This post wasn’t intended to go live until Tuesday, and there was a chance it wouldn’t be written at all. Yesterday saw the launch of a new communal music project associated with Disquiet.com. It’s called “Disquiet Junto” and it’s hosted over at soundcloud.com.
Here’s how it works: on Friday, which is to say yesterday, January 8, I posted an assignment, an “idea” for a piece of music. A deadline was set for this coming Monday, January 9, at midnight, by which time anyone who wanted to participate would post their own original track that acted on the assignment. The first assignment is:
“Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.”
It’s only Saturday evening as I type this, and there are already 51 members of the group, and as of three hours ago a total of 18 completed tracks have been posted, many though not all available for free download. I didn’t know if I’d ever write this post, because I didn’t know if anyone would participate. But participating they are — not only responding in sound to the assignment, but listening to and commenting on each other’s tracks. Collectively, the 18 tracks have been listened to almost 600 times in barely 24 hours, and there are over 70 comments, most from one contributing musician to another. Here’s a stark contrast: the recent Disquiet.com music project Instagr/am/bient has been listened to almost 17,000 times since its launch a week and a half ago, and there have been a total of 31 comments.
The variety of responses to “Disquiet Junto 0001″ is just as thrilling as the number of responses is. The idea of making music from the sound of ice in a glass has yielded a very short story from Mark Rushton, some detailed phonography from Mike Bullock, a lovely mix of buggy whirring and gentle melodic phases from My Fun, and subdued funk from Open Heart Sound, just to point out a few.
I have many ideas for things to do as part of Disquiet Junto, and will roll them out in coming weeks. I also have much more to say about where the project comes from, culturally and sonically and socially, but for the moment, let’s let the assembled musicians’ excellent contributions speak for themselves.
Check out the Disquiet Junto page at soundcloud.com.
PS: The word “junto” comes from the name of a society that Benjamin Franklin formed in Philadelphia during the early 1700s as “a structured forum of mutual improvement.” I learned of it while reading, recently, the Franklin biography by Walter Isaacson, who penned the recent Steve Jobs bio. I highly recommend the Franklin book, and Isaacson’s book on Albert Einstein. I have not yet read the Jobs one.
Update: With a little under 40 hours to go before deadline, there were already 24 entries by as many musicians.
What will happen when our computers are always on, or instant on, or so ubiquitous that we think of them less as objects, as accessories, or even garments, and more like soap or aftershave? Will we hang on to vestiges of their earlier days, much as we today add noises to electric cars in the name of comfort, safety, and security? If so, we’ll look back to work like that of Jeff Kolar, whose Start Up/Shut Down is, indeed, made of the noises of computers doing just that. His description is as precise as his working materials: 
