you know this chord.”

▰ Me not recognizing the chord but, yes, seeing it later in between where I have gotten so far and where he is currently: “I think you mean I will have known this chord.”

▰ The funny thing about practicing “Easy Living,” the Robin/Rainger tune, in guitar class so as to learn more about 7th chords is that life is thus not particularly easy

▰ A day in which both the Connections and Strands games in the New York Times have the same word (“aioli”). I’d always wondered if the editors kept an eye out for such things, or weren’t concerned. Either way, both puzzles were fun (earlier this week).

▰ Halfway through episode 5 of the Colin Farrell show Sugar I said something out loud — something that turned out to be the case in the episode 6.

(And just as a side note, the whole thing looks like an Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips jam. I’d swear the storyboards must resemble one of their comics.)

▰ The café has played Lucinda Williams, the Kinks, Sam Dees, and Pavement, and I’m easily twice the age of anyone apparently employed here. Everything will be fine.

▰ For every 10 browser tabs I have open, at least one will be for some esoteric-to-me guitar chord

▰ There are days when I’m not even sure which is my default web browser, and so I find a link in an email and click on it to remind myself

▰ According to my notes, I finished reading three books this week (while juggling more than I usually do, and adding several more in the process), a novel and two graphic novels. The novel is The Return of the Solidier by Rebecca West, about which I can’t say enough. It’s fantastic, and it sent me subsequently to The World Set Free by HG Wells (with whom she had a long out-of-wedlock relationship that early on yielded a son, the writer Anthony West); I’m just over the 50% mark on that one. Also In the Sounds and Sea by Marnie Galloway (a wordless comic with a mythical, Odyssean narrative) and the first volume of a new, ongoing Blade series, written by Bryan Hill and drawn by Elena Casagrande.

By Design

If your regular café’s bathroom doesn’t look like this, I politely suggest you find another