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Upcoming Activities
Spring 2013: The Disquiet Junto is assisting Geoff Manaugh in a course he is teaching at Columbia University's GSAPP, "San Andreas: Architecture for the Fault." Details at bldgblog.blogspot.com.
February 26: I'm giving a three-hour guest lecture about listening to a class on writing for radio productions at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
May 15, 2013: Last day of 15-week course I'm teaching about sound in the media landscape at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, California.
Ongoing: In January 2013 I became part of the SoundCloud Heroes project, more on which in the near future. In the short term, full disclosure, I was gifted the top-level account, Pro Plus. Initial post here: "What I'm Up To."
Ongoing: The film The Children Next Door (2012), on which I served as music supervisor and collaborated with Taylor Deupree on sound design, is currently touring festivals. It won a special jury prize at DOC NYC and has also played at the Denver and Hamptons festivals. Directed by Doug Block, produced by Lynda A. Hansen. More at thechildrennextdoor.com.
Down the Pike: Concerts in the Disquiet Junto series are in various stages of planning for London, England; Portland, Oregon; and elsewhere.
Way Down the Pike: Currently writing a book about Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, for the 33 1/3 series.
5 Most Recent Comments
Adrian Hallam: "Hi Marc, Thank you for the lovely write up about “The Parting”. I Really appreciate it...."
MichaelAshSharbaugh: "Dear Mr .Weidenbaum, Good Day! How are you? I just now saw the write-up you gave Adrian..."
Nick Cooke: "Really interesting use of an interesting instrument. "
DD Situatist: "Hello . hope u r ok . …. have a listen to my music when u have the time … i believe it..."
Guy: "For me, this interview has provided a holistic introduction to the work of Peter Kirn, about whom I knew very..."
disquiet junto
The Disquiet Junto is an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making space in which restraints are used as a springboard for creativity. It's housed at soundcloud.com. Subscribe to the announcement list at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto. There is an FAQ. These are the weekly projects to date: 1: ice cubes • 2: duet for foghorn and steam whistle • 3: expanded glass harp • 4: remixing Marcus Fischer • 5: adding sounds to everyday life • 6: remixing archival Edison cylinders • 7: create through subtraction • 8: rework Benjamin Franklin's autobiography • 9: cross-species collaboration • 10: remix a previous Junto track • 11: everyday mechanical rhythms • 12: cut and paste • 13: remixing wild Up playing Shostakovich • 14: sonic version of Matt Madden's Oubapo story • 15: aural RGB • 16: sandpaper and dice • 17: transition between field and composed • 18: relative prominence • 19: graphic score (photo by Yojiro Imasaka) • 20: use the NodeBeat app • 21: the four seasons • 22: sonic decay • 23: palindrone • 24: a suite of sonic alerts • 25: remixing project 24 • 26: making music from your trash • 27: turm the instruction text into sound • 28: remix a netlabel release • 29: music from water, inspired by William Gibson's Count Zero • 30: sounds from silence • 31: Revisiting a 1955 Yoko Ono Fluxus piece • 32: sonify the 2012 U.S. presidential election polling data • 33: making music with a turntable but without vinyl • 34: Use the theme song of the Radius broadcast as the source of an original composition • 35: Make music from a sample page of Beck's Song Reader sheet music • 36: Reworking Bach into abstract expressionism • 37: The sound of commerce • 38: Make a fake field recording • 39: Combine three tracks from the Nowaki netlabel into one • 40: Turn a Kenneth Kirschner duet into a trio • 41: Dirty minimalism • 42: Record a "naive melody" with your oldest and newest instruments> • 43: Make mechanical roars from the sound of a retail space • 44: Transition from storm to calm using field recordings from Sandy 2012 • 45: Combine material from the public domain adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tom Sawyer • 46: Investigate a recording of the voting process for its "sonic fingerprint." • 47: Turn the muffled voices of a distant party into the foundation of a recording. • 48: Celebrate the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works by remixing music from the Three Legs Duck netlabel. • 49: Make a track, 50% of which is the sound of a tape cassette deck in motion. • 50: Encode a word or phrase in