Promise to not make a habit of it, but this week’s Friday Downstream link is the same as last Friday’s: the BBC’s Mixing It radio show, at bbc.co.uk/radio3/mixingit. Same link, but new show, as each Friday brings a brand new broadcast. This one features — in addition to fine commercial recordings by Sion Orgon (real-world sounds warped until they sound like avant-garde chamber music), “underground hip-hop” mainstay El-P jamming with jazz musicians (among them Daniel Carter, William Parker and Matthew Shipp) and Mira Calix (mixing live insects and orchestra) — live studio performances by, and conversation with, Californian tuba player Tom Heasley, whose deeply reverberant solo works are often reminiscent of whale song. Heasley talks with the Mixing It hosts about his early improvisation experiences on tuba with one of jazz bassist Charlie Haden’s large-scale ensembles circa 1984, the influence of Robert Fripp (whose 1970s “Frippertronics” work make him think, “I could sorta see doing something like this with a tuba”), his prized loop sampler (“[It] records 14 seconds of music, and then you can overdub over that, and it just constantly mixes together and it becomes other things”) and the differences between a tuba and a didjeridu, which he also plays. More on Heasley at, naturally, tomheasley.com.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• February 5, 2020: The first session of the 15-week course I teach at the Academy of Art about the role of sound in the media landscape.
• April 15, 2020: A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the forthcoming 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.)
• December 13, 2020: This day marks the 24th anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2021: This day marks the 9th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Dates TBA
• 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.
• At least two live group concerts by Disquiet Junto members in the San Francisco Bay Area are in the works for 2020.
• I have liner notes for a musician's solo album and an essay in a book about an art event due out. I'll announce as the release dates come into focus.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
• 0465 / You Thank / The Assignment: Make a piece of music for someone or something for which you feel thankful.
• 0464 / Blanket Song / The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
• 0463 / Making the Gradient / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by the concept of a gradient.
• 0462 / Vade in Pace / The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.
• 0461 / Goldilocks Zone / The Assignment: Navigate a sonic space between the hospitable and the inhospitable.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 465 consecutive weeks to date.