Author: Marc Weidenbaum

On the Line: WNBA, Cicadas, More

Some favorite recent phrases

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

▰ GAME ON:

“The elements I love most about basketball are grounded in the bare physical nature of the sport: forced air, its sound shaped from a mouth, after a particularly powerful dunk or a devastating chase-down block; sneaker squeaks on hardwood; the expressions of strain-to-triumph in a tricky sequence.”

That’s Katie Heindl writing in The Believer. 

. . .

▰ BUGGED OUT:

“With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.”

Often the best drama is in the business section and the best horror is in the science section. Speaking of the latter, that’s the Associated Press’  Seth Borenstein on the modern cicada problem.

. . .

▰ LISTEN UP:

“I always try to notice what my first reactions are, but I don’t privilege them too much, because music is a repetitive form. I guess these days you can 'repeat' most anything. But with music, I think there’s an invitation to repeat. I’m interested in how my thoughts and feelings continue to evolve through multiple listens.”

That’s essayist Carina del Valle Schorske, interviewed by Merve Emre, in The New York Review of Books. The topic in this instance is delaying judgment when hearing music.

Sound Ledger: Ocean Noise & More

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

30: Estimated volume increase in the Santa Barbara Channel since the Industrial Revolution, impacting whales and other sea life

1.55: Numbers of times higher likelihood of depressive symptoms among people living in highest environmental noise areas versus lowest, per South Korean scholars

12,000: Estimated annual premature deaths in the EU each year due to noise

Sources: Channel: independent.com; depression: nature.com; premature: bbc.com.

On Repeat: Oval, Henriksen, Owl Song

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all. I had this entry mostly done last night, but the book reading I attended went later than I’d expected, so I’m finally posting it today.

▰ Space Man: Glitch progenitor Oval has delivered the 8th in his series of occasional mini-EPs, under the Now / Never / Whenever umbrella, the title seemingly related to the bits largely being archival. This time around that means a 1998 remix of Japanese duo Cappablack, a 2000 piece inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a previously unreleased track from a scrapped 2012 EP.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=719932288 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

▰ Taking a Break: The track title “Morphine flutes all over the place” hints at what’s going on. Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen broke his leg skiing, and recorded an album of edgier-than-usual Fourth World jazz-inflected electronica, Break a Leg!, while recuperating, reworking material he’d stored up on his laptop.

[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=442595357 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

▰ Two Out of Three: On Friday I attended a great trio set by trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, guitarist Bill Frisell, and drummer Herlin Riley at the Bing hall at Stanford (their album Owl Song is highly recommended), and while I can’t find much in the way of live footage of them online, there is this clip from 10 years ago of two of the three of them, when the concept was just getting started.

Scratch Pad

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I take weekends off social media.

▰ Afternoon trio for laundry machine, passing motorcycle brigade, and refrigerator hum

▰ Excellent. Going to see Bill Frisell for the second time this year. Friday night he’s playing with drummer Herlin Riley in a trio led by trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.

▰ It’s sorta crazy we just completed the 650th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project. What’s especially crazy, in retrospect, is that when the Junto first started, back in January 2012, each week the instructions were translated by participants into numerous languages. Now that was a lot of work.

▰ Another week when I read a ton but only finished reading a single book, the Lou Reed one about Tai Chi, The Art of the Straight Line. Any recommendations out there for other books about Tai Chi, in particular Yang-style?