Darren Harper’s second most recent track on his SoundCloud account dates back a year, so the one that popped up today may be the first in a long time — or he has deleted some others to make room. Either way, “Generative.01~Spring” is a welcome arrival. The 18-minute piece marks a new direction for Harper, who explains, “I’m embarking on a new project series that will focus on long-form generative eurorack pieces.” Powering his pursuit is a relatively new piece of equipment called Generations, which is a generative MID controller. The creator of Generations, who goes by Innesti, has explained that the device “creates the patterns autonomously once the user has configured the starting conditions.” Harper’s track is a slowly evolving collection of tones, such as hushed piano and picked guitar, as well as orchestral swells and deep drones. There are also gentle processes applied to these sounds, resulting in a lovely and cohesive suite.
You can watch an overview of the Generations tool in the following video. The device, currently sold out, first became available at the start of February 2024.
It’s been just shy of 10 years now that I’ve fiddled with a slowly growing, sometimes contracting, and always morphing modular synthesizer. The playing has greatly informed my work interviewing and collaborating with and writing about musicians — and it’s a lot of fun. I know this anniversary is coming up because Marcus Fischer sent me a photo a few days ago from when I gave a talk in Portland, Oregon, at Powell’s Books, an event at which he performed, along with Brumes (aka Desiree Rousseau) and the OO-Ray (aka Ted Laderas). Fischer used a modular synthesizer for his piece, and the next day he took me by the store Control Voltage, tucked off of N. Mississippi Avenue, to look at what felt to me, for the first time, as meaningfully proximate and approachable — and, yes, enticing.
In the intervening years, I’ve regularly failed at one thing in particular in this regard, which is documenting for myself my experiments with the synthesizer. Recently, I’ve come upon a system that works for me. Now, those last two words are the most important ones: “for me.” There are lots of different ways to track one’s work, and what I’m outlining here is just something that I’ve found works for me. For context, I am a big note-taker, but I am not a big written-note-taker. I jot words on paper regularly, but just as loose fodder for typing. I’ve typed for far too long to be a written-journal keeper. Also, I like the opportunities that computer files provide for searchability and cross-linking.
So, what I use is Obsidian, a free cross-platform document-editing tool that works with files in the markdown (.md) format (if it’s not familiar, more here). I format my synth journal documents very much like the one I use for my daily personal journal, though in this case also employing embedded images. (My personal journal is all text, no pictures — though my success with this Obsidian synth journal may feed back, so to speak, and inform my personal journal efforts down the road.) My system is to keep one file per month, with an entry within that file for each day, including a running checklist of next steps to pursue. (There’s also a separate to-do list for longer-term activities.) The approach yields a page that looks like this:
And if you have had success keeping a synth journal, I’d love to know what works for you.
I’m writing this under the assumption that the “sr” to whom the new Loren Chasse track, “The Sun and the Earth Together,” is dedicated is, in fact, the late musician Steve Roden, as the music is very much in the “lowercase” mode that Roden helped pioneer, and because the years in the accompanying liner note, 1964-2023, align with the span of Roden’s time on the planet, as does the characterization of the final phase of his life (that he was “in a long state of transition before passing on this past fall”). It’s a beautiful tribute to Steve (who was also a friend of mine), the cycling passages of droning tones overlapping and drifting. Nearly 12 minutes long, it takes its time, and asks you to drift along with it.
“The Sun and the Earth Together” was released on the Petit Bardo label (petitbardo.xyz), which has also put out work by Francisco López and Gregory Whitehead, among others. Fitting to the subject at hand, half the label’s earnings from sales go “to end of life care organizations.” The label’s modus operandi is a heavy one: “The artists were asked to create a sound work that can be heard by a person in existential finitude (in a relatively short period of time) or a sound work to be heard while someone dies or a sound work that the artists themselves would like to listen to while they die.”
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.
▰ Wodwo is the alias with which Derbyshire novelist Ray Robinson signs his recorded music. Requiem, released earlier this month, is a collection of alternately somber and wistful instrumental works that each seem to emerge from a thick fog.
▰ I’m a sucker for music that sounds like it’s melting, music that supplies an illusion that you’ll never hear it again, that each note is disintegrating in real time, such as in this live piece by the London-based musician who goes by Still Fades. (Of course, it doesn’t disappear. You can replay the video as often as you like.)
▰ Tuonela’s “S&S Drone” has the endlessly sawed strings of a Hollywood score, gaining in intensity as it proceeds, eventually becoming like a threatening swarm of insects. It’s both thrilling and frightening.
▰ “シミ” seems to translate as “stain,” and it’s the title of a new track from the tireless Japanese producer Corruption, who is rapidly reaching the 2,000-recording milestone. It feels like a sampled wooden flute sent through an exteme reverb, but there’s a lot more going on it its brief, half-minute length, what sounds like distant voices and pneumatic street work. As always with Corruption, it is enigmatic to the core.
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. I take weekends and evenings off social media.
▰ I love when a spam call comes through all glitchy and hard to understand, opening with a phrase along the lines of “This is an urgent message from …,” and it’s briefly like a Skynet warning from the future. Until, you know, it’s just spam about some fake loan.
▰ Among my memories of my grandfather is being left, on visits, to rummage through his desk, which always had many coins, many pairs of glasses, and pencils with erasers so old they’d become useless. I now have a desk full of many coins and pairs of glasses. In lieu of old pencils I have dead gadgets.
▰ Day 365 of Duolingo German. Not sure I’m gonna stick with it, but sticking with it for a year was interesting. We’ll see.
▰ Just been thinking about Steve Albini since the news broke. He was many things, but I realize that I think of him first and foremost as a guitarist.
▰ I get a little (a little) better at guitar when I practice guitar regularly, but I don’t get any better at installing firmware when I install firmware regularly, though I suppose my instruments get better.
▰ If you have trouble keeping a journal, I’d suggest starting a file called “tweets-not-sent.txt” and just put much of your negative thinking there rather than online
▰ More power to you keepers of handwritten journals. I’ve typed for too much of my life, starting with my fascination with my parents’ electric typewriter back in the days before my TRS-80. I’ve tried a handwritten synthesizer journal but I keep going back to markdown files with embedded images.
▰ No idea why I waited so long to really regularly use images in my Obsidian markdown notes, but in any case once you do it’s pretty great. The main thing I need to sort out now is a process for managing the images. Do I use one separate folder, or several, or project-specific, or monthly? I dunno.
▰ There’s a new (2024) Buddha Machine, and the creators, Christiaan Virant and 张荐 (Zhang Jian), who collaborate under the name FM3, put the loops up for free (aka “name your price”)
