- Gym music: zoned out to what turned out to be, accidentally, the @lastfm Godflesh station simultaneous w/ Cliff Martinez's Espion(s) score. #
- So much good new music lately — new scores by Martinez & Mansell, and now there's a second Jon Hassell-related album in 2009, Siwan (ECM). #
- Radiophonic streaming audio composition by Roger Mills this Sunday. More info at http://www.eartrumpet.org/ios/ — per (that is, RT) @menyui #
- My Facebook.com URL shortcut is http://www.facebook.com/disquiet #
- Taking of Pelham 123 = sound-porn. Great use of one of the few Jay-Z songs I like, plus helicopters, trains, and all manner of automobiles. #
- Weekend: maybe Club Sandwich show tonight, fine-tuning pozole recipe tomorrow. Also reading, writing, transcribing, and some arithmetic. #
- 11am sounds: typing; throat-clearing; air horn; lawnmower duet, one high, one low (despite no evident lawn nearby); voices below; motorbike. #
- #followfriday on Twitter: boundary-pushing cartoonists @wcraghead & @mmaddencomics + knowledgeable music-heads @eleventhvolume & @earslend #
- Taqueria Cancun for lunch. Something's different — oh, there's no blasting jukebox, just the grill and foot traffic and street noise. #
- Afternoon visit to Prelinger Library, always inspiring. Gotta dig into Electron, an old Canadian electronics mag, & back issues of Cabinet. #
- Morning gym music: Pixel's The Drive. #
- Afternoon sounds: voices down below, ceiling-fan drone up above, typing and paper-ruffling throughout, radio set just at the edge of silent. #
- Lugging a one-pound library book because I wanna finish its final 20 pages on the bus. #
- I don't link too often to Disquiet.com but this @thegrassyknoll remix of late bluesman Junior Kimbough needs to be heard: http://is.gd/U8gU #
- Cool new free iPhone app (rotating music, photo gallery) from @thegrassyknoll — http://www.feedtheenemy.com/?p=89 #
- RIP, Soft Machine's Hugh Hopper: http://is.gd/TOqS #
- A search for "tenori" (as in tenori-on) in the Audio section of Archive.org yields a null return? That seems unlikely, but it's what's up. #
- Now at saxist Tony Passarell at Cafe Royal in SF. First guy to ever play me Live Evil & Agharta. #
- Gym music: the recent Metallica, again. Yeah, I'm addicted. Anyone seen an instrumental edit of the full-length around? #
- Morning sounds, back in SF: distant bus sounds like surf, laptop fan sounds like hair dryer, stomach sounds like it's time for dim sum. #
- Home. London was freaking great. Arrive to sunny skies in SF. Almost done with del Toro novel (it's OK so far), and Burn Notice is on Tivo. #
Current Activities
Upcoming
• February 5, 2020: The first session of the 15-week course I teach at the Academy of Art about the role of sound in the media landscape.
• April 15, 2020: 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. (Details at oup.com.)
• December 13, 2020: This day marks the 24th anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2021: This day marks the 9th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Dates TBA
• 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.
• At least two live group concerts by Disquiet Junto members in the San Francisco Bay Area are in the works for 2020.
• I have liner notes for a musician's solo album and an essay in a book about an art event due out. I'll announce as the release dates come into focus.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
• 0465 / You Thank / The Assignment: Make a piece of music for someone or something for which you feel thankful.
• 0464 / Blanket Song / The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
• 0463 / Making the Gradient / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by the concept of a gradient.
• 0462 / Vade in Pace / The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.
• 0461 / Goldilocks Zone / The Assignment: Navigate a sonic space between the hospitable and the inhospitable.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 465 consecutive weeks to date.