Talk about a short-lived blog. Perhaps throttleclark.com will find a second life, but with its third posting it’s pretty much fulfilled its charter agenda. Clark, a prominent artist on the Warp label, has posted three tracks at the site over as many weeks, in advance of the release of Body Riddle, his forthcoming Warp album. As an appointment in appointment-downloading, it’s been a success. Furthermore, it’s done more than just whet our appetites. Sure, the first track was from the album itself, but the subsequent entries haven’t been, which has made listeners all the more curious about what’s to come. (Sure the tracks can be streamed, in 30-second chunks, at bleep.com, but that requires patience and a blind ear when it comes to the seams between chunks.) And the final of the three free downloads, “Dusk Raid” (MP3), may be the best so far, less rhythmically succinct than what came before, and rich with plucked instrumentation and broken beats that suggest DJ Krush’s machine-molested shamisen, not to mention muddled horns that bring to mind Robert Wyatt’s solemn art-pop. If these are the leftovers, one can only imagine what the main course will bring. The album will be released the first week of October.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• July 28, 2021: This day marks the start of the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• 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.
• 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.)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
• 0488 / Reverse Delay / Assignment: Do something you've been putting off.
• 0487 / Carillon Quotidian / Assignment: Turn a recurring sound from your life into music.
• 0486 / Earths Days / The Assignment: Celebrate Earth Day on or for another planet.
• 0485 / Strange Weather / The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer's traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes.
• 0484 / A Movable Heart / The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer's wind chimes to a new location.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 488 consecutive weeks to date.