- There is something inherently humorous about getting a busy signal when one calls a phone company. #
- Anyone else in San Francisco having trouble with AT&T Internet access this morning? #
- Having revisited Vitiello's World Trade Center audio, I am apparently marking 911's 10th anniversary by (finally) reading Mira Grant's Feed. #
- The strongest art memorial to WTC 9/11 may have been made two years before 9/11: http://t.co/aIMg0Ws #
- When subject line cuts off after "New 8 hour e" it's nice to find spam hasn't gotten past your filter. Just a long recording. #
- RIP, Michael Hart (b. 1947), founder of Project Gutenberg (via @dylanhorrocks) #
- Great first night @sfemf — five sets in less than two hours. A good, brisk start. #
- RIP, Andrew Householder (b. 1932), my high school chorus teacher. #
- Looking forward to @sfemf starting tonight @sfmoma. Really wish the Saturday concert didn't conflict with Ikue Mori at Mills. #
- The Bark of the Fugue #CanineClassical #
- Magnifidog #CanineClassical #sorry #
- Beethoven's Symphony No. K9 #CanineClassical #
- RIP, George Kuchar (b. 1942), underground filmmaker: http://t.co/92njnTs #
- The good news is there's a new Steven Soderbergh film this Friday. The great news is there's a new Cliff Martinez score. #contagion #
- RIP, visionary (and visions-inducing) experimental filmmaker Jordan Belson (b. 1926) via @geetadayal @CtrVisualMusic @quartzcity #
- Amazing how well Win7 netbook runs after reducing visual fx, turning off Media Player Network Sharing Service & limiting searchable folders. #
- Very glad to learn Alphas was renewed for a second season. Second most sound-conscious TV drama, bested only by Fringe. #
- Took one-year-old for routine checkup blood draw. The lab waiting room had tons of generic mags and one novel: Zero History by @GreatDismal #
- RIP, Creole legend Wardell Quezergue (b. 1930), whose Nola label recorded Robert Parker’s “Barefootin’”plus work by Eddie Bo and Willie Tee #
- [email protected] Yeah, that Belkin looks like what I'm thinking. This is what I'm currently pondering, or maybe a pair of 'em: http://t.co/ce7mZJt #
- Batteries: 47%, 88%. Headphones: Mute. Day: 72%. #
- Is there an easy way for audio going into the mic jack of a Windows machine to be immediately funneled out the headphone jack? #
- Half of the 10 cuts on the Metallica/Reed/Willner album are over 8 minutes long. One is almost 20. #
- In this cafe everyone's cellphone ring sounds like an episode of House is about to start. #
- PR processing: Create "PR email" folder. Then a folder for "interesting" PR. Then a folder for "truly" interesting. Then for "musts" … ∞ #
- Christian Marclay and Ikue Mori are playing the Bay Area this weekend. It's like I never left SoHo or the 1980s. #
- No fog horn, but the Tuesday noon siren bled into the noon bells. #
- Sun's coming out, but remain hopeful for fog horn duet with Tuesday noon siren. #
- These days when a band or solo musician appears after a decades-long break I immediately think, "Madoff retirement plan." #
- Amazing how more smoothly Win7 runs on netbook with few tweaks to visuals, indexing, start-up programs. Why isn't there a netbook setting? #
- Fog horns at their most Close Encounters of the Third Kind”“tastic. #
- Ubuntu: shouldn't be this difficult to install DropBox. Otherwise nice and stable. (Vaguely related: Acer should make RAM upgrades simpler.) #
- Battery: 98%. Volume: 35%. Day: 56%. #
- "That is the death metal of exhaust fans," says @markrushtoncom http://t.co/hslZZpC #
- Phone-made field recording of perhaps the loudest bathroom fan (76 decibels or so) on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco http://t.co/hslZZpC #
- Battery: 95%. Volume: 78%. Day: 39%. #
- Consider Kickstarter-ing Joshua Izenberg's I, Slomo doc. I just did. It's about a neurologist who rollerblades in slomo. http://t.co/YkZwcia #
- Evening sounds: Nothing but the high pitch of a house with a not inordinate amount of electrical devices. #
- SF Zine Fest was pretty great. Lots of self-published works, plus paintings, buttons, stickers, stationery, and more. #
- Baby's first experience of Coroner's cover of the Beatles' "She's So Heavy." Every doom-metal band must cover the proto-drone-rock classic. #
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
• 0465 / You Thank / The Assignment: Make a piece of music for someone or something for which you feel thankful.
• 0464 / Blanket Song / The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
• 0463 / Making the Gradient / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by the concept of a gradient.
• 0462 / Vade in Pace / The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.
• 0461 / Goldilocks Zone / The Assignment: Navigate a sonic space between the hospitable and the inhospitable.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 465 consecutive weeks to date.