downstream – Page 134

Current Favorites: Organ/Synth + Instrumental Yo La Tengo

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

December 6, 2020 / 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. (This weekly feature was previously titled Current Listens. The name’s been updated for clarity’s sake.)

This week, some recent favorites to which I keep returning:

▰ Helena Ford’s [*Songs for Organ and Synth*](https://helenaford.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-organ-and-synth): an album of stately court music for our hybrid analog-digital present.

<a href="https://helenaford.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-organ-and-synth">Songs for Organ and Synth by Helena Ford</a>

▰ [*The Sounds of the Sounds of Science*](https://yolatengo.bandcamp.com/album/the-sounds-of-the-sounds-of-science) is a full album of instrumentals from the acclaimed indie rock band Yo La Tengo. The pieces were composed to accompany aquatic documentary shorts by the filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989). The music is more rock-like but no less atmospheric than the experimental tracks the band released [earlier this year](https://disquiet.com/2020/07/14/yo-la-tengo-summon-the-now/).

<a href="https://yolatengo.bandcamp.com/album/the-sounds-of-the-sounds-of-science">The Sounds of the Sounds of Science by Yo La Tengo</a>

▰ Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been entertaining pandemic-era listeners with solo performances, under the Songs of Comfort banner. The latest, [uploaded today](https://youtu.be/nXd9m8vup0g), is the theme composed by Ennio Morricone for the 1998 film *The Legend of 1900*.

Emma Hendrix x Julie Gendron x W.A.C. Bennett

Hydroelectric minimal techno

December 4, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Julie Gendron and Emma Hendrix are Manufacturing Entertainment, a Canadian art duo with a decade and a half of collaboration (audio, video, installation, performance) to their credit. “When Once There Was” is a trance-inducing, ever-evolving, minimal-techno transition state, nearly a quarter of an hour during which rapid pulses gain hypnotic powers. What begins as mechanized pitter-patter escalates to something consuming and palpable, engrossing and enthralling. It might be difficult at any given moment to comprehend how what you recall from minutes, even moments, ago even became what you are currently hearing.

As it turns out, the transformation began before the track did. The audio is sourced from site recordings of the W.A.C Bennett Dam, a hydroelectric buttress against the Williston Reservoir in British Columbia, Canada. The 50th anniversary of the dam’s construction was celebrated two years ago, in 2018. The audio is a live performance, broacast on CiTR, the University of British Columbia’s radio station.

Track originally posted to [soundcloud.com/emmahendrix](https://soundcloud.com/emmahendrix/wotw-live-performance-on-cjsw). More on Manufacturing Entertainment at [manufacturingentertainment.com](https://manufacturingentertainment.com/) and [instagram.com/manufacturing_entertainment](https://www.instagram.com/manufacturing_entertainment/). Maps via Google.

Disquiet Junto Project 0466: [ ] Sound Machine

The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?

December 3, 2020December 4, 2020 / 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, December 7, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 3, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0466: [ ] Sound Machine

The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?

Step 1: The American comedian George Wallace made an astute observation this week on Twitter: “You never hear about sound machines from other cities. Miami really cornered the market on that shit.” Ponder this.

Step 2: Choose a city (perhaps your own, or one you’ve visited, or one you want to visit, or a fictional one) and share what its sound machine sounds like.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0466” (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 “disquiet0466” (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-0466-sound-machine/

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, December 7, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 3, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. Cities are both large and small.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0466” 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 466th weekly Disquiet Junto project, [ ] Sound Machine (The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?), at:

https://disquiet.com/0466/

Project inspired by a December 2, 2020, tweet from George Wallace:

https://twitter.com/MrGeorgeWallace/status/1334274395938832387

Grid Across Generations

A live video from Sudden Language

December 2, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The Tenori-on is almost 15 years old, but it still looks like an instrument from the future. It was an early progenitor of the grid-based instruments that blanket the music-making world these days. Here it is heard sequencing sedate exotica beats, as filtered by an offshoot of another matrix instrument. That’s a Norns Shield on the left, a little music computer from the makers of the Monome Grid. The video is from a musician who goes by Sudden Language.

The Tenori-on was developed by Toshio Iwai and Yu Nishibori. Video originally posted at [YouTube](https://youtu.be/VusLOZeuoeo). More from Sudden Language at [suddenlanguage.bandcamp.com](https://suddenlanguage.bandcamp.com).

Cecilia Tyrrell on Radius

For the series' 93rd episode

November 30, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The long-running Radius broadcast/podcast series has reached episode 93. This current entry, which was released today, features a piece by Cecilia Tyrrell.

It overlays field recordings of the coastline with jittery spoken word, the latter like a public address system sent through the shredder. A brief description lends context:

>”Sonic topography inspired and partly arranged from recordings made at a sound mirror on the South East coast of England (UK). The mirror itself stands dormant as it waits, facing out away from land. Sound markers and siren warnings, still it listens, quietly detecting.”

The sound mirror is pictured up top, a presence obscured by fog. Bells that bop around like buoys on a wave mix with appropriate burbling as the piece comes to a close, but up until then it’s a much more complex undertaking. The water sloshes like it’s underfoot, the sound taking on the semblance of a journey, either in search of or in avoidance of what remains unclear. The garbled voiceover sounds like a warning, but for whom? It’s an abstract audio drama, a thriller that replaces plot with pure sensation, as ambiguous as it is deliberate.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/theradius](https://soundcloud.com/theradius/episode93). More on the piece at [theradius.us/episode93](https://theradius.us/episode93). More from Tyrrell at [ceciliatyrrell.com](https://www.ceciliatyrrell.com/).