“Live coding” is a term to describe the means by which performing musicians write and alter computer software in real time while sound is being emitted and itself impacted by the software, thus deploying code as an instrument. That approach draws a distinction between “merely” utilizing software as an instrument, and using the underlying code of software as an instrument. In this video from Eulerroom, a combination of software tools eke out swells of drones that, as the quarter of an hour passes, get slowly morphed, evolving into more complex and expressive burps and squelches, like life stepping out of a primordial ooze. It’s somewhat intoxicating, in a The Matrix sort of way, to watch the cursor navigate the right side of the screen, changing variables and turning on and off segments of text, and then we recognize the impact of those decisions in the sound we hear.
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
20 Great Albums from 2023
Or "the best," as some put it
I have long since lost the ability to really put together a year-end best-of list. There’s more music available these days than ever before, and in many ways more better music than ever, if “more better” can be considered a thing. I did participate this year in some year-end voting activities, and toward that end I put together a list of what I thought, respectfully, represented the better end of more better for 2023. Of course, after I completed the following list of 20 such records, still more music came out — but this is, I think, a solid and representative selection:
- Bill Frisell: Four
- Dedalus Ensemble: Performing Brian Eno: Discreet Music/Music for Airports/Thursday Afternoon
- The Necks: Travel
- Lia Kohl: The Ceiling Reposes
- Loraine James: Gentle Confrontation
- Eivind Aarset and Jan Bang: Last Two Inches of Sky
- Between: Low Flying Owls
- Markus Floats: Fourth Album
- Scott Tuma: Nobody’s Music
- Sarah Davachi: Long Gradus
- Éliane Radigue: Naldjorlak
- Ryuichi Sakamoto: 12
- Boxhead Ensemble: Ancient Music
- Machinefabriek with Monika Bugajny: Recytle
- Philip Jeck & Chris Watson: Oxmardyke
- Marcus Fischer: Dodecalogues (vol.1)
- Oliver Coates: Aftersun (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
- Stephen Vitiello with Brendan Canty: Stephen Vitiello with Brendan Canty
- John Luther Adams: Darkness and Scattered Light
- Earth: Even Hell has its Heroes (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Year-End Reminder
Again, apologies if I didn’t write about your music this year. My inbox runneth over, as evidenced by this snapshot of my email folders in their current state. On a positive note, I’ve been working on putting together a Plex server that will greatly improve my ability to process inbound requests for coverage. Details on the submission policy are in this site’s FAQ.
For context: I focus on ambient music, experimental electronic music, contemporary classical, instrumental hip-hop, sound art, and other vaguely related things, related to the extent that the use of technology feels exploratory, intentional — and I must admit I write about virtually nothing with an intelligible vocal.
I should also mention: I get hundreds of inbound emails about music each week, and so I rarely respond. I do listen constantly, and when I find something I want to write about, I write about it. I’m not a great correspondent.
If I’m not going to write about your music, I will almost certainly not write in reply to tell you so, because doing so would mean literally hundreds of additional emails I would have to write each week — emails that would inevitably spur further correspondence.
Soundtrack Effects
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
The local public library has a “sound effects” CD category right next to the “soundtrack” CD category, and when the sound effects category is empty — which is pretty much all the time, suggesting all the old CDs are gone — then the two labels, which are on plexiglass, end up overlapping, which in turn yields a merged category called “soundtrack effects,” which is in essence my dream category.
And two friends pointed out something I’d never noticed, which is that the label is misspelled: “sountrack.”
Scratch Pad: Rain, MP3s, Cooking
From the past week
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.
▰ It’s not lost on me that a leading metaphor for generative music, of tending a garden, can also apply to the process of dealing with one’s sizable library of digital audio files. Right now I’m deep in the latter weeds, having switched from iTunes Match to a fairly complex implementation of Plex.
▰ Drizzly day means I’m listing to Oscar Peterson while I type. (My keyboard can’t keep up with his.)
▰ Kind of amazing this far into the existence of the MP3 (etc.) that the simple act of associating a cover image with an album can take countless rounds of metadata fiddling for the system to actually recognize it
▰ Eddie Rabbitt: “I love a rainy night.”
Me: “I kinda like the idea but I still have hurricane PTSD after four years of living in New Orleans, and following the long drought here in San Francisco, I’m kinda not used to the noise and in the end I get very little sleep. So, I’m ambivalent at best.”
▰ My YouTube history this week has a consistent color scheme. Half of it is Yule log and the other half is Icelandic volcano.
▰ 1983: cutting art out of magazines to serve as cassette tape J-cards
2023: cropping JPG files into squares to serve as “covers” for collections of music files
▰ According to the liner notes, some audiobooks are “read,” while others are “performed.” Sometimes this is a meaningful distinction.
▰ Cutting onions and listening to Beastie Boys instrumentals
▰ Current jam: The slow, unsteady beat of a crockpot heating beans in an otherwise silent home