Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Going Deep with Cleared

A deep, extended sense of transit

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Cleared is the duo of Steven Hess and Michael Vallera. Their forthcoming album, Lustres, due out March 6, gets a teaser in the form of the title track. Just over 10 minutes in length, it’s an invitingly barren industrial drone that has the density and depth of felt space. Listening is immersive — less a plunge than a deep, extended sense of transit. Vallera arranged and mixed the material, and the album was mastered by Lawrence English (of the Room40 label). Hess and Vallera are based in Chicago, Illinois.

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On Repeat: Amen, Technolessness, Horn+Synth

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ The Amen Break is tough to work with without sounding self-referential, without sounding like you’re commenting on the endless other previous uses of the Amen Break. The musician who goes by Breakwork — based in Brighton, UK — manages to bypass that matter by breaking the ubiquitous sample into ever tinier, virtually unrecognizable bits on Nybltrax. And then, in turn, reworking that. (An earlier release by Breakwork is, tellingly, titled Dangerously Close to Stupid Amount of Breaks.)

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▰ Some dreamy gorgeous sonic hazescapes from Belgium-based Marco Morati, on this dozen-track set titled Redemption. It’s like dub techno reduced beyond recognition, dub techno minus the techno, especially the piece titled “Conditioned.” More form Morati at youtube.com/@marco.morati.

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▰ Horn and synth have, in the past year or so, become a major favorite combo for me, and the first available track, “Reno Silver,” by synthesizer player Elori Saxl and clarinetist/saxophonist Henry Solomon from their forthcoming Seeing Is Forgetting, due out February 6, hints at the treasures we may be up for. More from Saxl at elorisaxl.com and Solomon at henrysolomon.com.

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Scratch Pad: Null Return

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

Apparently I posted a whopping single post to social media this past week, aside from a photo I shared here separately. This week was clearly quite busy, as I flailed out on Jamuary after the 11th (longer than I even thought I had, when I looked back at my activity this morning during the coffee phase of the day), due to workload and general activities, but I hope to get back to it. Perhaps some of the relative non-posting has to do with my having weaned myself off the platforms while offline at the end of 2025, but I always take the end of the year off, so current circumstances would still register as an outlier scenario. Anyhow, that one post, edited after the fact, and a few other items below:

▰ 17 weeks until the 750th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project.

▰ One concert this weekend, another possibly this coming week

▰ Likely short trip to NYC and environs at the very end of January

▰ The six massive (tractor trailer-–size) diesel generators that appeared down the street during the recent power outage and storm are due to be removed over the next few days. They’ve been silent since they were turned off. It remains a pleasant surprise, when going past, to confirm that remains the case.

▰ My work mode can be described as “the more screens the better,” and yet my backpack and travel modes tend toward the spartan.

▰ Getting back in the habit of going to the gym. My main sonic observation is that doing so is a lot more pleasant with noise-canceling earbuds.

▰ Finished reading zero books this week but made plenty of progress on several.

Jamuary 2026 10–11

Three more

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I made it to two more days into Jamuary, a straight 11, but then work and life got the better of my intentions. I hope to dig back in. Meanwhile, two unsatisfactory renderings:

▰ 10\31 — “Gran Ensem”: I’ve got this idea of starting a new patch as a seed, and then doing variants in the days that follow. This track represents a new seed: a new first patch. It’s a simple one. A field recording of a school jazz band (recorded from outside the school, on the sidewalk) tuning up is playing backwards, and it’s going through a granular module with six channels. The output of that module then goes through a delay, which turns on and off. We hear the granular output plus, at times, the material through delay, though never just the delay. Toward the end, I manually futz with the delay timing.

▰ 11\31 — “Chao Scillate”: Just a nudge forward of the previous day’s patch. Trying to get some practical control of this particular granular synth module. As is evident, I have yet to achieve the stated goal. Source audio remains a recording of a school band tuning up, as heard from a floor below, windows closed, played in reverse here.

Aphex Twin x Russell Holzman

Give the drummer some IDM

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A friend shared with me this great video of drummer Russell Holzman, aka starpowerdrummer, playing a tight bit of accompaniment to Aphex Twin’s now classic “Avril 14th.” The original turns 25 this year, having come out on the 2001 album Drukqs. For at least a decade, if not longer, musicians have been posting cover versions of the song on the titular date. This video, not quite a cover, arrives early, and raises the bar for those looking to join in in a few months’ time. This video appeared as a YouTube short, a somewhat annoying format, in that unnecessary effort is required to locate track description and release date. The recording is also on Holzman’s popular Instagram account, where he subsequently gave an older Aphex Twin track, “Flim,” off 1997’s Come to Daddy album, a similar treatment.