Month: April 2012

IoNiZeR Previews Forthcoming Album (MP3)

"The shape of things to come"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A new IoNiZeR track is always a welcome thing. The Belgium-based producer actively recalls the more dramatic episodes in the early Ninja Tune catalog, work like that of Amon Tobin and Funki Porcini, and from them spins new yarns. If so-called IDM took the sounds of dance music and warped them into something more headphone-oriented, then IoNiZeR takes production touches from industrial, techno, and even aspects of drum’n’bass and house and renders from them something just short of pure atmosphere. The beat on “4th Dimension” is so slowly paced, it’s almost there simply to remind the listener, on occasion, that indeed this is a song. Sampled dialog and spacious breaks further the impression that this is less a song and more a forgotten episode of The Outer Limits leaking through from your neighbor’s living room. One phrase in particular, “The shape of things to come,” encodes a practical message, in that the song is intended as a teaser for an album due out later this year.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/ionizer-ion. Previous Disquiet coverage of IoNiZeR includes the New Global Disorder and Infused Fear albums.

Disquiet Junto Project 0012: Alternate Rurality

The Assignment: Use "cut and paste" to combine two 1928 recordings of rural music.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


Each Thursday evening at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership to the Junto is open: just join and participate.

For the 12th weekly project, the participants were given a pair of source recordings, both from 1928, and both representing rural sound. The nature of the source material differed significantly, between the hoe-down quality of one from the American south, and the slavic tinge to the one from Slovenia. The goal of the project was to utilize material from both tracks to create one new track, reconciling the disparate sounds, and locating, or forcing, a semblance of unity. Some participants’ tracks found a klezmer-like flavor to the latter material, and then walked back from that to the dance-oriented former source.

The project included a particularly restrictive instruction: participants could only employ cut and paste in creating their works. The idea was in part to suggest a rural-like sensibility in the cut and paste approach, given how rudimentary a tool it is.

The assignment was made late in the day on Thursday, March 22, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, March 26, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries: disquiet0012-cutpaste. As of this writing, there are 30 tracks associated with the tag.

Here are the instructions that were presented to members of the Disquiet Junto:

Disquiet Junto Project 0012: Alternate Rurality

Instructions:

Deadline: Monday, March 26, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Plan: The 12th weekly Junto project requires you to take two existing recordings and to make something new by combining them. You will accomplish this solely by using “cut and paste,” and you will only use audio from the two provided source tracks. By “cut and paste” it is meant that you will use segments, however brief or lengthy, in the construction of your track. (You will not .otherwise transform them: i.e., you won’t slow, speed, or process them.) This project explores two matters. One is the historically important technique of cut and paste. The other is alternate conceptions of “rural” sensibilities: while both recordings date from 1928, one is from the American south, while the other is a Slovenian folk song.

Length: Please keep your piece to between two and five minutes in length.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0012-cutpaste”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.

Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:

The two source tracks originally made available at:

http://www.archive.org/details/Stomp
http://www.archive.org/details/Michael_Lapchaka-Rezeda_Czardas

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

The image up top accompanied the track by Echosonic, who is based in Hampshire, Britain.

Digital Dub’s Metal Past (MP3)

An unreleased 2000 EP from the trio Teledubgnosis

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


There is a new record due out from the rigorous metal trio Prong. On the surface, that release has little to do with ambient electronic music, but the continued development of Prong has had many overlaps with excursions into technologically enhanced music. The band’s leader, Tommy Victor, has played extensively with the industrial rock band Ministry. As for Prong, its most electrified recordings were, arguably, among its earliest, when the band still included its founding drummer, Ted Parsons, who has also played with Foetus, Bill Laswell, Swans, Godflesh, Jesu, and Killing Joke. Parsons now lives in Oslo, Norway, and he has over the years been part of another trio, Teledubgnosis, which teams him with Jason Wolford and Gregory Damien Grinnell. Wolford has recently been posting the Teledubgnosis catalog for streaming on his Soundcloud account. And he set one of them, apparently an unreleased EP dating from 2000, for free download. Folks who like the cut’n’paste aesthetic of early Ninja Tune, and the dub jazz of Grassy Knoll, just to note two points of referential orientation, will appreciate the dense, hip-hop”“associative tracks like “Ladies and Gentlemen” and “Sonic,” and the the deep echoes of “Superdub.”

