- Listening to Breakbeat Era's Ultra-Obscene on vinyl while tidying cable spaghetti in my office. How is this album already a decade old? #
- This so-called "dry lightning" over San Francisco is insane. The house just rattled like a big bass drum in some sludge-metal song. #
- Story hed from today's @nytimes uninformed, obnoxious, or both: "At Last, Artists Harness the Internet" At last? http://is.gd/3bQVd #
- Crazy bright light flashes over San Francisco at 4am while foghorns drone. Straight outta Close Encounters. Lightning storm? #
- Someday soon, I'm gonna go to a chamber music concert, and listen to the whole thing through @rjdj #
- Friday morning sounds: foghorns out in force. #
- Excellent in empty office to not be at all confused to hear cute melody emanate from someone's cellphone buried deep in an unseen handbag. #
- Man, Ennio Morricone to conduct his own work at the Hollywood Bowl? This may require a trip to Los Angeles: http://is.gd/37yx3 #
- Glad iTunes 9 includes liner notes. Wondering if the ones I did for the Nina Simone: Nina Sings Nina album I compiled will be part of this. #
- Morning listen: an interview with Italian prog-rock group Goblin about scoring Dario Argento's art-horror flicks: http://is.gd/34Zcp #
- Uploaded my first @audioboo field recording (of a ceiling fan), inspired by the @hearthisworld project of @alexismadrigal http://is.gd/33oCW #
- One of the great things in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is hearing music out of context, especially Ennio Morricone score cues. #
- While shopping for oven, thought of a guy in junior high who named his RPG character Electrolux. I'd laughed. Others hated the anachronism. #
- Seems meaningful/fitting that the opening of Miles Davis's "Freddie Freeloader" covered on Kind of Bloop compilation sounds like Steely Dan. #
- Installing all of Ableton Live 8's libraries seems to take longer than installing Windows 7. #
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
• 0455 / Inner Invertebrate / The Assignment: What does a moment (or a day) in the life of a jellyfish sound like to a jellyfish?
• 0454 / Lsoo Vneg / The Assignment: Encode the name of someone you love into a piece of music.
• 0453 / Dial Up / The Assignment: Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound.
• 0452 / Let's Scream / The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music.
• 0451 / Ursula's Silences / Make music inspired by a line from A Wizard of Earthsea.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 455 consecutive weeks to date.