Disquiet

JANUS-FACED MP3 EP: Toward the end of April of this year, the Suicide in Installments netlabel posted its last (or, one hopes, simply its most recent) freely downloadable release, a six-track set by Mosca, titled Arcwelder. The EP alternates, quite consciously, between beatless exercises in background atmospherics (the angelic “Bolt,” the warped “Peeling Layers,” the nearly still “It’s Okay to Cry”) and tracks that put their beats front and center, only to often crinkle ‘em in nifty ways (the gear-shifting “Bastard Generator,” the loopily funky “Preset,” the pleasingly rote “Mass”). Further evidence that Mosca knew exactly what he was up to in thus ordering the album, the set proceeds with sequentially longer tracks. So the first, a lush gauze, risks comprising its elegance by coming to a sudden close after barely a minute, and the last, a steady four and a half minutes built atop what sounds like someone rhythmically grounding a castanet into the floor with a boot, ekes out a zen state with its trance-inducing repetition. Arcwelder is available at the label’s website, suicideininstallments.com. And there’s more Mosca to be heard at retropublik.com.

DIMUZIO REMIX MP3: The initial noise doesn’t so much swoop up as it seems to simply proceed from that mysterious time before the track began; it’s as if by starting to play the song, you’re opting to enter into a cramped room where a rock band is in the final throes of a performance, that denouement during which riffs decay into texture, when the rigorous alternation of verse and chorus finds sweet release. And then, just as suddenly, the noise subsides, not into silence, or into the next track on the set list, but into a heady, steady controlled tone that is like an orchestra put on hold. If the volume has gone one direction, from loud the quiet, then the sense of space has gone the other, from rock club to concert hall, from cramped to spacious. The track in question is “Never Steven,” by the San Francisco-based electronic musician Thomas Dimuzio, and it’s the lead item on Slew, Dimuzio’s recent retrospective album, on ReR Megacorp/Gench. The album collects material he has released previously on compilations from such labels as Tzadik, Alku, Realization, Digital Narcis, Self Abuse and Cuneiform, and “Never Steven” is available as a free promotional download. The song, as if to emphasize its meta-compilation context, seems like three tracks in one: from that burst of noise, to that deep orchestral holding pattern, to a closing period of digital chatter even more compressed than the track’s opening. All the source material comes from Nick “Dr. Nerve” Didkovsky, and the track originally appeared on the Transforms: The Nerve Events Project compilation, which also featured Nerve-based work by Dave Douglas, Henry Kaiser, Neil Rolnick, Larry Polansky, Tom Erbe and others. Download “Never Steven” here, and visit Dimuzio at thomasdimuzio.com and gench.com.