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.
▰ Losing both Charles Gayle and Steve Roden on the same day hits really hard. So much music reverberates in their respective wakes.
▰ There’s a special irony to electronic musician Steve Roden and free jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle dying on the same day. I’m spending the day after listening back to their music — some of the quietest ever and loudest ever, respectively.
▰ A previously unreleased Autechre album has been discovered by astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in the Chilean Andes. “Its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old.”
▰ Anyone out there use Obsidian (the note-taking app) and, within it, use “graph view”? I use Obsidian a lot. The “graph view” is neat and all, but I’m not sure I have any sense of what I’d use it for.
Feel free to ignore this message if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
I reviewed an excellent Outsound Presents concert at the Luggage Store Gallery from a couple months back in the new issue of The Wire (October 2023). It’s behind a paywall, but here’s how it kicks off:
The Assignment: Combine two or more pre-existing 60 BPM tracks into something new — at half the speed.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 11, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 7, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0610: Speed Limit Pt 2 The Assignment: Combine two or more pre-existing 60 BPM tracks into something new — at half the speed.
Step 1: In the previous Disquiet Junto project, participants recorded a variety of tracks at a standard pace of 60 BPM. Listen to the resulting material on the Lines discussion board and the SoundCloud playlist:
Step 2: Select two or more tracks from the provided ones, slow them to half their original pace — that is, to 30 BPM — and use editing techniques to combine them into one new piece of music.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0610” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0610” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 11, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 7, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 610th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Speed Limit Pt 2 (The Assignment: Combine two or more pre-existing 60 BPM tracks into something new — at half the speed), at: https://disquiet.com/0610/
The Wednesday issue of This Week in Sound is usually for paid subscribers. I’d already intended to also share this week’s with all subscribers, and then I got news that great musician Steve Roden had died at age 59, and getting out that sad news became an additional reason to broaden this issue’s reach.
An annotated playlist of ambient (and adjacent) music, this is usually a weekly bonus — a thank-you to people who financially support This Week in Sound. It supplements the free Tuesday and Friday issues, which feature a broader array of material from the field of sound studies.
Today, we’ve got: (1) a video, (2) a sequel, and (3) a preview — and (4) a memorial.
1. A VIDEO
DARK STAR: The first video from the forthcoming solo record by Vince Clarke is so stark, so somber, it makes “Ghosts Again,” Depeche Mode’s tribute from earlier this year to the late Andy Fletcher (which took the form of an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal), seem almost like a pop pastiche by comparison. “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” which has no vocals, shows a gaunt Clarke, dressed in black, striking various poses in a largely empty building. This is lockdown as solitary retreat — solo album as monastic reflection on mortality. Occasionally Clarke glances at the camera, challenging the viewer to not look away. The music matches the dire tone of the video, which was directed by Ebru Yildiz. It is primarily the cello of guest musician Reed Hays, playing against Clarke’s synthesized room tone of doom. There is reportedly no singing on the album; it is described as a “a 10-track lyric-less album of uncategorisable ambient beauty.” Apparently the album, titled Songs of Silence, should prove similarly intense as a whole: “Nobody in my household is particularly interested in what I get up to in the studio,” Clarke said in an announcement from Mute Records. “Even the cat used to leave after an hour or so of listening to drones.” Songs of Silence is due out November 17.
TWO OF A KIND: Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset and his countryman, electronic musician Jan Bang, strike out for elegant dub territory on Last Two Inches of Sky, the first song from which, “City Never Sleeps,” is now available in advance of the album’s September 23 release. This follows up Snow Catches on Her Eyelashes, the duo’s extraordinary 2020 album. It’s a gorgeous work of firmly rooted, slow-motion ease. Apparently there’s a sample of trumpeter Arve Henriksen somewhere in this song, as well as “treatments” courtesy of Erik Honoré. Nona Hendryx provides guest vocals on another of the upcoming album’s tracks, “Legion.”
OBJECT LESSON: The kinetic sculptor and sound artist Zimoun has an album due out later this month, on September 22, on the 12k Records label. Titled ModularGuitarFields I-VI, it is, judging by the opening track, an extended exploration of tone. This first piece, “ModularGuitarFields I,” is a 12-minute meditation on slight fissures amid deep feedback. According to the press materials, Zimoun’s equipment on the album amounts to: “a Tenor Baritone Guitar, combined with select elements of a Modular Synth and a vintage 1960s Magnatone Amp.” Zimoun is best known for sculptures that use simple materials like cardboard, cheap motors, crumpled paper, and plastic balls to explore how systems can create structure and patterns in sound and visuals alike. Parallels can easily be drawn between that art practice and the impact of this hypnotic new recording.
4. A MEMORIAL
LOWERCASE STUDY: Just as I was putting this issue to bed, I got an alert from an old, mutual friend of the sound artist, musician, and visual artist Steve Roden that Steve had passed away — news announced on his Instagram account, @inbetweennoise. I last saw Steve in the summer of 2019, when the impact of his diagnosed Alzheimer’s was already becoming evident; he spoke spoke that August at the Los Angeles gallery Vielmetter, in conversation with Michael Ned Holte, and then he performed on his modular synthesizer. Steve was a wonderful human, and an incredible thinker about art and sound. I will cherish the meals we shared over the years, and the discussions we had. He was also a friend of Disquiet, having been part of the art installation we did for the San Jose Museum of Art back in 2014, and our collaboration with artist Jorge Colombo, LX(RMX), in 2012 — among other examples. Steve is particularly well known for “lowercase” music that ekes out beauty and meaning at a volume just above a hum. For many who followed in his footsteps, lowercase was an aesthetic pursuit. With Steve, it also felt like a reflection of his own presence. (Above, just by way of example, is a 2009 performance by Steve at the Schindler House in Los Angeles.)
