Disquiet Junto Project 0485: Strange Weather

The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer's traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes.

/ 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 19, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 15, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0485: Strange Weather

The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes.

This is the second of two projects in a row we’re doing with artist Chris Kallmyer. You needn’t have participated in the previous one to do this one. First, some background: Kallmyer’s “Two hearts are better than one” is a pair of wind chimes, one of which is depicted in this week’s cover image, crisscrossing Los Angeles at the height of the pandemic. Installed at homes for week-long listening sessions, the chimes formed a duet across a city and provided intimate experiences with sound for 16 families sheltering at home. (More at [chriskallmyer.com](http://www.chriskallmyer.com/portfolio-item/2-hearts/).)

Step 1: Chris has provided us with a recording of the wind chimes, a little over five minutes long. The audio was cleaned up by Alex Hawthorn to maximize the clarity of the chimes themselves, removing much of the background sound, thus situating the chimes in what might be thought of as a platonic space. Access the wav file at [dropbox.com](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9fwo845wf218cn/2hearts_v3_heavy.wav?dl=0).

Step 2: Do what you wish this the chimes. Remix them to your musical heart’s content. The one request is that at least once in your recording, let the source audio be heard clearly.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0485” (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 “disquiet0485” (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-0485-strange-weather/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0485-strange-weather/)

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 19, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 15, 2021.

Length: The length is entirely up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0485” 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 485th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Strange Weather (The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes) — at:
https://disquiet.com/0485/

More on Chris Kallmyer at:
[chriskallmyer.com](http://chriskallmyer.com/).

Major thanks to Alex Hawthorn for support:
[alexhawthorn.com](https://alexhawthorn.com/)

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-0485-strange-weather/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0485-strange-weather/)

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 by Chris Kallmyer and used with the artist’s permission.

Noémi Büchi Live

A percussive set from November in Stockholm

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


This live set by Noémi Büchi of Zürich, Switzerland, is 23 minutes long and slated for release several months from now, on August 4. Perhaps there’s more to come, but as it stands it’s a very satisfying piece. A driving percussive set eventually wends its way out of an inchoate opening. What begins as scrap sounds, tiny noises and globular burbles, becomes more dynamic, focused, and metronome-like as it proceeds, with opportunities later for lulls and pauses. The result is a mix of classic minimalist percussive music and metallic synthesis. It was recorded at the ljudOljud Festival at KMH (Kungliga Musikhögskolan), the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, back in November 2020. The set is named “Södra Grinda” after the island in the Stockholm archipelago. Büchi has said that she visited the location shortly after moving to Sweden.

The track is at [noemibuchi.bandcamp.com](https://noemibuchi.bandcamp.com/track/live-set-s-dra-grinda) and [soundcloud.com/noemibuchi](https://soundcloud.com/noemibuchi/live-set-excerpt-ljudoljud).

Michiko Ogawa’s Hammond Drone

A half-hour preview of a new album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

One at a time, quite slowly, each addition layering another tone, sometimes replacing a previous component, noticeably shifting the sensibility of the overall piece in the process, a key is pressed on Michiko Ogawa’s dusty old Hammond organ and the resulting drone changes its shape. This is “Ura,” the one preview track from *Solo May / 2020*, her new album. Best known as a clarinetist, Ogawa here applies herself to dense, dramatic music that is full of sublime portent, a minimalist’s take on the Phantom of the Opera, a mass for the wonders of sedimentary geology.

Album originally posted at [hitorri.bandcamp.com](https://hitorri.bandcamp.com/album/solo-may-2020). More from Ogawa, who is from Tokyo, Japan, and based in Berlin, Germany, at [michikoogawa.com](https://www.michikoogawa.com/bio.html).

Current Favorites: David Shea, Anne Guthrie, Tuesday Drones

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.

▰ David Shea’s [*Live in Blackwood*](https://youtu.be/newGiBbNCk0) is a remarkable concert document, a performance recorded in nature and making the most of the environmental sound in which it is ensconced. Shea himself is first heard before he’s seen, his course whistle collaborating with birdsong. He them enters the camera’s view from behind bushes. Each phase of this series of sets, almost 37 minutes in total length, mixes varying instrumentation with different video approaches, such as a hovering drone shot while he plays a series of multicolored bowls that sound like massive tuning forks, and a forest walk while he combines samples, gongs, and field recordings. (I found this via a mention by Lawrence English.)

▰ On [*Gyropedie*](https://anneguthrie.bandcamp.com/album/gyropedie), Anne Guthrie elegantly combines field recordings, electronics, and instrumentation, notably her French horn, in a gestural, almost fleeting manner, finding common ground between the materials in fragmentary form.

▰ Compelling, rusty, [serrated drone](https://youtu.be/oOypjSV89Z8) by the musician best know as/for Tuesday Night Machines, performed on an intriguing setup from the inexpensive synthesizer manufacturer AE Modular.

Seefeel x Autechre

A 2021 reissue of a 2003 release of a 1994 remix of a 1994 track

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Update: When I first posted this, I misstated the release date of the remix (as 2003, when it was released, instead of 1994). I then received a clarification from none other than Autechre’s Sean Booth, who wrote as follows. Reprinted with his permission.

>that seefeel rmx is actually from 94, it was done in return for their remix of basscadet but for some unknown reason warp never put it out, then mark eventually put it out in 2003 (i think cos he felt guilty or something)

>some trivia: it was done on a rainy afternoon in april in the same room we made amber in (my bedroom at the time) just before we finished doing the tracks for amber, so it’s part of that era
>
>it was a live take hence the stupid runtime

To highlight a slate of reissues from the band Seefeel, Warp Records this week posted an Autechre remix of “Spangle,” the original from the classic 1994 *Artificial Intelligence II* compilation that featured Autechre as well, along with Scanner, Richard D. James (in Polygon Window guise), Richard H. Kirk (of Cabaret Voltaire), and many others. In the remix, an extended bout of genteel ambience, all quavery sine waves, eventually — far later and less organically than the original — gives way to a slowly emerging , deliciously gated beat and a heavenly bit of vocal from Seefeel’s Sarah Peacock. The other members are Mark Clifford, Daren Seymour, and Justin Fletcher.

The remix dates from 1994, but wasn’t released until 2003. Here’s the original for comparison:


Get the collection featuring both tracks, *Rupt and Flex (1994 – 96)*, at [seefeel.bandcamp.com](https://seefeel.bandcamp.com/album/rupt-and-flex-1994-96-1).