Current Listens: Dalt’s Voice, Mursyid’s Gamelan

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ 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.)

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NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ Despite the title “Patch Notes,” this 15-minute video by Lucrecia Dalt is not a tutorial. It’s a full performance, a mesmerizing one, for expertly processed voice. Dalt is based in Berlin, Germany.

▰ “Origin High Brazil” is dense drones, somehow both orchestral yet solitary, from Parker Weston of Phoenix, Arizona. It’s the second track off the *Enohpoxas Blews* album, recored by Weston under the PKWST moniker:

▰ Gamelan-inspired, software-forged, effortlessly dreamy synthesizer figments from the talented, Indonesia-based musician Fahmi Mursyid:

Disquiet Junto Project 0439: Hybrid Self

The Assignment: Compose music combining the styles of two musicians you admire.

/ 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 1, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 28, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0439) for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0439: Self Less**

The Assignment: Compose music combining the styles of two musicians you admire.

Step 1: Think of two musicians, preferably ones with different styles, whose music you admire.

Step 2: Consider ways elements from both musicians might be combined. Elements doesn’t mean copyrighted material. It is intended to mean stylistic. (Yes, recent legal decisions have, shall we say, blurred these lines. Try to put that thought aside.)

Step 3: Compose a piece of music exploring the combination (the grafting, the hybridization) of styles you considered in Step 2.

Step 4: You may when posting your track elect to identify the musicians that served as inspiration, or you may choose to keep it to yourself.

**Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:**

Step 1: Include “disquiet0439” (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 “disquiet0439” (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-0439-hybrid-self/

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 1, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 28, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. This may be the rare circumstance when longer is better.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0439” 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: Given the nature of this particular project sequence, it is 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 439th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0439: Hybrid Self — The Assignment: Compose music combining the styles of two musicians you admire — at:

https://disquiet.com/0439/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0439-hybrid-self/

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 track is from Vega A, used thanks to a Creative Commons license and Flickr. The image has been cropped, colors shifted, and text added.

https://flic.kr/p/cAkg3C

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

The Generative Tuba

The glorious web video series of id m theft able

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a running series on the YouTube channel of user “id m theft able” that is one of my current favorite things on the internet. (I put quotes around that name simply so it’s clear where the name begins and where it ends, and also so it’s clear that the sentence constructed around the name isn’t disintegrating as you read it.) Each of the user’s videos in this series places a tuba somewhere, “with a microphone in it,” as the description always points out.

We then hear both the sound of where the tuba has been placed — along a river bank, adjacent to a waterfall, in the wind and rain, in the snow — and that sound echoing inside of (tracing the contours of, limning the deep recesses of) the tuba itself.

The footage generally runs, uncut, for about an hour. Which is to say, it doesn’t blink. YouTube is filled with nature footage. And if you spend time in the realm of ambient electronic music, there’s a lot that’s shot of battery-powered setups out in the wild. But the generative tuba is the rare drone music video that is, truly (an oft misused term), of nature.

There are 11 videos thus far: [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObK3aMmc7Ao&list=PL0N7tO24231cLRJPE5LOXr1O64jvgalow).

Current Listens: Ayako Okamura Tunes the World

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ 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

▰ The score to the upcoming second season of *Homecoming* is by Emile Mosseri, who previously scored the excellent *The Last Black Man in San Francisco*. It opens with violins that manage to be both atonal and syrupy, and gets even better from there. If A Winged Victory for the Sullen composed a season of *Westworld*, this is what it might sound like. Mosseri also scored the upcoming Miranda July-directed film *Kajillionaire*. The first season of *Homecoming* had no score, in the traditional sense. Instead, it utilized the scores of dozens of other films (see Chris O’Falt’s detailed coverage back in 2018: [indiewire.com](https://www.indiewire.com/2018/11/homecoming-score-classic-thriller-movie-soundtracks-sam-esmail-complete-list-1202018145/)), from *The Parallax View* (Michael Small) to *The Day The Earth Stood Still* (Bernard Hermann).

▰ Twenty tracks of downtempo, sample-laden excellence: *Selected Instro Work​(​s) 17​-​19 II* is the latest set from Philadephia-based hip-hop producer Small Professor.

▰ Take a minute and a half to listen to how Japanese musician Ayako Okamura tunes the world, finding the fundamental pitch of field recordings and accentuating the inherent music. (Presuming you, like I, don’t know Japanese, be sure to turn on the automated translation.)

▰ *White Moths* is a half hour of the artist known as junklight improvising in deep, often delicate melodic territory. It isn’t drone, per se. It’s drone by association.

The YouTube Étude (Loop Edition)

Courtesy of Amulets (aka Randall Taylor)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A lot of YouTube videos of music (in contrast with “music videos,” a term that brings to mind a dramatized or play-along format, à la classic-era MTV) focus on specific instruments. These can feel salesy, and given the prevalence of affiliate links might even be salesy, but many of them are simply evidence of musicians focused on their tools. Some are about trying out new things, while others are about dedication to a thing. Many of the musicians who make these videos are experts in their craft, and their videos are the études of streaming life. Such is the work of Amulets (aka Randall Taylor), whose tool of choice is the tape loop. He is a prolific utilizer of loops, and an activist in promoting their utility (his [how-to video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER3s1NPr_U) is approaching 150,000 views). His latest, posted this morning, is a timely one, a roughly nine-second loop, seen rotating in plain view, as a warped vocal goes round and round. The table on which the player-recorder rests is festooned with the little plastic reels of past and, no doubt, future experiments. In a brief accompanying note, Taylor connects the maudlin yet beautiful sound to our current circumstances:

>I just had this super simple video idea and decided to make it in quarantine. It’s really nothing more than a repeating tape loop, but I think it’s definitely a reflection of the monotony of quarantine life and our daily existence. These days are on loop and no one really knows when its going to end…

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended fine live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7-Yq6vQouE). More from Taylor at [amuletsmusic.com](http://www.amuletsmusic.com/).