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).
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
• 0445 / Aare Tribute / The Assignment: Read maps of a river as a graphic score.
• 0444 / Bot Ensemble / The Assignment: Make music as directed by the great twitter.com/InstrumentBot account.
• 0443 / In Two Landscapes / The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up.
• 0442 / One Sentence / The Assignment: Make music that explores the shape, tone, cadence, and content of a favorite section of prose or poetry.
• 0441 / Three Stones / The Assignment: Make music that explores territory sonically.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 445 consecutive weeks to date.