Over six years passed between an evening in late January 1997, when Colin Bradley slow-burned the air during a Manchester, England, concert performance, and early 2003, when he made recordings from that show available on CD for the first time. It’s a lovely EP, even before you pop it in your CD player — a modest 3″ CD, slipped into a full-size, bleach-white, corrugated-cardboard CD sleeve, looped by a glossy-paper band displaying Bradley’s prolific moniker, Dual; the set’s title, Pace (CEE); and the terse titles of its three tracks, “auxpin,” “chpstk” and “pyrrhic.” (All three were performed with the assistance of Sean Reynard, and the third is co-credited to Julian Coope.) Pace is three tracks of industrial ambience for which the guitar serves as the primary sound source, that being Dual’s code of honor, its modus operandi. On other recordings, more recent ones, Dual has milked the guitar for its soft curves, for the way both the guitar strings and the instrument’s feedback have an inherently natural sound to them — the cycles of the sine waves, the hazy edges and ambiguous shapes that evade all but the most patient and craft-minded of digital synthesists. Bradley finds so many sounds in his guitar, the tender pizzicato as “pyrrhic” fades out, the scratches that irritate the opening track’s dub-like zone. Pace is three tracks in name only. Track one, “auxpin,” doesn’t fade into “chpstk” so much as bleed into it, its thought-level buzz continuing on as a somewhat lifelike beep and a distant, coastal hum become prominent. And “chpstk” doesn’t fade into track three so much as it sounds, at the end of track two, as if the performers were cleaning up after themselves in preparation for their “pyrrhic” close. There’s a smattering of loose noises, of objects moved around, of small occurrences that cannot all have been pre-planned. Fans of Han Bennink’s brand of “European free improvisation” will hear resemblances to his favor for wild chance clutter, the everyday percussion of dropped objects and nervous activity. Fans of typical electronic ambient music may be confused by the theatricality of these recordings, especially the way “chpstk” sounds like footsteps, like tentative movement. If so, “pyrrhic” offers some respite in its gently layered long tones, its high-pitched gossamer. But the three tracks should be heard together, because their various elements complement each other. Pace is reportedly the first in a series of three, and the next two are eagerly awaited.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• December 28, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• July 28, 2021: This day marked the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the 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
• 0507 / In DD’s Key of C / The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.
• 0506 / Wipe Out / The Assignment: Take something whole and erase half of it.
• 0505 / Line Out / The Assignment: Share a track, get feedback, and give feedback.
• 0504 / Transform Formula / The Assignment: Take a sound, change it, and contrast that with the original.
• 0503 / Sing Song / The Assignment: Record a song using only your voice transformed beyond recognition.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 507 consecutive weeks to date.