Infrastructure Is Beautiful
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Command Z
Yeah, I memed again
Starship Organ
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Went to Saint Mary atop Cathedral Hill here in San Francisco on Sunday for the weekly 4pm Musical Meditations, which meant listening to this starship of an organ fill the enormous interior space for us and maybe 17 other people, not counting the young organist, his teacher, the church’s guard, and some apparent janitorial staff. The sound was massive and consuming, the colors and tones rich and thick, thorough and luxurious.
On Repeat: Live Minimalism, Foley Volcano
Home/office playlist
Been a while since I did one of these. Brief mentions (optimally each Sunday) of some of my favorite listening from the week prior:
▰ The Polish keyboardist Hania Rani performs live with a large ensemble (Ziemowit Klimek, Wojciech Warmijak, Adam Jełowick, Kacper Krupa, Jarosław Kawałek) in the sunlit courtyard of a nearly 350-year-old building in Paris. She’s a consummate performer, with her own blend of pop-informed minimalism and muted neo-classical.
▰ Davide Bernardi sets drones in luscious, gleaming motion with a small set of devices.
▰ The Christoph Möckel Trio is named for its founding saxophonist, and also features Oliver Lutz, on six-string bass, and Moritz Baumgärtner, drums. This would be great modern, composed chamber jazz unplugged, but what pushes it over the edge is how both Möckel and Lutz employ a battery of guitar pedals to treat their instruments. The set is barely 18 minutes long. Take the whole thing in.
▰ Another great Aphex Twin transcription performed by classical guitarist Simon Farintosh: “Rhubarb” off Selected Ambient Works Volume II. When a cover really works, especially one purposefully trailing in the wake of the original, I wonder how much I’m mentally “hearing” the original while listening to the new take. It’s like a very good version doubly benefits by echoing the source material in the mind’s ear.
▰ There’s white noise, brown noise, and pink noise, among many other noises. My current favorite is molten red noise. (I checked in with the videographer, after discussing the video with my friend Mahlen Morris, and confirmed that in fact the audio was added after the fact. Still, it’s quite evocative.)
Scratch Pad: Radio, AI, “Nang”
From the past week
I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others, including Bluesky (disquiet.bsky.social), which remains behind a beta firewall at the moment, and, yes, Threads (threads.net/@dsqt).
▰ I certainly have significant concerns about music streaming services. I also sometimes listen to Elvis Costello’s “Radio, Radio” to be reminded that this “shared culture” that nostalgists long for was “anesthetizing” in its own right. (Understood there are other concerns, too.)
▰ This is what this speech-to-text tool I’m trying out inserted when it heard silence:
[ Silence ]
I like the extra two spaces fluffing out the brackets.
▰ My expectations were low, but I still was surprised that entering “nature sounds, ambient drones, shortwave radio” into one of those text-to-music AI prompt engines still yielded five beat-heavy tracks. Just imagine if I’d actually requested percussion.
▰ “nang” — new-to-me slang, with a sonic etymology (and which I first heard thanks to the solid Australian TV show Deadloch), “a Nitrous oxide bulb, derived from the sound distortion that occurs when one is under the influence of the drug” (via urbandictionary.com)