I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media (as well as related notes), which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means post.lurk.org. Sometimes the material pops up earlier or in expanded form.
▰ Window open like it’s spring or something. Bus, car, garbage truck, bird, gleeful kid, elderly person on a cellphone in a Slavic language, distant construction noise, even more distant traffic. I could listen to this all day. Or at least until it gets cold.
▰ Just finished recording an episode of a podcast on which I was the guest. It was super fun: chatty, good-natured, idea-driven. I’ll mention here when it’s online. A tiny bit will be, apparently, behind a Patreon, but the vast majority of the recording, like 95%, will be freely available.
▰ I like Brian Eno’s singing voice, but I’m looking forward to the instrumental version of his recent record. I don’t need snazzy Record Store Day collectibles. Fortunately there will be a digital version.
▰ Q: How did you treat yourself at the end of a productive work day?
A: I finally updated a synthesizer module for which the latest firmware came out last November.
▰ “Time is fleeting / See what it brings”
Bergman -> Seinfeld -> Depeche Mode
▰ I looked at my recent Instagram posts. The first, fifth, and sixth photos here are totally different buildings, despite potential appearances otherwise.
▰ Hey, #BookClub hive mind: I started reading War & Peace for the first time, and I’m not too far in (“only” chapter 17, a mere 5%) to change to another version if there’s a particular translator that you recommend. The version I’ve been reading is the one translated by Aylmer Maude and Louise Shanks Maude. I’ve also got Constance Garnett’s translation sitting here, borrowed from the library. Thanks. (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky has been recommended, indirectly by the Russian-born former dean of where I went to college, so I may switch over to that.)
▰ Haiku sourced from Wikipedia’s notable deaths:
Chinese engineer Romanian pharmacist English footballer
▰ “Ne plus recevoir notre lettre d’information” — I was always bad at languages other than the one I was raised in, English, but I’m aces at unsubscribing from things I never subscribed to.
▰ A moment in my week:
▰ Me reading: Books in this genre are all the same.
Me a few minutes later: Oh, I’ve already read this book.
▰ Story in my right ear, the world in my left. Afternoon audiobook walk.
Hania Rani’s On Giacometti contains material from her score to a new film about the artist Alberto Giacometti and Giacometti’s broader family. It’s a gorgeous collection of quiet, contemplative music — the sort of music that fills the space in a film and yet is, through the strange received logic of film-making, intended to signify the presence of silence, the absence of sound. Start with “Knots,” in which a stoic piano part — the score is essentially all piano all the time — gets lightly embroidered with bits of synthesized filigree. Then try “Storm,” which is only stormy at a distance; to listen to its echoing patterning is to witness, purposefully, something through thick glass and grim darkness that is transpiring quite far away. One highlight is the occasional appearance of Dobrawa Czocher’s cello, notably on the opening track. Some of this material will draw comparisons to Nils Frahm (the muffled pads of “Mountains,” for example) and Philip Glass, but this is Rani’s music through and through: the gracious pacing, the lithe development, the ambiguous mood. The movie, The Giacomettis, was directed by Susanna Fanzun.
The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.
/ 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 20, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 16, 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.
The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.
Step 1: This is a shared sample project, one in which all the participants will utilize the same provided recording, about a minute and a half long, as the rhythmic element for their own music. Access the track, originally recorded by Scott Fletcher and used with his permission, here:
Step 2: Listen to the provided track several times. Think about ways to map its content, perhaps making notations about when certain unique, momentary aspects surface.
Step 3: Record an original piece of music for which the provided music is the underlying rhythm. You might take this quite literally, using the source as it is, resulting in a track that is precisely 1:35 long. Alternately, you might elect to sample and rework the source material. If you go the latter route, make certain that the original sound is, at least at some point in the finished track, recognizable.
Step 4: Because this is a Creative Commons resource, be sure to identify Scott Fletcher as the original recorder of the source material, and include a link to the source track. Identify the license as: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0581” (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 “disquiet0581” (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. How long did the rain last?
Deadline: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 20, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 16, 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 581st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Helsinki Downspout (The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track), at: https://disquiet.com/0581/
Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/helsinki-downspout/
Back at the very end of 1980, Eliane Radigue performed a lengthy concert on the radio station KPFA. The nearly two hours of music included the world premiere of her Triptych, a work of trenchant drones that originated as a piece for choreography. The second of its three parts had premiered two years earlier, in 1978, as part of Dancehall/Theatre of Nancy production. (I know little to nothing of Dancehall/Theatre of Nancy. If anyone has information to share, I would appreciate it. I’m assuming the Nancy is Nancy, France, and this is related to Jack Lang’s work there in the arts.)
That original composition was, as of 1980, now bookended by two other pieces, similarly built from tones whose slight variations yielded intense beading, patterns, the minimalism of which didn’t even make an effort to belie what was, in fact, a quite forceful sonic presence.
And those Triptych recordings have now, thanks to Important Records, been remastered for the album 11 Dec 1980. Also included is “Chry-Ptus,” a piece for synthesizer originally composed in 1971, and the sounds of which are slightly more varied, ranging from white noise to metronomic pulses to high-pitched whirs to warbling wave forms that sound like science-fiction effects, à la the BBC Radiophonic Workshop — but all still held tight and close, exhibiting Radigue’s refined control. This is exhilarating music, at once static and energizing, meditative and fierce.
