Month: February 2013

Disquiet Junto Project 0058: Endless Commons

The Assignment: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Endless Ascent netlabel.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130207-endlesscommons

*Each Thursday at [the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com](https://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 in the Junto is open: just [join and participate](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto).*

This assignment was made in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, February 7, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 11, 2013, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at [tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto)):

>Disquiet Junto Project 0058: Endless Commons
>
>This is a shared-sample project. Create a single new piece of music by employing the selected material (see below) of each the following three tracks. All three were initially released on the netlabel Endless Ascent, and were posted to the Internet with a Creative Commons license encouraging derivative reworking. Please only use this material; you can transform in any way you choose, but do not introduce any new source material.
>
>1: The 30 seconds of “Materia Lucida,” the title track of a release by Kirill Platonkin and Jarguna:
>
>http://www.endlessascent.com/ea023/ea023-Kirill\_Platonkin%7eJarguna-01-Materia\_Lucida.mp3
>
>2: The second 30 seconds of “With a Wimper” off Exuviae’s album The Sum of Zero:
>
>http://www.endlessascent.com/ea019/ea019-Exuviae-06-With\_A\_Wimper.mp3
>
>3: The final 30 seconds of “02” off Illuminoscillate’s album Solar Wave Phase:
>
>http://www.endlessascent.com/ea018/ea018-Illuminoscillate-02-02.mp3
>
>We’re doing this to pay thanks to the open-minded Endless Ascent, which not only releases its music for free download but also employs the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works. There are hundreds of netlabels out there, but only a small percentage allow for reworking. These occasional Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution.
>
>Deadline: Monday, February 11, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your finished work should be between 2 and 5 minutes in length.
>
>Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.
>
>Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0058-endlesscommons”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: For this project, your track should be set as downloadable, and allow for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
>
>Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
>
>This Disquiet Junto project was done as a celebration of the efforts of the Endless Ascent netlabel, and to support its employment of licenses that allow for derivative works. These Junto netlabel remix projects are intended to promote reworking as itself a means of music distribution. This track is comprised of three pieces of music, all originally released on Endless Ascent: “Materia Lucida,” the title track of a release by Kirill Platonkin and Jarguna, “With a Wimper” off Exuviae’s album The Sum of Zero, and “02” off Illuminoscillate’s album Solar Wave Phase. More on the Endless Ascent netlabel, and the original versions of these tracks, at http://www.endlessascent.com/.
>
>More on this 58th Disquiet Junto project at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/02/07/disquiet0058-endlesscommons/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Scandinavian Psychedelia

Opening a Swedish archive

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The web is often a place where old tracks go to stream. It’s a vast, inexpensive repository for the public consumption of works past their initially intended sell-by date. For active musicians, it is frequently the case that past work represents very much that, the past, and that as the past recedes the work from that time becomes all the less representative of who they are and what they are up to. Much as with yesterday’s recommended track, in which [Richard Chartier posted an old revisitation of an even older work](https://disquiet.com/2013/02/04/richard-chartier-pfiler/), the duo **Ï€ Dogx** has begun posting archival material. The initial track, “1. Trollskogen (M),” comes from their debut album, which dates from 2008, though what’s heard here was remastered at the tail end of 2012. It’s loopy, synthesized stuff, replete with warped vocals, shapeshifting samples, and sublimated field recordings. It’s deeply psychedelic.

https://soundcloud.com/peedogx/1-trollskogen-m

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/peedogx](https://soundcloud.com/peedogx/1-trollskogen-m). Ï€ Dogx is **Bo Davidson** and **HÃ¥kan Müller** of Linköping, Sweden.

Chartier Reworks Chartier Reworking Chartier

The self is a hall of mirrors: microsound edition

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

**Richard Chartier** has posted for free download a track from over half a decade back (its originating material over a decade old), six minutes of everyday noise transformed into glitchy distillates. It’s a track that represents him twice reworking his own music. The story goes as follows. Back in the late 1990s, when microsound — music made from, and expressing the inherent qualities of, low-level noises — was coming into its own, he released an album titled *Postfabricated*. There were, as he tells it, production issues; in particular, he writes, “a studio engineer not accustomed to this type of recorded material compromised the details of the sounds.” He subsequently tried to reconstruct the music from scratch, yielding a collection he titled *Repostfabricated*. And in turn he gave the source material to a slate of musicians and asked them to rework it, yielding *PostPostfabricated*. Among those musicians were **CoH**, **Vend**, **Asmus Tietchens**, **Frank Bretschneider**, **Goem**, **Taylor Deupree**, **Alva Noto**, **Freiband**, **Sogar**, **Byetone**, **Matmos**, **Steve Roden**, and Chartier himself. “Pfiler” is his reworking of his reworking of his own work:

https://soundcloud.com/richard-chartier/pfiler-by-richard-chartier

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/richard-chartier](https://soundcloud.com/richard-chartier/pfiler-by-richard-chartier). More from Chartier, who’s based in Washington, D.C., at [3particles.com](http://www.3particles.com/) and [twitter.com/3particles](https://twitter.com/3particles).

Layering Reality (MP3)

Three simultaneous field recordings from Jez Riley French

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

From the excellent TouchRadio podcast series comes an array of field recordings by **Jez Riley French**. Much of the TouchRadio series includes field recordings, some raw (as in the work of Chris Watson) and some cooked (wherein real world sounds are transformed into raw material for a composition). In the case of this piece by French, the approach is somewhere in between, a layering and sequencing of documentary audio ([MP3](http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio90.mp3)).

[audio:http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio90.mp3|titles=”instamatic blue mountains new south wales australia”|artists=Jez Riley French]

He explains the contents of his mix, a little over 12 and a half minutes in length and titled “instamatic: blue mountains, new south wales, australia”:

>One of a bower floor, with contact microphones and geophone (nb. some of these low frequencies will not be audible via computer speakers) alongside a dawn chorus amidst light rain – drops falling centimetres from a conventional stereo microphone. Towards the middle of the piece, a further contact microphone recording enters, revealing one of the most bizarre fence wire sounds i’ve yet managed to gather.

The above photo accompanied the track when it was first posted at [touchradio.org.uk](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_90_jez_riley_french.html). More from French at [jezrileyfrench.co.uk](http://www.jezrileyfrench.co.uk/).

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum