Current Activities
Upcoming
• Autumn, 2019: I'll have a new piece in The Wire.
• December 13, 2019: This day marks the 23rd anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2020: This day marks the 8th anniversary of the Disquiet Junto.
• March 2020: A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the forthcoming book The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (Oxford University Press), edited by Stephanie Horsley, Janice Waldron, and Kari Veblen.Dates TBA
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the forthcoming book The Music Production Cookbook: Ready-made Recipes for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), edited by Adam Patrick Bell.Ongoing
• The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, was published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury. It has been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018).
Monthly Archives: September 2014
via instagram.com/dsqt
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Autechre Live from Poland
A Kraków 2014 show for free download
There’s a specific nature to the sound of a concert bootleg. Foreground and background are reversed. The cheers of the crowd seem like they’re an elbow away, while the music recedes amid the audience, as if heard in snatches, bobbing between heads and shoulders, glimpsed over ears and beneath the rims of baseball hats. Such is this recording, reportedly of a live Autechre show from Kraków, Poland, taped by Martin Mohyla and posted for free download — there’s an FLAC and an MP3 (320 kbps) available — with the permission of Autechre member Sean Booth (half of the duo, the other half being Rob Brown). The brief liner note at neuralcorrosion.com, where the audio is hosted, says it was recorded in the front row, but that’s less meaningful at an amplified concert, especially an electronic one, than at, say, a solo acoustic set. The speakers at a show like this aren’t at the front of the stage, which is why the best seats, from a sonic standpoint, are often midway back near the mixing board. Still, it’s a bracing performance, the muddy sound lending a grit and minimal-techno dankness to the music, balancing the increasingly digital brittleness that has marked the group’s output in recent years. The beats are pounding, often subaural, thudding machinations from deep below. Other elements interject, as if from a separate train of thought, including jittering higher-pitched percussion, rough noises, and hazy synthesized cloud formations. The music changes continuously, from horror movie anxiousness to blank ephemera, from pop minimalism to desiccated EDM, club anthems left in tatters. Presumably this was the September 20, 2014, show at the Forum Hotel that also included Battles, Darkstar, LFO, Rustie, Hudson Mohawke, Patten, Bibio, and Plaid, the latter two in DJ sets. The event was one in a series to celebrate the Warp label’s 25th anniversary, more on which at warp25.net.
via instagram.com/dsqt
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Random Access Beatcraft
From Philly's TLKE
The random-access beatcraft of Philly-based TLKE has more reference points than the appendix to a PhD disseration. It’s a constant flow of information, sometimes excitedly fractured, at others tribal in its processional metrics. It is always moving, always aborbing external sounds and from them making something new. Often as not the methods of production are turned into the sonic focal point, like the way vinyl textures and beat-loop seams are the cornerstones of “Moon Wrangles (Ripple Effect)” and how the unique skipping-CD flavor provides the salvo on “Exile Path.” Both those tracks are off the extravagantly titled The Abstract Reorganization of Subliminal Oneness by the Laughing Khokmah Ensemble, which is what the “TLKE” abbreviation expands to. The music brings to mind the abstract hip-hop of Arcka and Small Professor, TLKE’s fellow Philadelphians (both of whom, one directly and the other indirectly, introduced me to the music). Though it’s at times quite hypnotically intent in its almost solemn, deeply considered persistence, the album finds space for the kind of broken soul that Arcka and Small Professor often pursue. Just check out the glitchy claps and boomerang samples that make up “See of Time.” Tremendous stuff, throughout, all 22 tracks.
Album originally posed at “name your price” at tlke.bandcamp.com.
via instagram.com/dsqt
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt