The Berkeley, California”“based composer and sound designer Kent Sparling remixed a Shostakovich chamber symphony along with dozens of his Disquiet Junto colleagues, back when the 13th project was underway (the series has now had almost three times as many projects). The projects have a strict deadline inherent in their definition. In part this is an organizational matter, but it’s also part of the ethos of the projects, which is to provide a situation in which the musicians are comfortable failing in public — if you aren’t entirely pleased with your work, you can always just point out that it was made under demanding restrictions, but no matter what you have attempted the challenge and produced something.
And, if you are somewhat pleased, you can subsequent to the project work on it some more, which is precisely what Sparling — whose work in films include the score to Wayne Wang’s The Princess of Nebraska — did, taking the drone he exuded from the source material and lending, to these ears, more tonal diversity.
This is the earlier version, “Parcel [disquiet0013-wildup],” created for the project in its original time frame:
This is the further refinement, “Designs,” completed subsequent to the initial project:
The tracks were posted for free download to Sparling’s SoundCloud.com account (“Parcel,” “Designs”). More on and from Sparling at jicamasalad.net and jicamasalad.bandcamp.com.