Month: April 2013

Arcka’s Beat Deck

The compilation-in-progress from the Philly-based producer

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

**Arcka**, the Philly-based rhythmsmith, continues his run of *52pickUpbeetz*, a compilation-in-progress of homemade, sample-based percussive riffs, each tied to a different card pulled from a deck. The effort, which just expanded to include its ninth consecutive track, bears Arcka’s trademark use of lesser-known snippets of soul, hip-hop, and other favorites as the raw material from which he constructs his avant-hop experiments. This time around, he is heard using more vocal samples than listeners may be accustomed to. Recent highlights include the post-rock interplay of “ad: Mos’Flow 2”and the loungey exotica of “10s: We Dont Need”:

Get them all for free download at [arckatron.us](http://arckatron.us/album/52pickupbeetz).

“Whining Train Carriage Chassis at Stratford Railway Station (SRA)”

Everyday noise and its underlying tension, courtesy of Dizzy Banjo

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130420-dizzytrain

**Dizzy Banjo**, aka **Robert Thomas**, has made countless iOS devotees appreciate the musicality, the sonic essence, of everyday noises through apps like RJDJ, as well as prominent developments associated with the film *Inception* and the last of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. In those apps, quotidian noise gets transformed into rhythmic, tonal, often melodic explorations that highlight the musicality of the source material. And then, sometimes, Thomas simply posts unmediated raw recordings of everyday sound to his [soundcloud.com/dizzybanjo](https://soundcloud.com/dizzybanjo/whining-train-carriage-chassis) account, such as the recent “Whining Train Carriage Chassis at Stratford Railway Station (SRA).”That could be the title to a lost Raymond Carver short story. And in a manner it is, in that by focusing on the electric whine of the transit system, Thomas emphasizes the droning anxiety of the commuter’s routine.

https://soundcloud.com/dizzybanjo/whining-train-carriage-chassis

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/dizzybanjo](https://soundcloud.com/dizzybanjo/whining-train-carriage-chassis). More from Thomas at [dizzybanjo.com](http://www.dizzybanjo.com/) and [twitter.com/dizzybanjo](https://twitter.com/dizzybanjo).

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • More anechoic-chamber porn: How to gauge quiet computers: http://t.co/SpcJveddW0. Via @ioflow ->
  • Bonobo album poster uses "DNL" to refer to "download." Is that a common usage? ->
  • Bleeker Bob's in NYC closing. Someone cursed Froyo in comment. Thought it an oddly phrased anti-Google line, but a yogurt chain's moving in. ->
  • Radio in this café has played Amel Larrieux’s “No One Else”for almost two hours straight. No one seems to have asked them to turn it off. ->
  • Was concerned the great battery life on my gen-2 iPad had spoiled me, but the Nexus 7 is holding up remarkably. ->
  • RIP, Italian ambient musician Oöphoi (b. Gianluigi Gasparetti, 1958), founder of the magazine Deep Listening: http://t.co/U6LLJBLGqd ->
  • 24.9 seconds: The average length of @djunto tracks this week, as we use text-to-speech to frame fragments of Homer’s Odyssey. ->
  • That recurring dream in which you're running running running and you swipe up — and the Google Now interface appears. ->

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0068: deriv.deriv.cc

The Assignment: Combine three songs from the first release of the new deriv.cc netlabel.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130418-derivcc

*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 evening, California time, on Thursday, April 18, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, April 22, 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 0068: deriv.deriv.cc
>
>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 new netlabel deriv.cc, and were posted to the Internet with a Creative Commons license encouraging derivative reworking. In fact, the impetus for the label, which was founded by C. Reider, was to draw attention to the intrinsic benefits of allowing for derivative works. Like deriv.cc, this project — one in an ongoing series of netlabel remixes undertaken by the Disquiet Junto — is intended to address the unfortunate popularity of “ND”(i.e., “no derivatives”) licenses among netlabels. Please only use the following material in your piece; you can transform in any way you choose, but do not introduce any new source material.
>
>1: The final 20 seconds of “The Find Beauty, Even in the Mundane”:
>
>http://deriv.cc/stream/d1/02.ogg
>
>2: The first 20 seconds of “Immaterial Girl”:
>
>http://deriv.cc/stream/d1/04.ogg
>
>3: The portion of “Libertarian Entertainment Automaton”that runs from 1:10 to 1:30:
>
>http://deriv.cc/stream/d1/06.ogg
>
>Deadline: Monday, April 22, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your track should have a duration of between two minutes and five minutes.
>
>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: Include the term “disquiet0068-deriv”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: Per the spirit of a Creative Commons license allowing derivative work, set your track in a manner that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
>
>Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
>
>More on this 68th Disquiet Junto project, the intent of which is to draw attention to the benefits of a Creative Commons license allowing for derivative works, at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/04/18/disquiet0068-deriv/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
>
>This track is composed from material extracted from three pre-existing tracks (“The Find Beauty, Even in the Mundane,”“Immaterial Girl,”“Libertarian Entertainment Automaton”) by C. Reider, all of which were released on the album The Conjuncts on the deriv.cc netlabel, and were themselves derived from the following: “Garden City”and “Ventilation”from Tulse Hill by Hannah Marshall; “LichenWall”from Gardening by Steve Moyes; “Eighteen Events”from Not One Nor by Daniel Barbiero; “Awkward Customer”from [m2012/30-09] by Restive; “cues two three”and “cue six”from Cue Sheet by Sighup; “Sending Dreams to She Downstream”from Pocket Suite by He Can Jog; “The Palsgraf Scale”from Weights and Measures by Gurdonark; “Bonus Track”from Pale by Leo Bettinelli and Pol Nieva; “Haunted Grace”from Haunted Grace on SoundCloud by Jess Lemont a.k.a. Be A Waterwolf; “Ochiita”from Gently Annoying by Xesús Valle; and “Once More With Intellect”from [m2012/30-09] by Restive.

Organ Drones in Cornwall

A live performance by Robert Curgenven

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130417-Radio93

The dense, wavering drone that **Robert Curgenven** committed to tape when performing live in Cornwall at the Exchange back in August 2011 has been made available for free download by the great [touchradio.org.uk](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_93_robert_curgenven.html) podcast series. The drone consumes the listening space, but it is not the entire space. There are fragile elements within it, the static of what could be a crackling fire, high notes like a soloist from a robot boy’s choir practicing circular breathing, clusters of organ chords. Those latter elements are the highlight. Curgenven describes the material as “Unprocessed recordings of a 16 foot pipe organ – built 1861, standing in a 13/14th Century rural church in West Penwith, Cornwall.” Among the additional elements are “guitar feedback, unprocessed field recordings, ventilator and microtonal dubplates & turntables.” And the overall density is owed to room tones from “contained and reverberant spaces in the cities of Berlin (2007), Tokyo (2006), Sydney (1999), Milan (2008), Hamburg (2009) and Osaka (2006).” The original performance was an eight-channel set-up at the Exchange, which is in Penzance, Cornwall, as part of an exhibit titled An Urban Silence, which was organized by Blair Todd. This recording ([MP3](http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio93.mp3)) was made by Martin Clarke, and then mixed and mastered by Curgenven.

[audio:http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio93.mp3|titles=”Live at the Exchange (August 2011)”|artists=Robert Curgenven]

Track originally posted for free download at [touchradio.org.uk](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_93_robert_curgenven.html). More from Curgenven at his website, [recordedfields.net](http://www.recordedfields.net/).