Music for Reading (and Writing)

Horror, that is

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

If the clattering noises and blood-in-the-ear drones, not to mention the backwards monster voices and plagues-sweep-the-land synth washes, make this intensely quiet music an altogether uncomfortable listen, it’s all on purpose. Finland-based musician Juha-Matti Rautiainen set out, when recording the four tracks that comprise *Dark*, “to create as scary soundscapes as possible.” He recommends the music as accompaniment when reading the work of “psychological horror” novelist Marko Hautala. The album grew out of a conversation the two of them had, leading Rautiainen to compose music to which Hautala might write, and to which his readers, in turn, might read.

Album originally posted the night before Halloween at [juhamattirautiainen.bandcamp.com](https://juhamattirautiainen.bandcamp.com/album/dark). More from Rautiainen at [juhamattirautiainen.com](https://juhamattirautiainen.com/), and check out Hautala’s writing at [markohautala.fi](http://markohautala.fi/home/).

Current Listens: Bisengalieva, Vogelsinger, half light

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.

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NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ Live violin from the Kazakh-British composer Galya Bisengalieva, soaring like gulls above an accompaniment of strings, voices, and muted percussion.

▰ Hélène Vogelsinger performs (in full (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYxheEGl2oM&t=176s)) a 10-minute live modular piece in an abandoned castle in her native France.

▰ The Dallas/Nashville duo called half light released [*Permafrost*](https://soundcloud.com/halflightcompositions/sets/permafrost), a beautiful box of musical curios. Long tones, cello and violin lines stretched to the horizon, gather beneath the sonic equivalent of textured cloth on one track (“Hiraeth”), while infrastructural moans meet panning drones on another (“Isolation”). A deep, rich recording.

▰ In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)

The Voice of the Beat

Eight new tracks from Manchester-based Machine Woman

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The new Machine Woman album half-tells stories with bits of spoken conversation, slivers of memoir, fragments of verbiage, sometimes as if overheard, often as if directed at the listener, and then as if the listener were, in fact, a close confidant — and sometimes that conversation is buried deep in the album’s sounds themselves. A warped tape of what seems like voice mail opens “Telephone Calls From Milan to New York (Featuring The Nativist).” A garbled anecdote partially explains the subject of a track titled “Man at the Bus Stop.” These voices that permeate *In the Basement of 83 Men* seep into our heads, so much so that even on the tracks where they’re not as prevalent, the sounds of Machine Woman’s rhythms seem made from voices. A beat on “The End of Last Year Always Be Beautiful” feels like it was shaped from a breathy vowel. A synth on “Frankfurt Glitch Machine” that moves like a broken Slinky toy blurts as if someone were struggling to say something. And quite clearly (at least to my ears), aspects of “Petrol Sounds I Hear Outside My Window” were certainly clipped from spoken language and reworked into another sort of communication, one built on the common language of techno. Percussive ingenuity and a storyteller’s imagination guide this excellent collection.

Album originally released at [machinewoman.bandcamp.com](https://machinewoman.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-basement-of-83-men). Machine Woman is Anastasia Vtorova, based in Manchester, U.K.

Disquiet Junto Project 0462: Vade in Pace

The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.

/ 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, November 9, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 5, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0462: Vade in Pace

The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.

Step 1: Consider the way pace (tempo, speed) is experienced, represented, and accomplished in music.

Step 2: Consider the way stasis is experienced, represented, and accomplished in music.

Step 3: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds. If possible, have it end with a sense of outright stasis. Fading out is fine, too, certainly.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0462” (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 “disquiet0462” (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-0462-vade-in-pace/

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, November 9, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 5, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. Shorter is often better.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0462” 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 462nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Vade in Pace (The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds), at:

https://disquiet.com/0462/

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-0462-vade-in-pace/

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 Josh Levinger, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (flipped and cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/CHUe3K](https://flic.kr/p/CHUe3K)

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

Current Listens: Recent Retrospect

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. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)

I listened to plenty of new music this week, from Autechre’s surprise [*Plus*](https://autechre.bandcamp.com/album/plus) to Patricia Wolf’s [remix](https://soundcloud.com/scenenoise/premier-fadi-tabbal-the-new-and-improved-guide-to-birdwatching-vol3-patricia-wolf-remix) of material from Fadi Tabbal’s [new album](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/23/tabbal-subject-to-potential-errors/) to ioflow’s [ambient workout](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XFQtsj4zw) on the Elektron Digitone, but I wanted to highlight in this edition of Current Listens some music I’ve written about over the past month or so that’s really stuck with me. The emphasis on the new can create a false impression of constant new. Even the recent new can linger in ways that change one’s initial impression, often for the better:

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NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ The patzr radio art-sound podcast of Jimmy Kipple’s musique concrète (music constructed from field recordings and pre-existing recorded sound) is a font of textural pleasure, especially the recent [two-parter](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/12/patzr-radio-202/). Here’s the second half:

▰ Loraine James’ [remix](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/28/loraine-james-lunch-money-life/) of Lunch Money Life’s “Lincoln” reveals key moments of the source material before artfully falling to deliberately challenging pieces.

▰ Lloyd Cole recorded an economical little album of modular synthesizer music with one little noise source, from which the record takes its name, [*Dunst*](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/11/current-listens-johannsson-tribute-coles-synths/), as its focus:

▰ “Suite pour l’invisible” was the first track made available from Ana Roxanne’s forthcoming [*Because of a Flower*](https://disquiet.com/2020/09/09/ana-roxanne-flower-suite/) album. I’ve gone back and listened frequently. It was followed up by the beat-machine-backed, almost Sade-like “Camille.” The [full release](https://anaroxanne.bandcamp.com/album/because-of-a-flower-2), with five additional tracks, comes out on November 13.