Month: February 2009

Bell, Bowl, and Mixer: Spatial MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Touch Radio podcast has taken a break from its pure field-recording mode for a proper live performance, and what a performance it is. Recorded last December at the National Pantheon in Lisbon, Portugal, “Book of Hours” (MP3) captures the intensely dense waves of sound resulting from a combination of bells, bowls, and glasses rung and struck, echoing in the depths of the Pantheon’s massive dome, and further expanded courtesy of what Touch describes as “space multi-channel diffusion and real-time processing.”

[audio:http://www.touchmusic.org.uk/TouchPod/book.mp3|titles=”Book of Hours”|artists=Paulo Raposo & Carlos Santos & João Silva]

The performers are Paulo Raposo on said processing, Carlos Santos on “glass and bell,” and João Silva on “crystal bowl.” More details and additional photos at touchradio.org.uk.

It’s a Nosdam Pain Mix MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

One of the more wide-ranging production figures in the outer regions of hip-hop is Odd Nosdam, and DJ Pain takes a little tour through Nosdam’s back catalog on a recent, nearly hour-long mix, The Odd Side of the Sun. The DJ mixes at a quick rate (see below), but never loses site of Nosdam’s deep-seated downtempo mode. Nosdam favors sublimated noise, strummed guitar, sci-fi synths, and understated beats, all of which are in abundance here.

[audio:http://www.rhythm-incursions.com/downloads/DJ_Pain_-_The_Odd_Side_of_The_Sun.mp3|titles=”The Odd Side of the Sun”|artists=DJ Pain]

Pain explained to the great rhythm-incursions.com site back in January:

    The mix features all beats by producer Odd Nosdam throughout his career with the Mush and Anticon labels minus the Clouddead output that I didn’t want to focus on for the mix. I went through all of his beats that I had and wanted to do something that stayed close to his original work, yet at the same time throw my own twist on it. There’s almost 40 tracks mixed together in about 51 minutes. The mix is a little A.D.D on steroids…

More on Pain at djpain.com. As a show of appreciation, Nosdam mentioned the mix on his myspace.com/nosdam page.

site upgrade / Comments Are Go

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Just a quick notification that discussion in the form of in-post comments is now live on this website.

It’s a test. We’ll see how much spam there is, and whether the comments prove beneficial. I’m hopeful. For the time being, Disquiet.com is using WordPress’s built-in commenting system. But it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge one of the key factors in my decision-making, which is something Daniel Ha of the commenting service disqus.com said at a panel discussion (disqusion?) in San Francisco last year. Rather than paraphrase him, I’ll quote from the Disqus promotional website a sentence that serves as a concise summary of what Ha proposed on the panel: “After all, there is no difference between a great comment and a great published article.”

Guit-ronic Mix: 6 Solo 6-Strings

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

About Disquiet.com’s “Listen?”:

Welcome to Disquiet.com’s streaming-audio service. The interface immediately below will stream in sequence six recent favorites from the site’s Downstream section, which focuses on legally free downloads on the Internet — all six are solo recordings of guitar-based music, ranging from unmediated live performance to sounds that are heavily processed digitally. You can flip back and forth through the playlist using the small arrows. At the bottom of this post is additional information on each of the pieces.

[audio:http://www.12k.com/flashaudio/1051_9.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/yoyo06/yoyo06-ANN_DEVERIA-patio_de_luz.mp3/,http://www.archive.org/download/ElisaLuuFloatingSoundsphch002/Arteline.mp3/,http://www.archive.org/download/luvs007/A-7.mp3/,http://www.anticipaterecordings.com/files/audio/Holden_Into_Ryley_EP_03_holden_into_ryley.mp3,http://www.archive.org/download/NJL019/njl019-02-aidan_baker_track2_liveatkatapult240408.mp3/|titles=”Untitled #9″,”Patio de Luz”,”Arteline”,”A-7″,”Holden into Ryley”,Untitled live performance (April 24, 2008)|artists=Giuseppe Ielasi,Ann Deveria,Elisa Luu,Matthew Mullane,Mark Templeton,Aidan Baker]

The duration of this mixtape/playlist is 59:37.

 

Playlist Guide:

Please note that most of the links below in this post will result in pop-ups, so as not to interrupt the streaming audio.



Track 1. (Duration: 04:08.) In Giuseppe Ielasi's "Untitled #9," soon enough the gap between the guitar and its sonic surroundings has begun to blur, such is Ielasi’s alchemy.
[More info: disquiet.com. Label: 12kblog.wordpress.com.]

Track 2. (Duration: 06:43.) Ann Deveria's "Patio de Luz" is a delightful layering of acoustic guitar, understated percussion, and light digital effects that only make themselves fully apparent as the nearly seven-minute track draws to a close.
[More info: disquiet.com. Musician: myspace.com/anndeveria. Label: ambulatore.com/yoyo.]

Track 3. (Duration: 04:20.) There are glistening, cloud-like guitar patterns against pneumatic percussion on “Arteline” by Elisa Luu.
[More info: disquiet.com. Musician: myspace.com/elisaluu. Label: phantomchannel.co.uk.]

Track 4. (Duration: 03:35.) This solo guitar piece by Matthew Mullane, "A-7," begs the question if someone is ever truly playing solo when every note reverberates for several seconds before it even begins to fade from recognition.
[More info: disquiet.com. Label: luvsound.org.]

Track 5. (Duration: 07:11.) The strings on Mark Templeton's "Holden into Ryley" are filtered through feedback loops, clipped and set on repeat like an album that’s reached the end of its groove. The piece features gentle arrays of microsonic play against a lightly glitchy texture.
[More info: disquiet.com. Musician: fieldsawake.com. Label: anticipaterecordings.com.]

Track 6. (Duration: 33:40.) Recorded on April 24, 2008, this live Aidan Baker concert ekes out a splendid haze of slow-build dawn-break stateliness.
[More info: disquiet.com. Musician: aidanbaker.org. Label: noisejihad.dk.]



I plan to do these mixes every month or so, but I wanted to get up this second mix shortly after the first, just to make sure there's a variety of material here right from the start.

NB: To the best of my knowledge, my promotion of these tracks in this manner is all above board. However, if you represent any of these tracks and/or artists and feel that they are being inappropriately utilized here, please contact me directly at [email protected], and I'll rectify the situation promptly.

Images of the Week: Sonochemical Reaction

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Below are two images of Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s installation “Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory,” currently view at the ICC in Tokyo, as part of the museum’s Light InSight exhibit. In the work, a globe that one views in deep darkness, “A band of sound waves of varying frequency is converted into light, made visible, by the sound luminescence phenomenon that occurs when it passes through the chemical medium contained in the water.”

This is the globe:

This is what it looks like, in part, when it’s active:

I visited the exhibit back in December, and have yet to post on it here, but because the exhibit closes at the end of February, I wanted to make sure to get this mention up sooner than later. It’s a remarkable experience, like viewing some strange, disembodied life form at the bottom of an alien ocean.

Here’s the two artists talking about the science behind the art:

[audio:http://www.ntticc.or.jp/Exhibition/2008/Light_InSight/sound/Evelina_Dmitry.mp3|titles=”Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory”|artists=Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand]

More information at the museum’s website, ntticc.or.jp, from which these images are borrowed.