Set available for free download at soundcloud.com/wirerecordings. More on Teledubgnosis at teledubgnosis.com.

It’s not entirely clear if Parsons performs on this album. The notes on the post read: “There is an interesting story behind this very dated and lofi gem. This one could’ve gone a totally different direction. Ask me about it sometime. But I like it as it is. It’s the little EP that could but never did. Guest vocals and trumpet by Regina Chellew, Norman Westberg and Kurt Wolf on guitar. David Wm. Sims on Bass. Heather Pauwe on violin. And the very much missed George Javori on percussion.”

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Thanks to @SactownMagazine‘s new website my old interview with Pakistan-born rapper Bohemia is now online: http://t.co/rogKjZQh #
  • Interviewed Morton Subotnik and Tommy Victor (of Prong) in the same afternoon. I love the 21st century. #
  • The Disquiet Junto instruction email last night went into some people’s spam folders. Project is here: http://t.co/XdRJsrQ9 #
  • What he said. RT @Chegreco 14e Junto du merveilleux Disquiet sera un bel « excercice de style » musical | Oulipo ¬ Oubapo ¬ Oumupo | #
  • #junto I love it. Bonus points for 99-second entries. RT @mmaddencomics none of this 2-7 minutes mollycoddling: It’s 99 seconds or nothing! #
  • The 14th Disquiet Junto is a sonic-narrative rendition of @mmaddencomics‘ 99 Ways to Tell a Story: http://t.co/XdRJsrQ9 #
  • 14th Disquiet Junto project instructions went out to email list. No translations right now (I was traveling), but we may have some shortly. #
  • Now: tunnel remix of aforementioned quasi-monophonic lofi surround sound version of public radio. With playful honking. #
  • Stuck in traffic. Public-radio broadcasts coming from multiple slow-moving vehicles. An automotive 40 Part Motet. #

    • Continue reading “Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet”

Disquiet Junto 0014: Sonic Narrative

The Assignment: Do a sonic version of Matt Madden's Exercises in Style.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

2012-maddenjunto

*Each Thursday evening at [the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com](http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership to the Junto is open: [just join and participate](http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/).*

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 5, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, April 9, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list:

>Disquiet Junto 0014: Sonic Narrative
>
>Subject: This project, the 14th in the weekly Disquiet Junto series, is about sonic narrative.
>
>Instructions: You will re-tell a very short and simple story — an anecdote really, an everyday slice of life — utilizing sound. It will take the form of a single audio file uploaded to your Soundcloud account. You will construct this track in any manner you choose: with field recordings, music, effects, dialog, or a mix thereof. The story you will be re-telling is this single-page comic strip by Matt Madden:
>
>http://goo.gl/TBI3x
>
>In the process of re-telling the story through sound, you may interpret it in any way you choose. You can do it as straight narrative, or do an abstract rendition, or retell it from another point of view, or contribute a score as if it were a movie, or a record series of foley cues. The choice is yours.
>
>Background: Matt Madden’s single-page comic is the template for a book he created titled 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style. In the book, Madden told that same story 99 different ways, each in a different comic-book style. For example, he told it as a superhero comic, he told it as a manga, he told it as experienced from upstairs, and he told it as if it were overheard at a bar. Madden did this in homage to the French writer Raymond Queneau’s own Exercises in Style, which is a key text of the literary movement known as Oulipo. Oulipo approaches the act of writing with intentional constraints, and the movement’s approach to creativity was a strong influence on the development of the Disquiet Junto. Oubapo is the name of the comics version of Oulipo. What we’re up to is the musical version: Oumupo
>
>Length: Please keep your piece to between two and seven minutes in length.
>
>Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0014-oumupo”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.
>
>Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:
>
>More on Matt Madden and his book 99 Ways to Tell a Story at:
>
>http://mattmadden.com/
>http://exercisesinstyle.com/
>
>More on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/