ELECTRO-ORGANIC MP3S: A cough, of all things, lends some context. As if to underscore that what you’re hearing is, in fact, being performed live, amid several of the downloadable tracks by Doogie (aka Nathan Mclaughlin) at his website, fluxed.net, you can quite clearly make out someone clearing his (or her) throat. It may be Doogie himself, it may be an audience member, but it isn’t particularly distracting, and in fact hearing the familiar sound helps your ear get a sense of the space in which the performance took place, because nothing else here is remotely familiar. Soothing, yes. Artful, yes. Terrestrial, no. This is beautiful music, exemplary of the kind of electronic goods that get described, widely, as “organic.” Though the sounds are self-evidently artificial, their rendering is so warm, and they so suggest life forms the way they cycle and burble and quaver, that you can’t help but think of them as, well, organic. Particularly recommended is “Whats in a Species” (sic), a chimey formulation, like some cast-off riff by mid-period R.E.M. that’s taken on a purpose all its own (MP3). (The live tracks, recorded last November, feature accompaniment by one D. Fox.) “Keys,” from Doogie’s album The Spatulate Finger, released last September, is a drone that slowly changes over the course of nearly five minutes, from monastic om, to breaking-dawn lightness, to industrial burr (MP3).
-
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
Field Notes
Interviews
Studio Journal
Projects
Subscribe
-
Current Activities
-
Upcoming
• December 13, 2022: This day marks the 26th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2023: This day marked the 11th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community. -
Recent
• April 16, 2022: I participated in an online "talk show" by The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier).
• March 11, 2022: I hosted a panel discussion between Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and James Bradbury in San Francisco as part of the Algorithmic Art Assembly (aaassembly.org) at Gray Area (grayarea.org).
• December 28, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marked the 25th (!) anniversary of the start of 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.) -
-
• 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 -
-
• 0544 / Feedback Loop / The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others.
• 0543 / Technique Check / The Assignment: Share a tip from your method toolbox.
• 0542 / 2600 Club / The Assignment: Make some phreaking music.
• 0541 / 10BPM Techno / The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.
• 0540 / 5ive 4our / The Assignment: Take back 5/4 for Jedi time masters Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond. -
Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 544 consecutive weeks to date. Archives
[email protected]
Downstream
-
Recent Posts