Want to hear more from Tyondai Braxton, one quarter of Battles, the electronified math-rock outfit newly signed to Warp Records? There are two MP3s up at his website, tyondai.jmzrecords.com, both from the History That Has No Effect album, a “solo loop” set released on the JMZ label in 2002. (JMZ has also released work by Zeena Parkins, Nels Cline and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.) “Great Mass” (MP3) is a heaving symphonic guitar drone, and it would bring to mind Glenn Branca’s guitar symphonies even if Braxton’s brief bio/resume on the website didn’t reference Branca’s “Hallucination City: Symphony 13 for 100 Guitars.” The six-minute-plus “Mass” is one of three movements from a piece titled “A Sentence Worth a Thousand Words.” And lest that formlessness suggest that Braxton’s role in Battles is more a matter of texture than of rhythm, not only does “Mass” shift into a charge of circuitous baubles as it closes, the second free download, the nearly nine-minute “The Violent Light Through Falling Shards” (MP3), opens with a clatter of muffled beats beneath some chiming strings and builds from there, through stretches of plectrum thunder that suggest the Byrds at their most deranged, before reaching a climax of overt sirens. Yeah, something’s comin’, alright.
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
• 0456 / Line Up / The Assignment: Interpret a painting by Agnes Martin as if it were a graphic score.
• 0455 / Inner Invertebrate / The Assignment: What does a moment (or a day) in the life of a jellyfish sound like to a jellyfish?
• 0454 / Lsoo Vneg / The Assignment: Encode the name of someone you love into a piece of music.
• 0453 / Dial Up / The Assignment: Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound.
• 0452 / Let's Scream / The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 456 consecutive weeks to date.