Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Disquiet Junto Project 0722: Spook Street

The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film.

/ 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 five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0722: Spook Street
The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film.

Step 1: It’s intriguing that the word “spook” regularly means “haunt” (verb) but also can mean “spy” (noun). Consider this.

Step 2: This project coincides with Halloween 2025, so imagine a spooky spy film, and write some music for it.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0722” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0722-spook-street/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Are you writing a cue or the whole score?

Deadline: Monday, November 3, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 722nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Spook Street — The Assignment: The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film — at https://disquiet.com/0722/.

Sō x Bergamot

A short-term autonomous octet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The quartet, in all its variations, from standard rock line-up to its jazz parallel to the formidable string arrangement to the saxophone mode, has long been a cornerstone of my understanding of how music functions. The group Sō Percussion is another permutation of the quartet, featuring members Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, Jason Treuting, and Eric Cha-Beach. The quartet, regardless of instrumentation, is a malleable form, one rich enough to stand on its own, and mobile and agile enough to collaborate fruitfully while maintain its own discipline and flavor.

A distinction of for many non-rock modern quartets is the implicit engagement with a fifth party: the composer. Classical and new music quartets, for example, often have composers in their midst, yet also engage with “external” composers as a kind of momentary fifth member. In this piece, “Oblique Music for Four Plus (blank),” group member Treuting has furthered the quartet’s modularity by, per the work’s title, aligning Sō Percussion with another unit, a foursome, in this live recording the Bergamot Quartet (Ledah Finck, violin; Sarah Thomas, violin; Amy Huimei Tan, viola; and Irène Han, cello). The short-term autonomous octet provides just enough musicians to allow for all manner of pairings and echos, rivalries and symbiosis — and yes, the title is a nod to Brian Eno.