Morse Code and employ that as a track's rhythm. • 51: Create a 2012 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments. • 52: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel. • 53: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (redux). • 54: Create an original musical score for the day's news. • 55: Combine two Nils Frahm solo piano pieces into one. • 56: Make music from the sound of the tick of a clock. • 57: Use sounds from the Phonetics Lab Archive at UCLA to depict emotions. • 58: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Endless Ascent netlabel. • 59: Make music from three randomly assigned vowels. • 60: Record something about yourself and your music/sound in your own words and voice. • 61: Record a single for which the cover would be the image suggested by a @textinstagram tweet. • 62: Make music using just three sine waves. • 63: Make a new piece of music based on an echo-laden re-recording of Gregorian chant. • 64: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound. • 65: Compose music atop a randomly assigned segment of a pre-existing track by Jared Brickman. • 66: Collaborate posthumously with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton. • 67: Compose music for a phrase from Homer's The Odyssey • 68: Combine three songs from the first release of the new deriv.cc netlabel. • 69: Make music from field recordings of earth, water, air, and fire. • 70: Create a single piece of music from two tones and three beats. • 71: Create an original score to the trailer to Christine Knowlton's film about blind sailors.Tags
8-bit android app audio-games chiptune classical comics copyleft demix field-recording film forum-digger free gadget generative i-hop installation ios ipad iphone ipod ipod touch jazz junto live-performance mp3 discussion group netlabel noise reactive remix rock science-fiction score silence site-maintenance sketches of sound software sound-art sounds-of-brands turntablism TV video video-games voice year's besttwitter: @disquiet
- SFO -> JFK 8 hours ago
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- By this time tomorrow I’ll still be on a plane to New York. 1 day ago
- Tuesday noon siren in the Mission. Plane overhead. “This is a [muffled] test …” 1 day ago
- I have a special folder where I put articles about how art is too commercialized and how music has been commercially devalued. 1 day ago
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interviews
“Dance Can’t Be Stored”
Peter Kirn talks about his music for choreography.
Sieve-Fisted Compositions
Chris Lawhorn edited the Fugazi discography down to a concentrated album-length study of rhythm and tension.
Listening to Ray Bradbury’s Mars
A conversation with sound artist Christof Migone
The Electronic Motive
Liza White talks about the manner in which computer music and hip-hop production inform her classical compositions.
In the Echo of No Towers
The artist Stephen Vitiello talks about sense memory, 9/11, and his landmark World Trade Center recordings
When Cells Collide
Istanbul-based 'Otomata' developer Batuhan Bozkurt on generative sound, app development, cross-browser incompatibilities, and unexpected outcomes.
Being Decimal: The Anticipatory Pleasures of the Thicket App
Morgan Packard, the sound half of the development duo that produced the 10-finger interactive audio-visual iOS app Thicket, on composing for interactivity
The ShapeSeq of Things to Come
Developer Paul Apfrod on how programming is like composing, the need for a "software art" iTunes subcategory, and how how octagons look nicer than squares
The Voice Electric
Lesley Flanigan on technological fluency, devices as sculpture, and moving beyond musical training
Young Communicator
The self-education of the adventurous, Philly-based hip-hop producer Y?Arcka
Buddha Machine, Reloaded
FM3 member Christiaan Virant talks about controlling pitches and recording new loops for the second-generation (version "2.0") sound-art gadget
End of a Netlabel
Brad Mitchell reflects on the decision to close his long-running netlabel, Kikapu.
Heavy Circuits
The lo-fi electronic musician Jamie Allen talks about hand-crafted circuitry, digital academe, and the beauty of the square wave.
Patchwork
Kristin Miltner on nurturing software and programming for video games -- plus visual art as preparation for sound-work.
Western Figments
The musician William Fowler Collins talks about his guitar-fueled solo album, Western Violence & Brief Sensuality.
Lique-Fiction
Science fiction writers Richard Kadrey, Pat Murphy and Rudy Rucker discuss remixing reality.
