A Way to Listen to Patzr Radio

Now up to episode 237!

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Patzr Radio podcast, its raw everyday noises coddled and collated, filtered and warped, by Jimmy Kipple, always surprises. What begins here as industrial whine gives way to a shuddering, a rabid flux, that is animal-like, maybe actual animals, such as the quick motion of sea creatures fleeing a net, or simply “-like,” some mechanical device nearing collapse from aeons of use and abuse.

The entries in this ongoing series (episode 237!) are short because they should be listened to on repeat. By the time you get to the end the first time, you understand more about where it began. When it begins anew, you understand the subsequent transitions better (when the whine dies out, when one sound transforms into another). And the more you listen, the more those changes take on compositional quality, the more the piece becomes a composition. Noises become motifs, transitions become development, and alterations become narrative.

And after listening to an episode on repeat, you’ll want to listen back to other episodes and sense how this piece helps unpack previous ones.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/patzr-radio](https://soundcloud.com/patzr-radio/patzr-radio-two-hundred-and-thirtyseven-argu).

Epic Alejandro Morse

From the forthcoming Adversarial Policies

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Alejandro Morse has shared an initial pieces off a forthcoming album, *Adversarial Policies*, due from the Static Discos label. It’s an epic recording, halfway between a vast granular synthesis daydream and an Ennio Morricone western score. It tracks a thick rising cloud of tremulous drones, as if a string section had been left to keep a hostage negotiation under control. It’s enthralling.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/alejandro-morse](https://soundcloud.com/alejandro-morse/never-again). Morse and Static Discos are both based in Mexico.

Disquiet Junto Project 0508: Germane Shepard

The Assignment: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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, September 27, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 23, 2021.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0508: Germane Shepard

The Assignment: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.

Many thanks to Robert Precht for having proposed this project.

There’s just one step: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.

More on the Shepard tone at [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone).

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0508” (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 “disquiet0508” (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:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0508-germane-shepard/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0508-germane-shepard/)

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.

Note: Please post one track per 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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 27, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 23, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. Given the topic, it may sound like it goes on forever …

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0508” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 508th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Germane Shepard (The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key) — at: https://disquiet.com/0508/

Many thanks to Robert Precht for having proposed this project.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0508-germane-shepard/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0508-germane-shepard/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by Chris, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/5WabYH](https://flic.kr/p/5WabYH)

[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

Wandering in and About the Rain

Via Nomadic Ambience

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Rain is something that can be thought of almost as an echo of itself. Like an extrovert who only exists when there is an audience to perform for, rain is not heard so much as it is heard in reaction to something: an umbrella, the ground, a window, or generally some other surface that it strikes. There is also the way rain combines with the sound of wind, and how cloud cover and other related factors can utterly alter the broader sonic environment: dulling edges, nurturing a sense of closed space, walling off further distant noises.

That’s a case made clear in this video from the always on the move Nomadic Ambience (834,000 subscribers on YouTube as of this writing), who wandered around Chicago on a rainy day and captured not just the rain as heard against the protective gear that keeps the camera lens dry, but also as it bounces off the sidewalk, and creates slick streets and shallow puddles that cars turn into sound sources as they pass by.

The video captures some thunderstorm noise, and various urban sounds, one highlight being a tour guide aboard a boat that passes under a bridge just as we, the viewer experiencing this all YouTube-vicariously, cross midway: “It’s a very well-designed building” goes the narration, before trailing off, absorbed by the whir of the rain.

Video originally posted at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXkkKm4AwBg).

Current Favorites: Cocolas, KMRU, Haas/Laswell

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them. (I haven’t done one of these in a while, and should get back in the habit.)

▰ Madeleine Cocolas’s 17-minute [“Nebulous”](https://madeleinecocolas.bandcamp.com/album/nebulous), a new release on the Superpang label, is a suite that moves from sonic cumulus to UFO drones to cinematic minimalism.

▰ KMRU’s [“For Sure I Saw Him”](https://soundcloud.com/kamarujoseph/for-sure-i-saw-him) is a standout track from [*As It Still Is*](https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/as-it-still-is), his recent set of ambient maximalism.

▰ A new collaboration between Alex Haas and Bill Laswell, the eight tracks of [*Incidents*](https://alexhaas.bandcamp.com/album/incidents) are dubby electronica with ghostly funk echoes.