Disquiet

Taylor Deupree and Stephen Vitiello played a concert together earlier this month. If you follow either musician, and anyone who admires ambiguously melodious ambient music should, then you knew this, because they mentioned it on Twitter, and posted photos as they were gearing up, such as the one above. It took place in Brooklyn, and fortunately for those of us not in the area, Vitiello has subsequently posted a six-minute piece from the show. It’s an enticing teaser, a mix of deep, midtempo swells and rough, light textures — and, toward the end, what could be distant screams, like cat calls in a cemetery. The swells seem to consume the textures as much as the textures seem to pierce the swells. The result, until that dramatic turn toward the close, is an expert study in uneasy balance. That closing section, the muted call, lends a kind of retrospective sense of narrative to what had preceded it.

The live recording is from a show at the Presents Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, from a concert organized by John P. Hastings as part of the gallery’s Sound Series. Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/stephenvitiello. More on the event at soundatpresents.tumblr.com. More on the gallery at presentsgallery.net. Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com, Deupree at 12k.com.

Nicholas Davis has posted a live recording of him improvising with Natalie Chami. The track evidences a blend of styles, a mix of two approaches. Perhaps each of these two aural modes exemplifies distinctions between their individual styles, or perhaps the coalesced but varied sound is the result of a collaboratively determined intent. In either way, it is rousing, especially midway through when a mix of choral effects and strained beeping suggests someone backing a truck into heaven, or toward the end when a seesawing suggests the slow roil ocean surface.

Chami, who performs as TALsounds, is on”Grendel Drone Commander, Synthesizers, Vocals, Live hardware processing” and Davis (aka Passerby) is on “Various electro-acoustic instruments, Vocals, 4093 Quad Oscillator, CB transceiver, Live hardware processing.” Track originally posted at Davis’ soundcloud.com/passerby account; more on him at sonicsentiments.wordpress.com. More on Chami/TALsounds at soundcloud.com/talsounds and talsounds.com.

Andras Hargitai, who’s based in Budapest, Hungary, has posted one of his most rarified, desiccated bits of dub yet. Titled “Saturday Sub (Live),” it is dub from an alternate universe, a place where the snare serves as the unlikely source of dubby goodness. In his rendition, the downtempo track has all the remote echoes one associates with dub, but not only is it laden with a raspy high-pitched beat, like a signal flare doubling as a metronome, it seems to take place in a uniquely arid environment. It’s like an X-ray of dub: all the contours, none of the humidity. It’s post-Singularity dub, when dance halls are unmapped partitions of forgotten hard drives.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/banyek314. More of Hargitai’s work at banyek.bandcamp.com. Here’s a group interview I did back in 2006 that Hargitai participated in: “Free as in Netlabel.”

“Goobs en Regalia” by Craque is several things. It’s a single individual improvising on a synthesizer. It’s a standalone track by a musician who’s released enough full-length collections to know the unique pleasures of the online single. And, at various times throughout, it’s the sound of something rhythmic and tasty a split second before it kicks in. The improvisations that Craque performs are a mix of gurgling tones and snatches of fuzzy static. The one-sentence liner note describes it as follows: “A bit of an excursion through the twisted roots of what’s through us.” The playing regularly ekes out these memorable little segments, like an avant-garde performance built entirely from fragments of pop music. Numerous among them have the sound of a proper riff in the process of winding up, but they rarely if ever repeat often enough to take on any sort of compositional solidity, at least until the very end when a blippy rhythm is allowed to continue at some length. Many of them in the process of winding up sound like they’re about to unleash some serious funk, like the gurgling is about to congeal into a serious beat. It never happens, which is no failure; that sense of tantalization is a core part of the track’s pleasure.

More on Craque at craque.net. Track originally posted for free download and streaming at soundcloud.com/craque.