The Drifter
Christopher Willits viscerally inhabits the space between what he plays and what we hear.
The Unessentialist
Christopher Bissonnette talks about music on the periphery.
Free as in Netlabel
The proprietors of three established netlabels (Andras Hargitai of Complementary Distribution, Nathan Larson of Dark Winter, Pedro Leitao of Test Tube) discuss the cost of free downloads, the online community of uploaders and the transition from physical distribution to virtual
After the Sampler
Dub figure Raz Mesinai talks about looping Sumerian myths and electrifying downtown musicians
Crashing by Design
One of electronic music's great live performers, Thomas Dimuzio talks about improvisation, music education and his longtime collaborator: feedback.
Buddha in the Machine
The duo FM3 packed nine ambient loops into a device the size of a cigarette pack; member Christiaan Virant discusses sound art in the age of mass production
After ‘Thursday Afternoon’
An electronic musician (Monolake), an English professor (Michael Jarrett), and a science fiction writer (Richard Kadrey), all Brian Eno fans, walk into a chat room …
Music for Shuffling
Composer Kenneth Kirschner talks about how his music, which he likens to a certain popular MP3 player, changes every time you play it.
United Stasis
John Kannenberg, founder of the Stasisfield netlabel, discusses the limits of microsound, the future of online music, and the compositional intersection of sound art and visual art.
Sacto Instruments
Chachi Jones turns childhood musical toys, like Speak & Spell and Touch & Tell, into 21st-century folk instruments.
Shawnee for ‘Laptop’
When Brad Mitchell isn't homebrewing electronic music as Pocka and studying sound design, he somehow finds time to run the Kikapu netlabel.
The Public Record
An archival interview from back in 1999, when composer Steve Reich talked about Reich Remixed, an album on which electronica acts rework his formidable, minimalist contributions to classical music
The Organization Musician
Monolake, aka Robert Henke, talks about the parallel processes of (1) composing a new full-length album while (2) helping develop the new edition of Ableton's audio production software, Live.
The Maestro of Belleville
Benoît Charest, who scored the animated film Les Triplettes de Belleville, talks about turning a vacuum cleaner into a Theremin, and other jazzy feats of everyday electronica.
Season of the Remix
Composer Elise Kermani talks about revisiting "retro" multimedia performance art; getting young, desk-bound technophiles to move; and remixing Vivaldi by accident.
Behind the 8bit
When Thorsten Sideboard founded 8bitrecs.com, an online label consisting entirely of free MP3 files, his role model wasn't Matador Records or Def Jam — it was a computer database.
The Bomb
Touring in support of his seventh full-length album, The Message at the Depth, DJ Krush talks about musical abstraction and geopolitical anxiety.
Shock the Bear
Moscow-based composer Artemiy Artemiev, head of Electroshock Records, talks about coming of age underneath a piano and the watchful ear of the Soviet secret service.
Psych Out
On his 2002 album, Out from Out Where, Amon Tobin leaves his native Brazil behind for the silver screens of India.
What Is Is
Future Sound of London talks about revisiting Britpop's past for the psychedelic follow-up to Dead Cities.
Woodshedding
Innovative American composer/performer Greg Davis on pastoral technology and the education of an electronic musician
Click It
Andreas Tilliander, who appears on the Mille Plateaux label's third Clicks & Cuts collection, talks about the hip-hop heart of experimental electronic music.
Splices That Bind
One half of the abstract electronic duo Twine, Chad Mossholder talks about long-distance collaboration and the hectic life of a sound designer.
Sonic Anomaly
The ubiquitous turntablist named DJ Logic is the Moby of the musicians' union.
U.S. Robotics, Part 3/3
The owner-operators of small American electronic-music labels talk shop. Up third (and last, but not least), Michael Bentley of Foundry Records, home to Seofon and Jonathan Hughes, as well as Bentley himself.
U.S. Robotics, Part 2/3
The owner-operators of small American electronic-music labels talk shop. Up second, Sam Rosenthal of Projekt Records, home to Steve Roach, among others.
