Permutation Amon Tobin (Ninja Tune) Endlessly listenable, Tobin’s latest full-length mostly eschews the Brazilian native’s bossa-nova penchant for cut-up variations on classic jazz.
Form & Function Photek (Science/Astralwerks) Rarified to his fans, antiseptic to his (mistaken) detractors, Photek sums up his early drum’n’bass work with a combination of archival material and remixes.
Sound for Spaces Scanner (Sub Rosa) Burbling, threatening ambience pervades this collection of site-specific work by the British musician who is obsessed with surveillance and the shape of the human voice.
Music Is Rotted One Note Squarepusher (Warp/Nothing) Gone are the cheeky themes and percussively aberrant drum-machine exercises. Here, Squarepusher rekindles early jazz fusion, at times abrasively funky, at others splendidly spacey.
LP5 Autechre (Warp/Nothing) A MiniDisc-only release got Autechre (aka Gescom) much of its press this past year, but it was the duo’s latest full-length that truly cemented their seniority in experimental audio.
chotto matte a moment! icu (K) Like Tortoise, World Standard and the Tied & Tickled Trio, icu mixes up live instrumentation and electronic skills. The trio’s brand of threadbare party music is sure to please.
Mold Praxis (Yikes) Bill Laswell releases so much music, he’s due to produce a gem like this group project on occasion. The CD consists of tidy cinematic cues — think Oval remixing Peter Gabriel.
Country Gazette World Standard (Asphodel) Taken literally, “country music” suggests a landscape of sounds. This international quartet mixes various string instruments with select electronic effects to evoke the exoticness of home.
Consumed Plastikman (Novamute) Richie Hawkins suggests techno, long the bastion of flailing mechanized dance numbers, as a highly nuanced act of introspection.
We Are Reasonable People Various artists (Warp) The Blue Note of electronica labels releases a state-of-the-music compilation. The highlight Aphex Twin squares off with Squarepusher. Also aboard Plaid, Plone, Red Snapper, and others.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• July 28, 2021: This day marks the start of the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the forthcoming book The Music Production Cookbook: Ready-made Recipes for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), edited by Adam Patrick Bell. Ethan Hein wrote one, and I did, too.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the book The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (Oxford University Press), edited by Stephanie Horsley, Janice Waldron, and Kari Veblen. (Details at oup.com.)Ongoing
• The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, was published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury. It has been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018).
disquiet junto
Background
Since January 2012, the Disquiet Junto has been an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making community that employs creative constraints as a springboard for creativity. Subscribe to the announcement list (each Thursday), listen to tracks by participants from around the world, read the FAQ, and join in.Recent Projects
• 0499 / Out of the Landscape / The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording.
• 0498 / Sonic Entomologist / The Assignment: Create a new hybrid insect from the sound of two different insects.
• 0497 / Benjamin's Glass / The Assignment: Pay tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his armonica
• 0496 / Isolation Room / The Assignment: Create new music around one strand of something you made in the past.
• 0495 / Protip Etude / The Assignment: Share a tip for making music or working with sound, and record a track that employs it.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 499 consecutive weeks to date.