- Headed out shortly to afternoon performance by Jim Haynes, William Fowler Collins, & others at On Land Festival at SF’s Cafe du Nord. #
- Morning sounds: bus, hard drive, some little animal on the roof. And, shortly, my copy of Method of Defiance’s album Nihon (RareNoise). #
- All week pondered tonight’s tough concert choice: Joan La Barbara or Bill Laswell? Laswell wins, based on Toshinori Kondo’s participation. #
- Excellent @boccalone sandwich from its bike-powered cart at @vegaatlangton today. Love the San Francisco utilitarian mobile food activity. #
- Thanks to @mmaddencomics & @wcraghead for Yo Gabba Gabba! tip. Someone had previously, & I feel bad I don’t recall who: http://bit.ly/7phA0 #
- RIP, Leon Kirchner (b. 1919), whose 1967 Pulitzer Prize was for a piece for string quartet and tape. http://is.gd/3pIUn http://is.gd/3pIWN #
- Best part of SFEMF concert last night was watching Don Buchla enjoy Lukas Ligeti rocking Buchla’s Marimba Lumina: http://is.gd/3ooeZ #
- Officially addicted to Pandora’s Tribe Called Quest channel. And to making playlists of instrumental versions of hip-hop tracks in fizy.com. #
- RIP, Mary Travers (b. 1936). I learned a lot at a young age from Peter, Paul, and you about tight harmony and pop psychedelia. #
- Headed to opening night of San Francisco Electronic Music Festival. Always comes around near anniversary of my return to this great city. #
- Disquiet.com due for upgrade. Reader input requested: http://is.gd/3lDm1 Subjects = ambient music, sound-as-art, reactive sound. #
- If you use @audioboo on your iPhone/Touch, consider joining a small geo-coded sound army: http://is.gd/3ldSB #
- Morning sounds: hard drive, buses flying by at unusually fast pace, general (which is to say minimal) traffic. No birds, no planes. #
- Wishing I could watch Echolalia, the invented Werner Herzog movie introduced in first chapter of Chronic City, Jonathan Lethem's new novel. #
- That old dog whining outside turns out not to have been a dog — it was a steel door being lowered. #
- RIP, punk poet Jim Carroll (b. 1950), who has joined all the "People Who Died" RT @richard_kadrey #
- Why are the On Land Festival & the SF Electronic Music Festival the same weekend? (Plus, Bill Laswell's in town with Toshinori Kondo.) #
- Listening to piano-tronic soundbed by @hecanjog — I got it for helping fund @kickstarter tour of him & @alwaystokyo http://is.gd/3e4Cc #
- RIP, saxophonist Luther Thomas (b. 1950). His Defunkt & James Chance work helped condition ears to fractured rhythms http://is.gd/3dTka #
- Cooking first meal in brand new oven — as the chicken bakes, acquainting myself with new button beeps and timer alarms. #
- Finally got USB audio hooked up to Vista 64 machine (Windows 7 on near horizon, of course). The UA-25EX pipes clean, static-free sound. #
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
• 0456 / Line Up / The Assignment: Interpret a painting by Agnes Martin as if it were a graphic score.
• 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.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 456 consecutive weeks to date.