- Amazing how many outlets covered the (now disproved) Samsung-laptop-keylogger story & how many failed to update their initial posts. #
- Especially conscious of birdsong this morning, likely because @maxwillens reminded me of Jeroen Diepenmaat's taxidermy turntables. #
- These noise-cancelling earbuds are strong. But Rufus Wainwright's nasal whine is stronger. #
- If you're writing-fluent in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, or Spanish & want to help on free-music-culture project, please get in touch. #
- A stage in letterpress project I mentioned yesterday morning: RT @boondesign Polymer plates by Rocket http://instagr.am/p/DL-2G/ #
- Today's best sound: Senior citizen taking hammer to hard drive on sidewalk in front of home. #
- If I get all this done today, I will celebrate by buying The Pale King. If I don't, I will console myself by buying The Pale King. #
- [email protected] Fetish & nostalgia do drive vinyl sales, certainly. That I can't celebrate. Sound quality, art — that I can celebrate. #
- I really like the idea of Record Store Day but it feels much more like Fetish Object Day than Music Day. #
- Record Store Day's neat. But commercial music also needs Day When Publicists Send Emails to Interested Parties Not Entire Rolodex. #
- He speaks the truth. RT @compactrobot 75% of RSD is repackaged existing music and/or classic rock. like waiting in line to pay for promos. #
- Guy with MacBook Air just bummed cigarette from guy with Asus netbook. #
- Want to see Atlas Shrugged, but think I'm going to wait to borrow the DVD from the public library. #
- Wanted to see Atlas Shrugged matinee, but someone bought out the whole theater so as to avoid watching it with us hoi polloi. #
- RIP, Tokyopop, a great competitor during my 5 Shonen Jump years. Confused you're closing within month of Priest movie, but so be it. #
- Fave CDs of week: @markisham Conspirators score w/ @zoecello, @underworldlive Frankenstein score, @seth_cluett Objects in Stillness #
- Only way to explain dude near me in cafe is that his therapist instructed him to sit in a public place for half an hour. Breathe easy, dude. #
- And has for 13 years. Thank you, @MetropolisMag. RT @mmaddencomics How many fans realize @benkatchor publishes new comics every month? #
- When I read a movie review that doesn't mention the score, my impression is that the reviewer really wasn't paying attention. #
- Progress! RT @distrec Added an RSS feed to the new site. Reminded to by the @disquiet netlabel checklist http://tinyurl.com/6zzvgvq #
- Protest for artist Ai Weiwei Sunday, April 17, 1pm local time at the Chinese consulate/embassy near you #1001ChairsForAiWeiwei #
- Next tweet courtesy of @vuzhmusic … #
- RIP, Dot founder Randy Wood (b. 1917), who told Lawrence Welk to “record music that is more for listening than dancing.”http://goo.gl/JMnCO #
- Biting off UI to spite UX: Seriously, @nytimes? I must log in before using Twitter button to inform people about an article? #
- Received new @MetropolisMag. Saw no Ben Katchor strip. Felt heart sink. Turned back page. Saw Katchor spread. Experienced relief. #
- "Commercial culture does more to harm open culture than the other way around." @dpnem on the #netlabel checklist: http://ow.ly/4xLOt #
- Morning sounds (in sequence): refrigerator hum, bus (west), typing, car (west), refrigeration turning off, car (east), helicopter (north). #
- Among today's album packages, one labeled "No Commercial Value." #irony #recordindustry #musicindustry #factsoflife #selfaware #
- Allow me to be the 100+th person to share this: underwater microphone captures March 11, 2011, Honshu, Japan, earthquake http://t.co/ZnRtBKH #
- Heading out for library-bound walk with my seven-month-old. Which continent/country should we dine from? #richmondistrict #
- Netlabel checklist discussion: podcasts, (blatant) self-promotion, ID tags, streaming v. downloading: http://ow.ly/4xLOt Please join in. #
- If you do the Facebook, there's a Disquiet.com page for that: http://www.facebook.com/disquiet.fb #
- And somewhere across town someone is letterpress-ing something I wrote. Nifty. #
- My favorite szechuan (southwest China) restaurant is now a dongbei (northeast) restaurant. Tonight I'll find out if that's good news. #
- There's a certain pleasure to writing an extended sequence of nothing but full declarative sentences. #
- Attended a concert with actual singing. Singing: voice to mic to amp to ear. A little guitar, drums, shaker. A keyboard helped me adjust. #
- RT @vuzhmusic Thought I was hearing cicadas today at school; turned out to be oscillating sound coming from truck engine that needs repair. #
