Month: March 2014

Reel-to-Unreal

The tape-loop decay of Howlround

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20140331-howlround

Don’t let William Basinski get all the Google search returns for “ambient decay tape loops.” Save some for Howlround, which pairs Robin the Fog and Chris Weaver, who use reel-to-reel machines to make sounds as rough as they are fragile, as ephemeral as the are rooted in texture. This audio is sourced from what was, apparently, their first ever live performance, back in May 2013, as part of the Great Escape Festival in Brighton (MP3):

[audio:http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio102.mp3|titles=”Live May 2013″|artists=Howlround]

Track originally posted for free download at part of the Touch Radio series at touchradio.org.uk. More from the duo at howlround.co.uk and twitter.com/howlroundmusic.

Disquiet Junto Project 0117: Naviar Junto Haiku

Compose an original piece of music in response to a haiku.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20140327-naviar

Each Thursday 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 in the Junto is open: just join and participate.

This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, March 27, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, March 31, 2014, as the deadline.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0117: Naviar Junto Haiku

This week’s project involves members of the Disquiet Junto participating in another music-making community: the Naviar Haiku Project. Already members of the Junto have joined in the Naviar, and this is an opportunity to add to those ranks. Each week participants in the Naviar Haiku Project compose original pieces of music in response to a shared, provided haiku. The following are the steps for this week.

Step 1: This is the haiku for the 12th Naviar Haiku project entry:

“They encounter

A cathedral of ice

At the end of the world”

Step 2: Compose an original piece of music in response.

Step 3: Upload the file to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud and describe your approach and process in the text field associated with the track.

Step 4: Also consider uploading the file to the Naviar Laboratory group on SoundCloud.

Step 5: Listen to other members’ tracks as they appear in the Disquiet Junto feed on SoundCloud, and comment on them when you have the time.

Additional Background: (1) At the end of every month a selection of tracks will be available on Naviar’s Bandcamp page as a pay-what-you-want album. (2) The haiku by Nite Rote. (3) The Naviar deadline is Wednesday, April 2, but this Junto project is to be completed by March 31. (4) The haiku was inspired by Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World.

Deadline: Monday, March 31, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Length is for you to determine, but between one and five minutes is recommended.

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 “disquiet0117-naviarjunto” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track. Also, per the Naviar rules, please include “Naviarhaiku012 – They encounter”in the title and as tag.

Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 117th Disquiet Junto project — “Compose an original piece of music in response to a haiku”— at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0117: Naviar Junto Haiku

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

The Disquiet Junto Project List (0001 – 0574 …)

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Join the Naviar Haiku Project at:

https://soundcloud.com/groups/naviar-laboratory

More on Naviar at:

http://naviarlab.tumblr.com/

Haiku by Nite Rote, more from whom at:

http://niterote.com/

Image associated with this Junto project is by William Warby, via a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/8HqHv9

Chamber Ensemble Stasis

New music from Christina Vantzou

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Like the earlier Christina Vantzou piece covered here (“Going Backwards to Recover That Which Was Left Behind,” back in January), her “Brain Fog” is a work of chamber music whose density masks its complexity, the full context of its internal machinations willfully lost in the near stasis of the undertaking. The sheer drone-like, slow-motion grace of the piece is so consuming you can lose track of all the timbral activity, the constant shifting that makes the drone so difficult to fully focus on in the first place. Like the earlier track, “Brain Fog” is from her highly recommended new album, No. 2, which the record label Kranky released on February 24.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kranky. More from Vantzou at christinavantzou.com.

Poetry-into-Sound

A new haiku piece by Mike J Dayton

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Another track from the same poetry-into-sound series that yielded Saturday’s Downstream entry (Vernal Drone” by Larry Johnson): Mike J Dayton’s “The Crumbling Ice Temple” takes as its subject a haiku, part of the Naviar Haiku Project. The poem is by Kristjaan Panneman. Dayton’s rendering is all gentle clatter and echoing resonance.

Deep Silence

In this ancient Buddhist Temple

Chanting Monks

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/mike-88. More on the Naviar Haiku Project at naviarlab.tumblr.com. It’s a project of Naviar Records, which is based in London and at naviarrecords.com, twitter.com/NaviarRecords, and facebook.com/naviarrec.

Music from Haiku

An example of the Naviar Haiku Project

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Larry Johnson, an active SoundCloud member under the avatar L-A-J, oftens pops up in the comments section of Disquiet.com having remixed a Disquiet Downstream entry of the day. His remixes are like comments in the form of sound. In Downstream entries, I try to describe what the track is getting at by how it is composed, how it functions, and Johnson then does this by dissecting the source audio and making something new of it.

This following original piece of his music, “Vernal Drone,” is in a manner of speaking itself a form of commentary in sound, in that it is a five-minute piece of music inspired by a haiku, written by David Dayson:

Spring clouds

Write their own free verse

Published in the sky

The resulting audio is a drone that merges with what sounds like slow-motion water and sleepy cicada.

It’s part of a series of haiku-derived musical compositions called the Naviar Haiku Project, which describes itself as follows:

Welcome to the creative section of Naviar Records. This is a collaborative music-making space: each week we will post a Haiku, for musicians to interpret and convert to music. At the end of every month a selection of tracks will be available on Naviar’s Bandcamp page as a pay-what-you-want album.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/l-a-j-1. More on the Naviar Haiku Project at naviarlab.tumblr.com. It’s a project of Naviar Records, which is based in London and at naviarrecords.com, twitter.com/NaviarRecords, and facebook.com/naviarrec.