Pierre Bastien‘s recent record out on Rephlex, titled Pop, like its predecessor, Mecanoid, creates shopworn arrangements from instruments largely of Bastien’s own creation. These aren’t instruments as in virtual plugins for software or homebrew synthesizers, but dilapidated contraptions that have steampunk charm, acoustic instruments strummed by electric motors, birdlike whirlygig-pets chirping on command, a kind of mecha-exotica. By way of example, he’s posted four full tracks on his website. Two are from Mecanoid, the warbly, nostalgic “Avid Diva” (MP3), a small menagerie of mallets and strings, and “Damn Mad” (MP3), which has as its root rhythm a scratched record and a slack drum. Two others are from the decade-old Boite #3 on Editions Cactus: “L’Orchestre Thermo-dynamique” (MP3), in which wheezy breaths and saliva-stained trumpet abet octogenarian-paced arrangements, and “Odovinil” (MP3), the most disorienting of the batch, which uses a messed up gospel record as its fulcrum. (The “Odovinil” link on Bastien’s site is misdirected, but it’s correct here.) If you can break yourself from their spell, track down Bastien’s 1988 Mecanium for its randy take on Duke Ellington’s “Caravan.” More info at pierrebastien.com.
Current Activities
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• I was on Vivian Host's Peak Time show (on Red Bull Radio) on March 11 to extol the timeless virtues of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, and related works. You can listen to a recording here: redbullradio.com.
• My latest article is a review in the March issue of The Wire magazine of the week-long Recombinant Festival (held in San Francisco), whose performance highlights included Herman Kolgen, Rrose, and Electric Indigo.Upcoming
• March 22, 2019: I'm giving a talk at noon on Friday at the Algorithmic Art Assembly, two days of events (Friday and Saturday) in San Francisco: aaassembly.org. The talk is titled "The Woodshed Is a Black Box" and this is its description in the program: "How a rules-based system formed, shapes, and fuels the long-running online music community known as the Disquiet Junto."
• May 7, 2019: This day sees the release of Rob Walker's book The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday (Knopf), which has entries about the Disquiet Junto.
• May 22, 2019: Final day of the semester of the 15-week "Sounds of Brands" course I teach once a year at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I post occasional updates here. Follow the tag #sounds-of-brands.
• 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.Dates TBA
• 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.
• 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 Spanish (2018) and Japanese (2019).