This may or may not be what Erik Satie had in mind when he talked of a music that went well with the sound of silverware at a dinner party, but among the more recent field-recording remixes at the Freesound project (freesound.iua.upf.edu) is a one-second snippet (MP3) recorded by Freesound contributor harri (“taken from a random sampled tour of my kitchen with a microphone”), and a 25-second extrapolation thereof (MP3) that transforms the quotidian beat into an addictive rhythm (and makes the term “industrial house” literal). If those MP3 links don’t function, head over to the Freesound site’s remix page and look for harri’s entries “35drawclose.mp3″ and “kitchenbeat1_90bpm.mp3″ (link).
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about
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
Upcoming
• Autumn, 2019: I'll have a new piece in The Wire.
• December 13, 2019: This day marks the 23rd anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2020: This day marks the 8th anniversary of the Disquiet Junto.
• March 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.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.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).
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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
• 0414 / Mod Cons / The Assignment: Compose one or more sounds for an appliance/device/gadget of your own choosing.
• 0413 / Objective Thankfulness / The Assignment: Highlight one piece of musical equipment for which you are particularly grateful.
• 0412 / One Chord Wonder / The Assignment: Play an extended chord where the instrumentation of each note changes as the piece proceeds.
• 0411 / Wrapped Up / The Assignment: Record a piece of music as a gift for someone special to you.
• 0410 / Op Audio / The Assignment: What does the sonic equivalent of Op Art sound like?Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 414 consecutive weeks to date.Tags
8-bit app audio-games brands of sounds chiptune classical comics copyleft field-recording film free free download gadget generative i-hop IFTTTgram installation ios ipad iphone ipod ipod touch junto listening to yesterday live-performance modular netlabel noise recommended stream remix rock saw2for33third science-fiction score site-maintenance software sound-art sounds-of-brands studio journal this week in sound turntablism TV video video-games voiceMost Recent Comments
Patrick Glynn: "Hello, I’m looking forward to hearing what you’ve been listening to. Thanks, Patrick "
Michael Mennell: "ok, glad I could help. Do you have a link to that MicroFreak video btw? I had posted it to our..."
Michael: "Yesterday, this post had a video (mistakenly?) linked at the top featuring a MicroFreak. What was that?..."
Marc Arsenault: "Are you saying, it’s like a smurf’s arm with a plum in its fist? "
David Neale-Lorello: "Would Thomas Dolby be one of the heroes or the mascot? "