The music made by Chance’s End (aka Ryan Avery) is not standard Disquiet Downstream material. It isn’t remotely fragile, abstract or attenuated, and even though it eschews all but the most mechanically tortured of singing — words generally vocoded to the point of incomprehensibility, with the exception of some catch phrases — it follows standard song structure without fail. The songs are more Orb than Aphex, more Jan Hammer than Margaret Leng Tan, more Crystal Method and BT than anything else, pop tunes built from the stuff of rave music. But they’re also absolutely stuffed with surprises, like the abrasive riff running through “Totem Redux” (imagine a turntablist forced to make do with a set of rusty brakes on a junkyard car), or the X-Files-style submarine radar that opens “Platinum Prawn,” or the piercing electric-violin solo that erupts midway through the song. Avery’s violin is used to particularly strong effect on “Going On,” building with warehouse-party gusto, high on the enticingly vacuous drama. Cheesy? Perhaps, but at the height of popularity for the Polyphonic Spree and Flaming Lips, we’re long since past such concerns. Check out these free downloads, and others, off his recent Set Me Free album, at chancesend.com (click on the “media” tab — oh, and if there’s no evident link for the “Totem Redux” track, you can find the MP3 file here). These are theme songs for cop shows yet to be pitched.
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about
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Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media
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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. -
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• 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).
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disquiet junto
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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 -
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• 0511 / Freeze Tag / The Assignment: Consider freezing (and thawing) as a metaphor for music production.
• 0510 / Cold Turkey / The Assignment: Record one last track with a piece of music equipment before passing it on.
• 0509 / The Long Detail / The Assignment: Create a piece of music with moments from a preexisting track.
• 0508 / Germane Shepard / The Assignment: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.
• 0507 / In DD's Key of C / The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.
Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 511 consecutive weeks to date. Archives
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