Midway through last month, the audio irritants at 20kbps netlabel released Paranomia‘s EP Le Requiem Pour les Refrigerateures Solitaires — or, as they helpfully translate for us cognate-challenged types, Requiem for Lonely Refrigerators. From the coarse, scrunched sounds of the first of its four tracks, it’s quite possible to believe that audio emitted by an old Frigidaire is indeed the extent of Paranomia’s palette. But this is no concept album, which means you needn’t ponder the provenance of the pingy echo of “No Prestamos Servicio a los Viciosos” or hard distant techno of “Le Dompteur de Pingouins” in order to take pleasure in this often desperately minimal electronica. The 20kbps site credits Paranomia as “a sideproject by Estonian producer Talvel.” And it’s really no surprise that the landscape that gave us Arvo Part’s haunting minimalism would, a generation or three later, unleash such a parched and monastic digital music. In fact, the submerged vocals on “Les Fusillades Massives des Masses” could very well come from one of Part’s latter-day modernist Gregorian chants. Download a stuffed archive of the set, complete with “album” art, here. And visit the label at 20kbps.sofapause.ch.
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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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Current Activities
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Upcoming
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• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
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• December 28, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
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• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
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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.)
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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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• 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.
• 0506 / Wipe Out / The Assignment: Take something whole and erase half of it.
• Full Index: And there is a complete list of past projects, 510 consecutive weeks to date. Tags
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