downstream – Page 157

Esther Venrooy Controls the Chaos

"Slam Your Doors in a Golden Silence," she says.

June 29, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This track by Esther Venrooy does crazy things to my fingers. My fingers rest on my laptop keyboard. My laptop keyboard is where the speakers are located. As the intense bell-like tones of “Slam Your Doors in a Golden Silence” rise, as their energy collects amid wisps of rougher sounds, the laptop’s surface vibrates in kind. Sonic Tesla coils send charges up my arms. There’s a luxurious chaos at work here, a chaos kept in line, and only just barely. Much as the live-wire noises and arcing tones hint at dangerous apexes, they remain held in check. There’s a famous maxim about music being “organized sound,” courtesy of composer Edgard Varèse. What Venrooy exposes here is that organization needn’t mean corralling sound into something familiar. There’s a lot of room before something is even remotely domesticated. It can mean yoking noise just tight enough to give it shape, but to still let it move under its own strange power.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/esther-venrooy-1](https://soundcloud.com/esther-venrooy-1/slam-your-doors-in-a-golden-silence). More from Venrooy, who is based in Breda, Netherlands, at [esthervenrooy.net](http://esthervenrooy.net/about/).

Current Listens: Filmic Exploration, Hyperspeed Pummel

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

June 28, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is my 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.)

▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰

NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ There’s the harrowing space horror of “In the most Unlikely of Places” and the charismatic digital-beatnik broken vocal on “I am Sitting in a Room Performing the Society of the Spectacle,” but the real keeper on *In the Place of a Vain Search for an Image of the Age* is the title track. That’s where Conspiracy Therapists (Jeff Gburek and Filippo Panichi) unleash a dense, filmic exploration of feedback and melodic drone.

<a href="http://mahorka.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-place-of-a-vain-search-for-an-image-of-the-age">In the Place of a Vain Search for an Image of the Age by Conspiracy Therapists</a>

▰ Come for the metalloid pandemonium of “Cortège.” Stay for the hyperspeed pummel of “I’ll See you Again.” Gaël Segalen’s album *Sofia Says* dates from last October, but it’s brand new to me.

<a href="http://ihearu.bandcamp.com/album/sofia-says">Sofia Says by Gaël Segalen</a>

▰ There’s no excuse not to make time for the Black Composer Miniature Challenge from the Castle of Our Skins ensemble. The latest is the beautiful, doleful, one-minute “Hannah Elias II” by Shannon Sea, performed on viola by Ashleigh Gordon.

Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes

The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up.

June 25, 2020June 29, 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 Monday, June 29, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 25, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0443-in) for the duration of the project.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes

The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up.

Step 1: You will need two field recordings for this project, preferably ones with clear differences between them.

Step 2: You will be creating a mashup-up of these two field recordings. Listen closely to them and locate distinct elements, as few or many as you wish.

Step 3: Extract samples of those elements selected in Step 2.

Step 4: Within minimal alteration of the source audio, combine the samples from Step 3 into a single track. It can be as chaotic or placid, realistic or artificial, as sounds right to you.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0443” (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 “disquiet0443” (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-0443-in-two-landscapes/

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 Monday, June 29, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 25, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0443” 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 443rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0443: In Two Landscapes — The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up — at:

https://disquiet.com/0443/

Feedback Light as a Fjærlett

Feather, that is

June 24, 2020June 30, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This beautiful instrument from Norway feeds back through spring reverb, and then lets the player adjust the audio with a 10-band graphic equalizer. It was created by Kristoffer Gard Osen, who is based in Oslo. The resulting sounds range from ethereal drones to industrial clanging, and the drones have a metallic vibe while the clanging has a rich resonance. Which is to say, this instrument isn’t about either/or; it’s about the varieties of sound in between. The name of the instrument is Fjærlett, which apparently is Norwegian for feather, or feathery. Which is to say, as Osen has noted, “You have to play it as light as a feather.” While this video serves as a product announcement by a small, one-person company, I’m sharing it based on the beauty of the sounds made during the performance. (In a June 30th update, Osen wrote that [an audio-input jack](https://mailchi.mp/b1e30d191773/fjrlett-waitlist?e=ddf84cbb79) will be available as an option.)

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WujMGqerd4). More on the Fjærlett at [tilde-elektriske.com](https://tilde-elektriske.com/fjaerlett).

Overnight Field Recording

Robert Rizzi leaves his rig alone

June 23, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

By definition, most field recordings are reflections of civilization, inhabited by the presence of whoever is doing the recording. Whether you’ve dropped a hydrophone into the bay or held a portable device up to catch the birdsong, you are there, physically connected to the recording tools. And the world that you are recording notes your presence. Animals avoid you. The wind curves around you. The device’s direction is determined by you.

But there are alternate approaches, such as Robert Rizzi’s. Rizzi, who is based in Kolding, Denmark, left his gear out in the wild, and then returned the next day to hear what his device heard when he wasn’t around. As he recounts:

>Last week I dropped a rig again in the Solkær meadows/wetland near my home. I have a friend who owns a large chunk of land there and he took me on an inspection/expedition of the area. I went back later the same evening and set up next to the little waterhole in the picture. I left the rig there until the next morning…

Even with his active absence, however, civilization managed to intervene. As he explains, the nearly 20 minutes heard here required post-production to remove the presence of planes, to adjust sound levels, and to filter out unwanted audio:

>This track is excerpts from the evening, night and dawn – it was pretty quiet so I have been fidling a bit with eq, compression and RX7 to enhance the result…(I’ll go back this week with my “big” rig to get a better recording hopefully without muchwork in post)
>
>Right at the beginning you hear a deer? really close to the mics eating, and finally running away, there’s swans flying by, heron or cranes vocalizing, frogs blackbirds etc… quite a few planes, and even a helicopter, over the 9 hours of recoding – I edited those out

Nonetheless, the sounds are special. The animals heard chomping in the foreground early on do disappear, and when they do the meadow opens up, and the ear hears further than it did previously, deep into the night.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/rizzi](https://soundcloud.com/rizzi/solkaer-meadows-june-17th-2020-overnight). More from Rizzi at [twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi](https://twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi).