The group Larsen consists of four Italian musicians on standard rock tools with some additional homey instrumentation: harmonium, xylophone, accordion. Their recent Play album, on Important Records, adds some guests, in the form of a cellist, a keyboardist, a violinist and a synthesizer player. Wondering, at this point, what Larsen has to do with the Disquiet Downstream section, beyond the fact that Play shares a record-label home with Jack Dangers (of the industrial band Meat Beat Manifesto), not to mention art-noisemakers Fe-Mail and Merzbow, and late ambient figure Muslimgauze? Well, according to Important, Larsen preceded the Play recording sessions with a particular exercise: “improvising around some of their favorite melodies from Autechre albums,” Autechre’s groundbreaking glitch having about as much to do, on the surface, with accordion rock as, well, fill in your favorite cultural-divide simile here. As it turns out, the Autechre factor infused Larsen’s recordings with a deep post-rock vibe. The Pitchfork online magazine’s MP3 page, pitchforkmedia.com/mp3, features a nearly eight-minute Larsen piece, “C,” which slowly makes its way from stasis to just short of ecstasy, building and building like some folksy ritual. And over at the Important site, at importantrecords.com, are two more tracks (on the Play album’s page). One, clocking in at two minutes, appears to be an edit of the Pitchfork track. The other, at three minutes, is an edit of an even more drone-like recording, the accordion bringing to mind, immediately, the protean work of Pauline Oliveros. Aside from this latter track’s clipped close, it’s heavenly.
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
• 0479 / Truck Radio Rain / The Assignment: Locate three sound sources and make something with them.
• 0478 / Collage of Collages / The Assignment: Make a collage that will become part of a larger collage.
• 0477 / Flying Blind / The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which some substantial portion is performed without looking.
• 0476 / IAH Forecast / The Assignment: Here's your next single's cover. Now record it.
• 0475 / Low End (4 of 3) / The Assignment: Remix a trio by doing forensics on its component parts.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 479 consecutive weeks to date.