Unsolicited Advice
(... you want to see in the world)
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Aphex Twin (032c Edition)
I was interviewed by Cassidy George
Back at the start of the year, a special issue of 032c, the culture magazine named for a Pantone color, included writer Cassidy George’s lengthy A-Z of the great Aphex Twin. The roundup, which ranged from “Acid” to “Zealous,” with stops in between for “Chris Cunningham,” “IDM,” and “Xtal,” among other topics, included a quick little Q&A with me. Here’s my section:
That bit was filed under “Ambient,” in between “Analord” and “Bank.” This is from the Winter 2024/25 issue. The full run-down is online at 032c.com.
Price Tag
Record shopping down memory lane
When I got back home from the store — with a gift receipt — I carefully peeled off the price tag, only to find a second and, in fact, a third tag underneath. The sandwiched price tag was inaccessible. The lowest of the three was from my former employer, Tower Records. This close-up photo, unretouched, better reflects my aesthetic-emotional experience of peeling off the labels than did the actual object in my hand at the time. There is so much detail here, notably those little slits, which I believe existed to make it impossible to remove a tag and affix it to another, more expensive item. The archeology of tactile media, the cycle of records being sold again and again back into the used bins, the visual wonders of mechanical typography — it’s all there, smaller than a postage stamp.
On Repeat: Glitched, Prepared, Installed
Home/office playlist
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.
▰ There is seemingly nothing Matt Madden can’t do. He’s foremost a highly inventive cartoonist, and also an expert guitarist. This is an ambient glitch track of shifting drones that I’ve been playing on repeat. Matt, an old friend, is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
▰ I owe thanks to Bruce Levenstein for introducing me to For renstemt klaver, a collection of contemplative recordings by Jo David Meyer Lysne, based in Oslo, Norway, utilizing a remarkable prepared piano of his own invention. I include the cover here to give a glimpse of what is going on. More information in the album’s liner notes, available on the album’s Bandcamp page.
[bandcamp width=640 height=340 album=1377699424 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]
▰ I owe a debt to Patricia Wolf for introducing me to the work of Pablo Diserens. This video is a concise documentation of a 2024 exhibit by Diserens, alytes, at Espacio Vilaseco in Lugo, Spain. The pinging calls are those of the midwife toad. Diserens is based in Berlin, Germany.
Scratch Pad: Fog, 707, STT
From the past week
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 find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media 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.
▰ It’s one thing to think the sounds from neighboring construction kinda resemble experimental percussion music. It’s a whole other level when it all starts to sound vaguely like the muffled vocals of an unidentifiable singer-songwriter.
▰ The city’s Tuesday noon sirens are still out of commission, but the bay fog horns appear to have gotten a new subwoofer
▰ A happy 707 Day to all who celebrate
That’s for the Roland TR-707 Rhythm Composer, which was first released 40 years ago, way back in 1985. The above INXS track came out two years later.
▰ I love when my speech-to-text tool identifies two different speakers, even when it’s just me rattling off notes verbally. There should be an LLM STT tool called Black Swan Fight Club that identifies your various sub-personalities for you.
▰ Been digging having my phone on grayscale mode. For one thing, it looks nice. For another, I find myself less drawn to wasting time on the device. For a third, the setting obviates the remotest consideration I might have had for a “dumbphone,” not that I had much of such a desire in the first place.
▰ The fog is so intense today. I wrote all day and then went for a walk and it felt like I was still indoors.
I kinda love it.
▰ Sometimes I just think about how much toast is consumed in the book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles, engineer/producer Geoff Emerick’s excellent memoir
▰ And this week in #dronescrolling — i.e., stuff other people posted: (1) Yuri Suzuki, sound artist and designer formerly of Pentagram, mentioned on Instagram that his partner, Amy Croft, founded a bed and breakfast in Margate, England, called Modja Modja House, and it now has artist residencies. He writes: “I’ve long had a passion for music and sound, and an ever-growing collection of synthesizers that really needed to be put to good use… so we thought: why not invite artists to stay and create?” ▰ (2) Robin Rimbaud is one of the OG electronic solo musicians from the 1990s, a peer — in time, impact, and sui generis quality — to Aphex Twin, Oval, and Squarepusher. His Instagram posts are regularly filled with his creative activities, as well as with a generous serving of what he is, himself, enjoying in terms of art and music. He writes detailed posts each time, such as this week about a visit to Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s “Clinamen” exhibit in the rotunda at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris.