- Excited to see musical based on Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend tonight. Concerned it's not based on Robert Quine & Richard Lloyd's guitar parts. #
- Great news to wake to: the @rjdj "music hack day" is coming to San Francisco on May 15 & 16: http://is.gd/c07PK #
- Donor categories for Other Minds Fest: minimalist, impressionist, neo-classical, post-modernist, expressionist, electro-acoustic, maximalist #
- Just saw great Bill Cunningham doc, in which he describes how he was instructed to use the camera like a pen — phonographers take note. #
- Few things make me as happy as the Radio Shack spam emails telling you there's still time to get that perfect gift for Mom. #
- Thanks to @wammusic & @errrvolpe for write-up on Despite the Downstream ("alluringly open-ended and intriguing"): http://twurl.nl/vpkdv3 #
- I'm no audiophile but really good jazz on a really bad stereo can sound like really bad jazz, can sound like the opposite of the jazz it is. #
- On the bus, three people at once folding newspaper sections, a sound all the more nuanced because of its increasing scarcity. #
- Unfamiliar noise amid city traffic. Filter out cars, buses, people, bicycles. What's left? The busy-beaver buzz of a Segway along Valencia. #
- Photocopy machine doing its qawwali dirge again, no doubt mourning the dead tech that lines the street corners of SoMa here in San Francisco #
- BoingBoing picked up my Despite the Downturn found-score "answer album" compilation. Major congrats to the participants: http://is.gd/bVLCh #
- Four Barrel Coffee (SF) is hardcore: vinyl-only music (a barista said an occasional iPod gets plugged in), no wifi, & no electrical outlets. #
- Dang. Robotspeak on Haight Street is closing, to focus on education. Bought my USB audio and Kaoss Pad there, & took Ableton Live lessons. #
- 9th track (2nd post-launch) added to the Despite the Downturn "answer album," this one by Jettatura / @jamesrotondi http://is.gd/bTUtt #
- 1st post-launch track (and 8th total) added to Atlantic response album Despite the Downturn: http://is.gd/bTUtt by @my_fun #
- Pretty psyched. I commissioned 7 musicians to respond to Megan McArdle's recent Atlantic story about copyright & music: http://is.gd/bT9O8 #
- Charles Stross on Apple v. Adobe: First year Apple's WWDC awards only open to iPhone/iPad apps. "Mac apps need not apply" http://is.gd/bT3My #
- Odd sensation: uploading something to @internetarchive / archive.org, knowing its offices are less than 20 blocks away. #
- ♫ Noon tune: Background music by Andreas Bick for radio play based on work by Roland Barthes, all ambient guitar texture: http://is.gd/bSuZn #
- Morning sounds: garbage truck, hard drive, distant cars, nearby bus. #
- Listening to music while reading ebook on Kindle-for-PC. Needed to get up. Had urge to pause not only the music but the book. #
- Love the Internet: 7 days in, have 7 completed tracks from 7 acts for sonic-activism compilation. More to follow. Should debut in 24 hours. #
- Auction for @resonancefm: Marclay slipmaps, Bailey poster, C. Palestine toy, Umeda Rice Cannon, Papadimitriou walk, more: http://j.mp/9wLjVP #
- Pretty neat: Last night dreamt I talked with Chuck Berry for long time. Little less neat: Was the Mos Def Chuck Berry from Cadillac Records. #
- Such an odd societal consensus that things in ALL CAPS "sound" loud. Even A TINY PIN DROP or MERE FILAMENT OF WHITE NOISE seem ear-damaging. #
- I don't prefer to type in green-on-black in fixed-width font 'cause it's retro. It's 'cause it's the environment in which I learned to write #
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about
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Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media
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Current Activities
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Upcoming
• December 13, 2022: This day marks the 26th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2023: This day marked the 11th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community. -
Recent
• April 16, 2022: I participated in an online "talk show" by The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier).
• March 11, 2022: I hosted a panel discussion between Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and James Bradbury in San Francisco as part of the Algorithmic Art Assembly (aaassembly.org) at Gray Area (grayarea.org).
• December 28, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marked the 25th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the 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.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the 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.) -
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• 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).
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disquiet junto
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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 -
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• 0541 / 10BPM Techno / The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.
• 0540 / 5ive 4our / The Assignment: Take back 5/4 for Jedi time masters Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.
• 0539 / Control Breath / The Assignment: Let your slow breathing guide a piece of music.
• 0538 / Guided Decompression / The Assignment: Get someone from tense to chill.
• 0537 / Penitent Honk / The Assignment: Do sound design for "a missing gesture" of vehicular life. -
Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 541 consecutive weeks to date. Archives
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Recent Posts
2 Comments
Quine & Lloyd: Those two on that record totally saved & defied the notion of being a hired gun musician.
Through the magic of T-Mobile, I can reply during intermission. The show’s guitarist, Shelley Doty, can seriously handle the stuff. She’s great.