Three tracks trace a dawn-like arc on Pausal’s new self-titled net-album on the netlabel Highpoint Lowlife. The pieces individually move from near-silence through a creaky murmur through an enveloping warmth that grows and grows. This sense of a real-world soundtrack is abetted by cricket chatter on the opening entry, “Heroes=Dogs,”in which rich, long chords suggest a solo for organ (MP3). The world peeks out of the second track, too, “Songs from a Cloth Pocket,”in which birdsong plays hide and seek amid the ebbs and flows of swelling synthesized drones (MP3), before those drones begin — slowly, mind you — to take on the quality that might — again, only possibly — be mistaken for — hold your seat — a melody; a light, tension-building bustle of what could be orchestral strings would be obvious were they not employed with such economy. The third track, “Place,”is a kind of drone chamber music in which little motifs, akin to minimalist repetition, gather in layers that overlap to form varying permutations (MP3); if you close your eyes — and this is the sort of music that makes you want to close your eyes — you might mistake it for some pastoral moment in Debussy. More info at highpointlowlife.com and pausal.net.
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
• 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.
• 0483 / Type Set / The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.
• 0482 / Exactly That Gap / The Assignment: Make a musical haiku following instructions from Marcus Fischer.
• 0481 / Capsule Time / The Assignment: Record a time capsule for yourself in the future.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 485 consecutive weeks to date.