- Evening sounds: footsteps, bus, house rattle due to bus, hard drives, refrigerator, airplane, bum fluorescent bulb. #
- ♫ Afternoon audio-stream: Grateful Dead (yes, the Dead) at their most spacey/experimental, titled "Infrared Roses": http://is.gd/4TwIN #
- Reading about composer Carl Stone in the 11/9 New Yorker — part of a story about LA-trotting chowhound Jonathan Gold: http://is.gd/4Tpwp #
- ♫ Audiostreams for the afternoon: sneak listen to excerpts from forthcoming @robinrimbaud 'Conversations with the Dead': http://is.gd/4SP9e #
- RIP, Albert Elms (b. 1920), film & TV composer (notably for the trippy Patrick McGoohan thriller series The Prisoner): http://is.gd/4SBDb #
- ♫ Afternoon free audio-stream: a 10-minute exercise in glitchy dub from DJ Erase (aka Daniel Troberg): http://is.gd/4RYJh #
- A: "The hum of time." Q: What did Nabokov's unpublished work need to survive before his son felt it was publishable: http://is.gd/4RTD4 #
- Morning sounds, post-sleep/pre-wake: muffled helicopter coming by from distance resembles, for extended time, an off-kilter foghorn. #
- MP3 Discussion Group: Is new John (Ultravox) Foxx & Robin (Cocteau Twins) Guthrie album shoegazeriffic or too new-agey? http://is.gd/4R9J5 #
- Morning sounds, in sequence: alarm (ancient-school hip-hop), alarm (snooze-breeze r&b), refrigerator, garbage truck. #
- Morning sounds: hard drives, shower, free MP3 of Jack Dangers remix of Terry Riley's "In C" — via @richard_kadrey: http://bit.ly/4ApBIR #
- Gym music: a whole lot of Stones Throw Beat Battle renditions. #
- In the mail today, three albums: one LP, one 7", one CD — what year is it? #
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
• 0472 / Jam Time (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.
• 0471 / Phase Transition / The Assignment: The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
• 0470 / Calendar View / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
• 0469 / [Missing in Caption] / The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.
• 0468 / Mirror Rorrim / The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 472 consecutive weeks to date.