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Disquiet Junto Project 0480: Ongsay Aftcray

The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.

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

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0480: Ongsay Aftcray

The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.

Step 1: This project is informed by Pig Latin. From the Oxford English Dictionary: “a secret language formed from English by transferring the initial consonant or consonant cluster of each word to the end of the word and adding a vocalic syllable.” By way of example, “Pig Latin” in Pig Latin becomes “Igpay Atinlay.” “Disquiet Junto” in Pig Latin becomes “Isquietday Untojay.”

Step 2: Consider how you might apply the technique of Pig Latin to a preexisting piece of music, perhaps one of your own, or perhaps someone else’s (a remix of something from the public domain, for example). You might cut up a melodic sequence and append the starts of phrases to their ends. This needn’t by any means involve words or voice. Just use Pig Latin as a guide, one that informs how you take something that exists and then rearrange its constituent parts methodically into something else.

Step 3: Record a piece of music employing the approach you develop as a result of Step 2.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0480” (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 “disquiet0480” (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-0480-ongsay-aftcray/42680](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0480-ongsay-aftcray/42680)

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

Length: The length is up to you. Ore more to the point: Ethay engthlay isyay upyay otay ouyay.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0480” 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 480th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Ongsay Aftcray (The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0480/

Karlehag’s “Spring”

Live modular synthesizer performance

March 9, 2021March 9, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a dream of a piece by Tobias Karlehag, whose “Spring” is an evershfting melodic line, supported by a shimmering sequence of ambient pads. The melody is quite brief and cyclical, and yet something about the accumulation of tones, the slight variations in permutations, the occasional appearance of what seem to be choral vocal samples, all adds up to something far more life-like than the individual parts might suggest. Throughout, Karlehag’s darts in and out of view, maintaining the balance, implementing small changes.

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

Danish Turbines

As recorded by Robert Cole Rizzi

March 8, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

rizzi · Windturbines recorded with LOM Audio Geofon and Usi pro

Robert Cole Rizzi files this sonic report from wind turbines near where he lives in Kolding, Denmark. The recordings employ the [Geofón](https://disquiet.com/2020/01/14/geofon-lom/) made by LOM, an instrument company in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Geofón is an especially sensitive microphone, its technology having originated for seismic measurements. In the six tracks that Rizzi posted, we hear the mechanisms and the drones, the death-ambient routinized turbulence, of the wind machines doing their thing. Some of the tracks are quite violent, notably the third, which includes a squeal that on first listen might be mistaken for that of a bird, though the subsequent repetitions makes clear it’s simply a result of the machine turning. While all the tracks have a meditative sameness once they get rolling, they aren’t immune to change. Track five in particular seems to rev up at one point, like it’s suddenly increased power. Many of the tracks have the industrial whir of those extended YouTube videos of the engine room of the Starship Enterprise. The first and fifth are my favorites. If deep gray were a sound, it would sound like these tracks, especially if it were a deep gray that’s rich with imperfections and prone to wear.

Playlist originally posted at [soundcloud.com/rizzi](https://soundcloud.com/rizzi/sets/windturbines-recorded-with-lom-audio-geofon-and-usi-pro). More from Rizzi at [twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi](https://twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi).

Current Favorites: Luu, Fripp, Euclide

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

March 7, 2021 / 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.

▰ The new release from Italian musician Elisa Luu (aka Elisabetta Luciani, based in Rome), [*Luu’s Strange Minimalism*](https://labelnetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/luus-strange-visions), packs more into four short tracks than most musicians do into a full album, even two albums. From the filmic post-classical “Violin, LuuV” to the pulsing minimalism of “Dicem, 15V,” the record is a strong example of why Luu is high on the list of my favorite musicians I have no idea why I don’t read about more frequently.

<a href="https://labelnetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/luus-strange-visions">Luu's Strange Visions by Elisa Luu</a>

▰ Just a reminder that Robert Fripp is 45 weeks into his promised 50 weekly tracks of Music for Quiet Moments. If you’re more familiar with his far more widely viewed pandemic-era collaborations with his wife, Toyah Wilcox, then welcome to the introspective side of his personality and his playing. The [latest](https://youtu.be/5hyv4xLlT2I) was recorded in Paris six years ago:

▰ A beautiful Instagram series pairs Gregory Euclide’s photographs with one-minute loops of music by a rotating and expanding cast of contributors, including [the OO-Ray](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLpJ16jhFOX/), [Stephen Vitiello](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLWvU1TB3zG/), [Jolanda Moletta](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLGBN7-hd09/), and [Kirill Nikolai](https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JtQ0xBmaB/). There have been 159 entries to date. The latest is by [Steve Ashby](https://www.instagram.com/p/CL0b4aYhuKj/). Visit at [instagram.com/thesisrecurring](https://www.instagram.com/thesisrecurring/).

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Drumcorps’ Glitch-Mediated Metal

RIYL your fond memories of Prong, Slayer, Fugazi, and Godflesh processed by Max Headroom's digital-native grandkid

March 5, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="https://drumcorps.bandcamp.com/album/better-days">Better Days by drumcorps</a>

To say this isn’t ambient would be an understatement, and it’s noted here simply because I veer less and less in my writing about music from the quiet zone, whether unnatural or natural or hybrid environments. So, yeah, don’t sit too close to your speakers, and attenuate that volume if you’re using headphones. This is, on a Friday, exactly what I needed. It’s Drumcorps hitting hard with not just his trademark glitched-up drum’n’bass-mediated metal, but the raw thing, as well. It’s RIYL your fond memories of Prong, Slayer, Fugazi, and Godflesh processed by Max Headroom’s digital-native grandkid. The first track is a trick, a sleight of ear, in which the metal starts off without the seams showing, cut and plastered so suddenly that it could be mistaken for (heck, maybe it is) simply a break-neck live performance by someone capable of playing back in realtime what we once craved software to accomplish for us. Either way, the realism soon enough fades in favor of the computer-addled automatic mash-up that Drumcorps is so good at.

It’s interesting how songs like Prince’s “Dance On” and Prong’s “Prime Cut” (prime aesthetic examples to me of human-machine music interface) once seemed so intense, and now don’t. They broke norms at their time, but they’re more (easy) listenable now, the tension gone. What’s great about Drumcorps is it has some of the intensity those songs had when I first heard them. And he’s been at it a long time, and still keeps it fresh.

Drumcorps is Aaron Spectre, originally from Massachusetts and now based in Amsterdam. More at [drumcorps.co](https://drumcorps.co/).