- Reading about pendulums. #
- Google Street View of Saul Bass' downtown Sacramento sculpture designed for the Fuller Paint Company: http://goo.gl/voabO #
- Reminder: Boulder's Communikey Fest starts today: Monolake, '60s Polish soundcards, Laura Goldhamer's speaker drum, etc. http://goo.gl/8AwyG #
- Spent many hours/dollars in that store. RT @pheezy RIP, Peter Howard http://bit.ly/dOv9HW (of Serendipity Books in Berkeley) #
- RIP, Charles Laufer (b. 1923), founder of Tiger Beat, http://nyti.ms/e1kN6T #
- Trying to wean myself off yubnub.org (the “command line for the web”). Again. #
- Narrative is an even more powerful force than genre, as any good DJ will tell you. #
- Helicopter hovering over the rainy Richmond District. Cougar or rabid dog? #
- Grammy formally acknowledges video-game music http://goo.gl/6ZenN — something we discussed just before this year's: http://goo.gl/5KGD0 #
- RT @quietdesign have lived in austin my whole life… have had some surreal cicada listening experiences. 30,000 channel nature installation #
- Austin's anthem. RT @kitty_d cicadas are out tonite. love that sound. @eartwit #
- Very pleased with discussion going on in response to my proposed checklist of how netlabels best function http://ow.ly/4xLOt Please join in. #
- Second only to fog horns, the sheer density/variety of languages/accents in my neighborhood thrills me almost daily. #richmonddistrict #
- It'd be cool if we could listen to other people's @soudcloud dashboard/incoming tracks, hear what their sequence of followings is. #
- I like to think that the "free" in "free jazz" is a verb as well as an adjective. #
- RIP, free jazz violinist Billy Bang (b. William Walker, 1947), via @daveseidel #
- Thanks, @davidvermillion — thought the @simplenoteapp sync issue was on my end. Some sort of error eating any new notes (Win7, Resoph). #
- Prepping to observe a Tues siren test in San Francisco. I think it's Cantonese. Japan's quake make ours seem less remote, more preparatory. #
- Ken Burns on the "acoustic shadows" of the Civil War http://goo.gl/Cfm0q (with a tremendous editorial illustration by Henrik Drescher) #
- On The Chicago Code, Jennifer Beals looks like Steve Dillon drew her circa Preacher. #
- RT @digiki I was stepping in shower this morning when I heard earthquake warning from school next door; it has a kind of Vangelis texture #
- New netbook means new hard drive and fan. New hard drive and fan means new sounds added to daily life. #
- RT (from Tokyo) @digiki If the situation continues, I'm sure we could ask Cornelius to compose a melody for those alerts #
- RT (from Tokyo) @digiki I would be less stressed if I could change sound of earthquake warnings to "fasten your seat belts" in-flight sound #
- RIP, composer Daniel Catán (b. 1949), whose Il Postino just opened at the LA Opera, and who scored Bruce Wagner's film I'm Losing You. #
- RIP, minimalist sculptor John McCracken (b. 1934): http://goo.gl/BVCJn #
- RIP, Steely Dan engineer Roger Nichols (b. 1944) http://goo.gl/kJCPK #aja #thenightfly #
- Master class. RT @pheezy: Trimpin gave @disquiet and I a demonstration of his spinning speakers http://flic.kr/p/9xDYeA #
- Now that Panda Country morphed into a less Szechuan place, is there a better tan tan noodle than the one at Spices on Clement? #sanfrancisco #
- Is there a good cafe in the Richmond District open after 10pm? #sanfrancisco #
- The pinnning of tabs in Chrome & Firefox 4 would be more enticing if it didn't seem to preclude appearance of tab-specific notifications. #
- An excellent, ear-opening day at the CCRMA/Stanford diy-instrument fest. Thanks to @pheezy for the company. #
- Tom Duff's tabletop banjo http://ow.ly/i/ad0J from today's CCRMA/Stanford diy instrument event today #
- Charles Gadeken's gargantuan, Tesla-tastic "Aperion": http://ow.ly/i/acY3 Live from CCRMA diy instrument fest #
- Headed to CCRMA/Stanford for "DIY musical instruments" event http://goo.gl/uWKra feat. Trimpin, Leonard, Duff, Thingamajigs, more #
- Back from Amoeba. Some ancient instrumental hip-hop vinyl (Pharcyde, Souls of Mischief, the Roots), and a new WSB-ish John Zorn CD. #
- Banh mi shop chamber music: cash register, kitchen bell, chatter, dining ware, archaic refrigerator, shoes on faux-marble tile. #
-
about
-
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
Field Notes
Interviews
Studio Journal
Projects
Subscribe
-
Current Activities
-
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.) -
-
• 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 -
-
• 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
[email protected]
Downstream
-
Recent Posts