Disquiet Junto Project 0486: Earths Days

The Assignment: Celebrate Earth Day on or for another planet.

/ 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, April 26, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 22, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0486: Earths Days

The Assignment: Celebrate Earth Day on or for another planet.

Step 1: Each Disquiet Junto project begins on a Thursday. This Thursday happens to be Earth Day. Reflect on the concept of Earth Day, and how it might map beyond our big blue marble.

Step 2: Record a piece of music or sound celebrating Earth Day for or as if on another planet.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0486” (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 “disquiet0486” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0486-earths-days/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0486-earths-days/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, April 26, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 22, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. .

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0486” 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 486th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Earths Days (The Assignment: The Assignment: Celebrate Earth Day on or for another planet) — at: https://disquiet.com/0486/

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-0486-earths-days/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0486-earths-days/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is in the public domain courtesy of NASA. Image credit: Zolt Levay Photography: [http://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2021/001/01EWXK6QFEF57A7W1RV6TC6ZZB](http://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2021/001/01EWXK6QFEF57A7W1RV6TC6ZZB)

Beirut Drone Duets

Seven pairings courtesy of Ruptured Records

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The definition of drone on the first volume of Ruptured Records’ *The Drone Sessions* gets pushed, challenged, and, in the end, enriched over the course of the set’s seven tracks. Each is a duet, 14 participants in all with none repeated. It opens with a mix of throttled, soft-attack keyboard sounds paired with inhumanly extended vocals, heavenly choir as manifest in a machine, and utterly gorgeous. That’s Fadi Tabbal and Julia Sabra’s “Roots.” Elsewhere, Charbel Haber and Sary Moussa bring a shimmery glitch to “And Yet Another Romance on a Sinking Ship,” while on “Woe to Him,” Sharif Sehnaoui and Tony Elieh emphasize string instruments, what appears to be an acoustic bass particularly prominent, such that the track is only drone-like in its adherence to a repetitive, underlying rhythm (it eventually explodes into a raucous noise).

Which is not only fine but kind of wonderful. Rather than parse out one held tone after another, *The Drone Sessions* uses the tension between artistic voices in combination with widely varied approaches to explore a far richer palette than an album with this title might have otherwise. All but one of the musicians is Lebanese, the exception being Aya Metwalli, who is Egyptian. Ruptured, the label, is based in Beirut, Lebanon, and the session itself was a collaboration with Nathan Larson, his Lumen Project inspiring the pairing inherent in the lineup.

The other performers are Jad Atoui, Liliane Chlela, Nadia Daou (aka NÂR), Ziad Moukarzel, Jawad Nawfal, Anthony Sahyoun, and Elyse Tabet. “Courbe Lisse,” Tabet and Nawfal’s more traditional drone, is an epic, nearly 12-minute expanse, and how it veers from gossamer pleasure to rougher terrain is one of the album’s many highlights.

All the music was recorded live over the course of two sessions back in November 2020 at the Beirut studio Tunefork. Album originally posted at [rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com](https://rupturedthelabel.bandcamp.com/album/the-drone-sessions-vol-1-live-at-tunefork-studios). It was released back on March 19 of this year.

Fine Drone Partita in a Minor Synth Setup

A video from Little Ambient Machines

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a solid example of the sort of videos I’ve been collating in my YouTube playlist of fine live ambient recordings. The equipment is in full view, and the actions in the video correlate with the generally subtle though sometimes not inconsiderable alterations to the pulsing drone as it proceeds. This video isn’t a tutorial. There are no instructions, just two hands enacting manipulations, turning knobs, clicking buttons. In addition, as the music plays, the ear’s sense of interior activity can find consonance with the eye’s attention to the pace of the various lights, providing clues as to which parts of the assembled tools align with what aspects of the music. The track takes its title (“Eurorack ambient drone featuring Morphagene, C4RBN, Magneto, DLD and FX-aid”) from the form of the music and the equipment employed (a bit like old-school classical music, such as Bach’s Partita in A minor for solo flute).

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video by Little Ambient Machines, based in Amsterdam, and posted today at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsX_wCJ5yQQ).

Current Favorites: Samples, Horror, Perfume, Fusion

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’m a sucker for many things, among them low-key propulsive fusion featuring Rhodes piano and a muted, economical horn section, along with liner notes stating which drummer is in the right channel and which in the left. This is the new Dosh track, [“If U Strike Me Down,”](https://dosh.bandcamp.com/track/if-u-strike-me-down) off the forthcoming album *Tomorrow 1972*. Dosh is Martin Dosh, longtime drummer for Andrew Bird’s band.

▰ There’s an excellent new Kev Brown hip-hop instrumentals set out, [*The Music Underneath! The “GOOD​.​” Instrumentals*](https://kevbrown.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-underneath-the-good-instrumentals). I’d love to know what the opening track samples. Its stately procession reminds me of David Byrne’s Knee Plays.

▰ Heymun has been summoning up her inner synesthete, channeling perfumes into music in an occasional series she calls “Scent to Sound.” This floaty, enjoyably askew ambience correlates with her sense that the particular fragrance suggests “Butterflies fluttering in my stomach.”

▰ Clint Mansell has a new horror score out, *In the Earth*, for the Ben Wheatley film, and it is a dark, intense, highly recommended listen. One track, “Spirit of the Woods,” is up officially on YouTube, and all 16 tracks are on streaming services.

Drones on a Budget

A live AE Modular set from the 5th Volt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There are numerous small-brew synthesizers in production currently, each with its own approach, in terms of how individual pieces of equipment operate, and what functions are explored, as well as the make-up of their own communities, who share their creations and provide feedback to the manufacturers, which in turn often yields new equipment. This is a short video displaying the drone capacities from the AE Modular line from Tangible Waves, which originated as a Kickstarter and has expanded into a wide range of small, affordable (the most expensive two are €74.00 and €87.00, while most are half that amount), mix-and-match modules. The source module heard here, the Drone38, contains 18 oscillators in a trio of sets containing a half dozen each. They’re modulated by hand, both the oscillator sets themselves, in terms of tuning, and the relative volume of the signals, plus various effects, in the DroneX mixer. This is a short demonstration from the 5th Volt channel on YouTube.

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGmMeqc9OTc).