Disquiet

[ October 10, 2008 / bookmark ]

Gastrophonique: Sound-of-Food MP3s

“Le Menu Gastrophonique” is a series of podcasts recorded in and about kitchens. The concern of “Gastrophonique” is, according to its recordists, “the sounds of food, digestion, excretion.” Produced by Coraline Janvier, there have been 10 episodes thus far, though only the first two appear to have popped up on the Resonance FM RSS feed (more info at papier.brouillon.free.fr). The first had all the clanking and frying of a visit to an Indian market, followed by the making of pakoras (MP3), and the second celebrates the random noises of the kitchen, as if — notes the posting — concrete legend Pierre Schaeffer were a cook (MP3).

[ October 9, 2008 / bookmark ]

Admirable Dutch Voice Transformation MP3s

It’s fairly evident on the face of it that the following image of a brief sound is not of music or tone, but of speech. There is the lack of an inherent rhythm, for example, and the sudden, even jagged alterations in content:

What the above image shows is the sound of word “bewonderen” being spoken aloud. In Dutch that word means “to admire.” The question is how does that become this …

And how does that second image lead to this …

The answer is: through the magic that is the community of sound collectors at freesound.org. The first entry was uploaded by a participant named hanstimm (freesound.org, MP3) several years ago. What’s admirable isn’t just the subject, but the resulting collaborative activity.

Later on, an Anton took the original and, by his own description, removed some of the “low end and other rumble” (freesound.org, MP3), resulting in something only subtly different from the original, though the roughness of the initial recording is evidently rounded out, based on the sonic image.

Finally, a participant going by dropthedyle “elongated and mangled” the sound, resulting in a bit of frozen digital terror (freesound.org, MP3), one that is especially listenable when set on loop.

[ October 8, 2008 / bookmark ]

Kalte MP3 Album on Stasisfield

The name Kalte is utilized by two Toronto-based musicians, Deane Hughes and Rik MacLean, who traffic in dramatic electronic sounds. Their album The Lanthanide Series, from the excellent Stasisfield netlabel, collects five instrumental tracks that are quite distinct from each other, including the opening drone of “Shallow Approach” (MP3) and the swaying noise of “Bremsstrahlung” (MP3). The pieces each have an admirably through-composed feeling, despite their evident construction from loop-based components. The result is a kind of compositional circularity, in which materials surface on a kind of schedule, even if the work as a whole has the substance of something that grows and changes over time. Get the full set at stasisfield.com.

[ October 6, 2008 / bookmark ]

Monolake v. CERN MP3

To celebrate the newly launched Large Hadron Collider — i.e., the massive scientific experiment in subatomic particles that gained notoriety as some began to fear its activity might lead to the end of the world — minimal techno maven Monolake (aka Robert Henke) has released a track for free download.

Monolake has taken his song “Cern” (which first appeared in two slightly different forms in 2003, on the single Cern White II and the album Momentum) and mixed in snippets of interviews with scientists from the CERN website (among them Mike Lamont, Verena Kain, Lucio Rossi, Laurette Ponce, Andrej Siemko, and Lyn Evans).

The result is a complete transformation of both sets of source materials. The “Cern” music — a rising tide of beat-driven activity — lends drama to the voices, and the voices lend a sense of narrative to the music.

Henke posts these free tracks with certain rules, including an admonition against linking directly to the MP3 file, so just proceed to monolake.de/downloads. This one should be up for the full month of October. (Photo, above, by Valerio Mezzanotti for nytimes.com.)

[ October 3, 2008 / bookmark ]

Static-on-Speed MP3 from Hourglass Drops

It’s rare for static buzzing to get as downright rollicking as “Adrenaline State,” a recent single by Hourglass Drops (aka N. Pavlov) on the tibprod.com netlabel. The track has all the hallmarks of white-noise music-making: the between-channels fuzziness, the hints of radio-interference chatter, and that crackling pre-digital warmth that practically smells of frayed wiring. But it’s also got momentum. None of that call-signal Zen for Hourglass Drops; this is static on speed, a static composed of whirring cycles of sound that carry you along with them (MP3). It’s balanced by the more sedate and vaguely tuneful “Sleep State,” which has an almost digeridoo-like quality (MP3). More on the musician at hourglassdrops.com.

[ October 2, 2008 / bookmark ]

40-Year-Old Trevor Wishart Archival MP3

The British label Paradigm has re-released Machine, Trevor Wishart’s almost 40-year-old mix of automation and spoken texts. The label’s website, stalk.net/paradigm, has posted a three-minute excerpt of one of the album’s five pieces, in which the ratatatat of gears and the ringing of bells mix with vocals clips and a torrent of water. It’s a collage wonder (MP3), one in which the (then) newness of the technical operations inherent in the sound editing is self-evident in the free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness nature of the goings-on. Wishart locates an eerie parallel between the routine of mechanization and the monotony of human speech, placing the recording on a continuum between, say, Charlie Chaplin and Pink Floyd. More on Wishart (born 1946) at his website, trevorwishart.co.uk.

[ October 1, 2008 / bookmark ]

Anton’s Tinkling MP3s

The Piop EP credited to Anton on the bumpfoot.net netlabel is comprised of the sort of nursery-rhyme electronic pop melodies that bring to mind the less aggressive work by Aphex Twin. Of the set’s seven tracks, especially promising are the second (”Sinetune I,” MP3), its lead tune plucked out as if on a cellphone keypad, each note rendered in a slightly sour envelope, and the fourth (”Betchgard Morning,” MP3), which is enlivened by twinkling little trinkets that seem almost random in their patternlessness. Get the full set at bumpfoot.net.

Bumpfoot’s two syllables apparently distinguish its two sonic realms. According to the site’s “about” page, “bump” is for “Techno, House,” and “foot” is for “Ambient, IDM, Electro Pops, etc.” By those guidelines, Anton’s Piop fits squarely in the “foot” category.

[ September 30, 2008 / bookmark ]

Burn After Listening / New Carter Burwell MP3s

As with No Country for Old Men, the Coen Brothers called upon Carter Burwell to score its quasi-thriller comedy, Burn After Reading. While the movie plays the genre for laughs, Burwell, their cinematic foil, plays it straight. He’s said he looked for inspiration in Jerry Goldsmith’s percussion-oriented score to the laugh-free zone that was Seven Days in May, directed by the late great John Frankenheimer. In other words, where No Country was extremely silent (more details at disquiet.com), Burn After Reading is loud and present.

That comment from Burwell appears on his website, carterburwell.com, where for each score he’s completed he provides sample music files and explanatory text. Among the Burn After Reading examples is “Earth Zoom In,” an intense minute and a half of barreling, doom-laden percussion (MP3). Also available from the Burwell site are two other percussive Burn pieces, each of which layers something into the mix, chanting n “Night Running” and Philip Glass-style strings on “How Is This Possible.”

One graphic-design side note: the poster for Burn After Reading shares with that of Burwell’s preceding film-score work, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, the classic Saul Bass-style text treatments from The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, Vertigo and countless other Hollywood classics — all films with excellent soundtracks, suggesting something of a music-typography correlation.

[ September 29, 2008 / bookmark ]

Julien Skrobek Near-Silent MP3

First a few seconds on electric guitar, which quickly fades. Later a deep hum surrounding a ringing piece of serrated metal. Then more guitar, tinged with feedback that comes close to matching the texture of the metal. Later on, single notes from what sounds like an acoustic guitar, plucked in the darkness, and then subsumed by more darkness. Then mixes of these elements, the tensely plucked guitar heard against the drone, and so on, and so forth, always with these long pauses — long enough to suggest that the piece is, in fact, over — in between. This is how Pays Natal by Julien Skrobek proceeds: slender sound pieces that follow one another, occasionally combining, for a little over half an hour. The result (MP3) is an exercise in which the roles of silence and music are, by most standards, reversed, and the mind is left to keep track of the elements, thus requiring close concentration. More details at the releasing netlabel, restingbell.net.

[ September 26, 2008 / bookmark ]

3 Solo Bass Exploration MP3s by Christian Weber

Released earlier this year on the Cut label (cut.fm), Christian Weber’s Walcheturm Solo displays the bassist’s skills at using the inherent sonic properties of a given room as a partner in his performance. Six minutes of excerpts from the album are available from the label’s website (MP3, MP3, MP3). In each, Weber mixes the textures and techniques of European free improvisation (think scratching and plucking) along a more sonorous and almost song-paced progression than those techniques might suggest. Throughout he’s abetted by the echoing properties of the hall. The album was recorded by Jason Kahn on September 13, 2007, in the Zürich, Switzerland-located art space Walcheturm. I believe that’s that’s the same Kahn who was the subject of a Disquiet Downstream back in November 2005 (disquiet.com). More info on Weber at his website, christianweber.org.