Nearly 25 years ago over the course of three days, in April 1973, reportedly some 60 musicians on “no less than ten synthesizers” and various other instruments filled six acres of the San Bernardino National Forest in California with music. Other Minds guru Charles Amirkhanian was there at the time, interviewing the involved composers and recording snatches of the music, heard in this archival document echoing and overlapping amid the trees (MP3). There are jazz performances, radio improvisations and much philosophizing about the nature of music — and about music amid nature. Participants included Richard Bunger, Barry Gott, Jacques Bekaert, Nicolas Slonimsky and Dane Rudhyar . More info at archive.org and otherminds.org.
The new album Unit of Resistance by Raz Mesinai’s Badawi is welcome not only because it is Mesinai’s first new collection since he started branching into film (Sorry, Haters; Romántico; the forthcoming Burning the Future: Coal in America), but also because the album’s guest line-up is the clearest delineator of the how so-called, once-upon “illbient” begat today’s so-called “dubstep.” In addition to Mesinai himself (also known to record his heavily dub-influenced music as Badawi), there’s a mix by DJ Spooky, a key illbient figure. More recent dub-drenched electronic contributors include Kode 9 and DJ/rupture. Up for free download, courtesy of releasing label ROIR, are two very different Resistance tracks. “Market Place” is from Badawi Quintet; it’s a raging piece of acoustic trance, all roiling drums and searing woodwind (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).