Month: August 2009

Subterranean London MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Tunnel Vision is the name of a new podcast via Resonance FM. It’s a 10-part series in which various musicians, writers, and other individuals wander the Victorian-era space below London, as initiated by producer Bruno Rinvolucri. The first spelunker in Tunnel Vision is Sammie Joplin, who takes his electric guitar, bow, and portable amplifier into the deep between Brixton Water Lane and Clapham High Street (MP3). The audio track presents Joplin recounting what it’s like under London, discussing with Rinvolucri and another producer. The sound is expectedly dank and reverberant, and around the 10-minute mark, Joplin begins his performance, an echo-laden tone-field, in which scraping suggests the presence of vermin, and long held notes summon up the dark depths — and that’s just the beginning. The work gets percussive and chaotic as he proceeds, making the most of that rancid and historic corridor. As Rinvolucri mentions at the track’s opening, the trio happened to surface in the midst of a crime scene. Says a policeman who greets them, “You’re lucky you didn’t come out with a lot more of us standing around you, thinking you were up to something else.”

[audio:http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/podpress_trac/feed/2496/0/TunnelVision-July28th09episode1.mp3|titles=”Tunnel Vision Part 1 of 10″|artists=Sammie Joplin]

Quote of the Week: The Law of Fluxus

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Kyle Gann locates some cognitive dissonance between the communal art production of Fluxus, and the rigors of copyright law:

    The situation is absurd, somebody under whatever questionable chemical influences scrawls seven words on a piece of paper and 50 years later I can’t refer to that piece of paper without paying someone some money and following their prescriptions.

The gist of the situation is that Gann’s book on John Cage is being held up. Why? He explains, “[Y]ou are no longer allowed to quote texts that are entire pieces of art. This means I’ve been trying to get permission simply to refer to Fluxus pieces like La Monte Young‘s ‘This piece is little whirlpools in the middle of the ocean,’ and Yoko Ono‘s ‘Listen to the sound of the earth turning.’ And of course, Yoko (whom I used to know) isn’t responding, and La Monte is imposing so many requirements and restrictions that I would have to add a new chapter to the book, and so in frustration well past the eleventh hour, I’ve excised the pieces from the text.”

Full entry at artsjournal.com/postclassic.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Gym music: all that equipment noise, cycled through @rjdj — and then the new Vladislav Delay. #
  • Probably last human on Earth to see 2nd Transformers movie. Sound design is insane: dense as Moulin Rouge!, but all industrial noise. #
  • Bruce Sterling — @bruces — has anointed an object with a story for @significobs http://is.gd/1WAyY #
  • Enjoying new Vladislav Delay album Tummaa. Pretty much first non-generative music I've listened to this week. Been deep in @rjdj on my iPod. #
  • If you Twitter it's #followfriday: sound artist @christofmigone & interactive app @rjdj — latter getting cool upgrade: http://bit.ly/2544IE #
  • Luggage Store Gallery tonight: Laptops, drums, more. #
  • Evening sounds: computer buzzing, distant typing, fridge hum, laundry next door (way muffled), minimal car and bus activity… #
  • Embarking on daily bus ride. Wanna hear new Vladislav Delay but will end up enjoying transformed environmental sounds through @rjdj again. #
  • Finally getting stuff uploaded to flickr, mostly tagged "soundart": http://flickr.com/photos/disquietpxl #
  • Do musicians need Twitter (& the like) to survive? We're discussing @missrouge's Whuffie book & @doctorow's original: http://is.gd/1RNYF #
  • RIP, George Russell (b. 1923), third-steam jazz magnet and magnate: http://is.gd/1RkDK #
  • Back from @classicalrev show. Cool organization, dropping classical acts into unlikely venues. Heard some Telemann, had a beer. #
  • Tonight out in San Francisco's Richmond District, @classicalrev is playing a classical show at Bazaar Cafe. Wonder what's on the program. #
  • Great San Francisco gallery New Langton is in financial trouble. Details, and an opportunity to pitch in, at http://www.newlangtonarts.org. #
  • Group discussion of book Whuffie Factor (about social capital) by @missrouge at http://artsjournal.com/gap. We're applying it to the arts. #
  • RIP, Merce Cunningham (b. 1919): http://is.gd/1OV89 RT @saraivry #
  • Morning sounds: foghorns and ice cubes, hard drive and garbage truck. #
  • Did a fresh OS reinstall on my five-year-old laptop, and now it's all speedy. Imagine that. #
  • Thanks to @michaelgregoire & @eleventhvolume & Prehab, I know to look at bottom of the iTunes screen for album's length when it's selected. #
  • Stupid question of the day: How does one view in iTunes the overall length of a given album? #
  • When I wake to see two hourly @oblique_chirps in a row, I realize I don't follow enough Twitter accounts on the other side of the world. #
  • While I reset my wireless router another round of The @rhawtin Drinking Game began. He's already played AGA (& REM?). My money on Alva Noto. #

Top 10 Posts from July

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Seven of the top 10 most viewed posts this past month were from the Disquiet Downstream section, one more than had been the case in June.

These range, in increasing popularity, from (1) Michael Bross‘s edits of field recordings of subways, to (2) a post commemorating the death of Danielle Baquet-Long (of the duo Celer), to (3) Alan Morse Davies‘s reworking of a 1936 recording of “Gloomy Sunday,” to (4) the textured cyberdread of 2methylBulbe1ol (aka French producer Nicolas Druoton), to (5) a found item by artist Steve Roden (a vinyl recording of the Great Stalacpipe Organ), to (6) Grassy Knoll‘s momentum-driven classic-rock mashup, to (7) percussive drones (whether or not that seems like an oxymoron) by Glenn Ryszko.

Rounding out the top 10, (8) a description of an art exhibit in Dortmund Germany, about ghost stories (with contributions by Tim Hecker and Scanner, among others), (9) a series of images of a giant microphone making its way around town, and (10) one particular week’s collected twitter.com/disquiet posts (with comments about the sound of sparking-wine riddling, Michael Mann‘s recent Public Enemies, and the eighth Parker novel, as well as an entry in my ongoing “The @rhawtin Drinking Game,” in which you try to guess what Richie Hawtin is going to DJ next, since he lists his track titles live via his Twitter account).