Few acts have melded digital production with dub as seamlessly as Pole (aka German musician Stefan Betke). His lanky works have mixed snare shots and pixel-precise percussion, deep echo and techno flourishes, gurgling melodic snippets and minimalist simplicity for a decade now: 2008 marks the 10th anniversary of Pole’s debut, 1, aka “the blue one.” Last year saw the excellent Steingarten and its associated remix collection, and there will be a 12″ by the end of this year, titled “alles gute / alles klar,” half of which is available for free download from the releasing label, ~scape (MP3, scape-music.com). The song appeared previously on the ~scape compilation CD Round Black Ghosts, and it brings to mind the song-form explorations of Grassy Knoll and the classic ersatz Afrobeat of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. It’s a tremendous track, with slurply bass lines lurking below the expertly programmed drum-machine beats. More at myspace.com/poleartist and pole-music.com; relatively recent interview at zero-inch.com.
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about
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Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media
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Current Activities
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Upcoming
• December 13, 2022: This day marks the 26th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2023: This day marked the 11th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community. -
Recent
• April 16, 2022: I participated in an online "talk show" by The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier).
• March 11, 2022: I hosted a panel discussion between Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and James Bradbury in San Francisco as part of the Algorithmic Art Assembly (aaassembly.org) at Gray Area (grayarea.org).
• December 28, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marked the 25th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the 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.) -
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• 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).
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disquiet junto
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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 -
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• 0555 / A Simple Timer / The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5.
• 0554 / Cage Chord / The Assignment: Riff on a chord by John Cage.
• 0553 / Break That Cycle / The Assignment: Record in a steady tempo but break it on occasion.
• 0552 / The Radio in My Life / The Assignment: Record music in response to a John Cage and Morton Feldman conversation.
• 0551 / The Bends / The Assignment: Get less strict about something you're strict about. -
Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 555 consecutive weeks to date. Archives
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