Month: August 2022

Cage Chord Compilation

1 chord, 54 musicians, 1 hour and 45 minutes

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This lengthy single track, just under an hours and 45 minutes in duration, was compiled by Tobias Reber from the work of 54 participants in a summer 2022 collaboration between Musikfestival Bern and the Disquiet Junto music community. Contributors were invited to make drones based on a shared single chord from a John Cage composition. More details at disquiet.com/0554.

Below is a full list in alphabetical order of the musicians included in this compilation. A few others were produced, as well, in the course of the music community project, which ran from August 11 through August 15, 2022. More on the festival, scheduled from September 7 through 11, 2022, at musikfestivalbern.ch.

33per, A Thousand Plateaus, Aethyr, Alchemical Cage Chord, analoc, ausgesuchtestenohren, baconpaul, Benn DeMole, celaeno, Chridmeister, Clint Burgess, craniform, Dan Simpson, Death Hags, encym, Fake Genius, feXon, Gerard Paresys, h b, he_nu_ri, hugh g twatt, -infDB, Kei, Krakencraft, krseward, Lazenbee Industries, Lee Evans, Leon Clowes, Marc Eisenschink, Marci Lucchi, Martin AB Cee, melondruie, nobuka, noimspartacus, Noodle Twister, Ossimuratore, Ostacoli Sonori, Paul Beaudoin, pineyb, Punks Dig Disco, RabMusicLab, ray_cobley, robbie, samarobryn, SinnySounds, Sonic Search, Stefan Strasser, Synthi, Tuonela, undermulden, wagneric, wasabicube, x i i i x x i, zeroperimeter

We don’t do a lot of this sort of thing (by which I mean a post-project compilation), in large part because I never want Junto participants to feel like they need to complete a piece before posting it, and in part because external overarching editorial consideration — as is necessary for a compilation like this — is also something I don’t want someone thinking about as they produce tracks for the Junto. But that said, the projects with Musikfestival Bern are unique ones, and part of the announced plan from the start was some tracks may be selected for playing during part of the festival. This excellent compilation is one expression of that plan. Many thanks to Tobias for having executed this compilation.

Five-Alarm No Fire

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

That there is no This Week in Sound email newsletter today may relate to the fact that I’ve just gotten back from 18 straight days in New York, and more specifically to the scene outside my hotel this morning at 3:00am when at least five fire trucks arrived en masse. The alarm initiated at 2:45am. Fortunately there was no fire. Eventually I did get back to sleep.

twitter.com/disquiet: Enveloped by Summer HVAC

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the tweets I made the past week at twitter.com/disquiet, which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up sooner in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com. I’ve found it personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud. This isn’t a full accounting. Often there are, for example, conversations on Twitter that don’t really make as much sense out of the context of Twitter itself. And sometimes I tweak them a bit, given the additional space. And sometimes I re-order them just a bit.

▰ Monday morning drone sextet: two lawn mowers, apartment building HVAC, dishwasher, washing machine, traffic

▰ Been on Long Island for 12 days straight and am finally getting a taste of that thunder we don’t get in San Francisco — or the rain, for that matter.

▰ The robot voice of the landline’s voicemail service announced the name of the incoming call. I didn’t pick up. The call was from a robot, which left a message. Someday these robots will be able to speak with each other. Someday later they will no longer be robots.

▰ How many OMGs can I fit in a tweet? Jerry Harrison and Adrian Belew are doing a live performance of Remain in Light at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this year. Please please please tell me the “all-star band” includes Tony Levin.

▰ I figured out the new Instagram algorithm:

33% synchronized dancing
33% Jackass wannabes
20% sports highlights
13% ads
1% people I elected to follow

▰ “I reign as the articulator with the greater data / Revolvin’ on the TASCAM much doper than my last jam.” Gang Starr Forever

▰ The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Exceptionally written at a sentence and paragraph level. Beyond that a mediocre psychological thriller. The first half reads like a meaningful parody of literary fiction. The second sets to unravel the tidiness, gets mired in ellipses. (The 20th novel I’ve finished reading this year.)

▰ My suburban hometown train station on Long Island is straight out of any number of anime I’ve watched.

▰ Word for “I need to call an ambulance because the ambulance that just passed by blew out my eardrum”?

▰ Final morning on Long Island for a while, after 15 days straight. Very quiet aside from the composite drone of automobiles — dampened by trees, buildings, and distance.

▰ The hotel HVAC in this tiny room is so loud and so substantial that it is echoing off of my fan-less laptop, and I keep thinking the laptop has a fan and it’s about to spin out of control. And on that note, have a good weekend.