U.S. Robotics, Part 1/3
The owner-operators of small American electronic-music labels talk shop. First up, Todd Hyman of Carpark Records, home to Jake Mandell and Marumari.
Silent Running
Koji Asano, a prolific Japanese electro-acoustician at home in Barcelona, talks about the life of an itinerant self-publisher.
Plastic Man
Before embarking on a 2001 tour of the United States, Squarepusher talked about the personal challenges of making challenging music.
Army of One
Hrvatski (aka Keith Fullerton Whitman) got his allies Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke and Kid606 to remix his music. Now he talks about split identities and a favorite laptop accessory: his guitar.
Rocket Man
Console's Martin Gretschmann talks about bringing fun to German electronic pop and composing on the run.
Sounding Floor
Prolific sound artist Zbigniew Karkowski talks about personal technology, collaboration, and live performance.
Turning Japanese
Bogdan Raczynski traces his journey from Poland to America to Japan to England, where he's furiously processing garbled beats for Aphex Twin's record label, Rephlex.
Play Boy
Moby talks about the technology behind — and the racial politics beside the point of — his landmark pop album, Play.
Straight Outta Chapel Hill
A brief chat with Dub Assassin, the New South's own "Tekkno Boy."
Smile for the Camera
Photek, born Rupert Parkes, proves to be the most ambivalent of DJs.
Evolution & Permutation
For his second full-length album under his own name, in 1998, Amon Tobin put the breaks on his unique Brazilian brand of drum'n'bass, if only for a moment.
Bric House
In 1997, Amon Tobin spoke about the sampling philosophy behind his Latin-tinged full-length album, Bricolage.
Anatomy of a Remix
Patrick Carpenter of Ninja Tune's DJ Food talks about re-tuning a David Byrne song.
Pump Up the HTML
Coldcut's Matt Black on electronica, life as an indie mogul, and wired fatherhood
More Songs About Buildings
Sean Booth of the British duo Autechre talks about just about everything but how he and partner, Rob Brown, make music.
Popp Music
Oval, Microstoria, and the man behind their curtains: Markus Popp
Electronic Flora
Erik Gilbert, label manager of Asphodel Records, talks about identity, electronica's forefathers, and DJ Spooky's move to the majors.
Extreme Measures
Roger Richards celebrates 10 years of CDs with Extreme Records.
Digital Libations
Moonshine Records label head Steven Levy on why independent companies own electronica — for at least the near future
Luke Vibert’s Bedroom Is a Jungle
The Throbbing Pouch full-length album is making his Wagon Christ pseudonym a household name. Next comes Plug.
Cornish for Jungle
Full transcript of the interview with Luke Vibert, aka Wagon Christ, aka Plug
Eponymous Rex
Aphex Twin (aka AFX, born Richard D. James), the British electronic-music prodigy, grants techno a human face.
Black Label
Electronic-music connoisseurs depend on small independent record companies for the hard stuff.
Dark Ambient, Down Under
Interview with Darrin Verhagen, aka Shinjuku Thief, founder of the Dorobo Records label.
Super Nova
The album Vita Nova proves British composer Gavin Bryars still never failed yet
Low Sparks
Spring Heel Jack's DJs, John Coxon and Ashley Wales, walk the digital walk.
Dub, American Style
There's more to West Coast instrumental pop than surf music — just ask Dub Narcotic Sound System, Grassy Knoll, President's Breakfast, or Money Mark.
Deep Listening
Composer, accordionist, educator, Pauline Oliveros talks about landscapes, soundscapes, the history of ambient music and the future of the recital hall.
Krush Groove
DJ Krush spins the international language of hip-hop.
Ground Control
Introducing Skylab, the band that fell to Earth.
Fashion Victims
After a decade of near-faceless (and guitar-less) superstardom, Depeche Mode strives to get personal with the new Songs of Faith and Devotion.
The Mad Sampler
Randy Greif goes where no Alice has gone before.


