downstream – Page 165

Disquiet Junto Project 0432: Ensembles (Remix)

The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own.

April 9, 2020April 10, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Two notes for participants: (1) With this project, we’re back to the standard Junto rule of one entry per musician. (2) If you participated in the 430th or 431st project, it would be great if you’d upload the isolated track of your part and link to it from your previous entry, which will make it available to this week’s remixer. Thanks.

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, April 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 9, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0432) 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 0432: Ensembles Remix**

The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own.

Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project brings the trios sequence to a close. Over the three previous sequential projects, musical trios were created by accrual, one participant at a time. You’ll now remix one (or combine more than one) and make it/them your own.

Step 2: The plan is for you to remix a pre-existing track from the previous project. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are well over 80 tracks in all to choose from, 83 in all. You might also choose to use more than one track, mashing up tracks that have nothing in common, or that share elements. Here’s the playlist, with 81 of the tracks from last week:

[https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0431](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0431)

And there are two others from Bassling (aka Jason Richardson):

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/12](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/12)

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/7](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/7)

To select a track, you can listen through all that and choose one, or you can use a random number generator to select a number from 1 to 83, the first 81 being numbered in the above SoundCloud playlist, and the other two being Bassling’s mentioned above. (Note: it’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)

Step 3: Create a remix based on the track or tracks you selected in Step 2.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0432” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0432” (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 track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0432-ensembles-remix/

Step 5: Annotate your track 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, April 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 9, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. It can be interesting to make long tracks short, and short tracks long.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0432” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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:**

Be sure to name and link to the source tracks you’re remixing, and credit the musicians who recorded them.

More on this 432nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0432: Ensembles (Remix) — The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own — at:

https://disquiet.com/0432/

Robert Henke Is on Bandcamp

And revisiting some early free downloads he posted in the mid-2000s.

April 8, 2020June 19, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://roberthenke.bandcamp.com/track/oomoo">Oomoo by Robert Henke</a>

In a welcome development, Robert Henke (aka Monolake) started a page on Bandcamp today. There’s just one release currently, a dreamy 10-minute drone titled “Oomoo.” The sinuous palindrome of its title mirrors the flowing vibe of the piece. The name was familiar to me, and then I realized that I wrote about the track when it was first released, back in 2007, as a free MP3 download from his monolake.de website, which no longer seems to be operational. (He was releasing a free MP3 a month back then.) Instead, he makes his home on the web at roberthenke.com, as well as, now, at roberthenke.bandcamp.com. That’s the same year, 2007, that SoundCloud was founded, and it’s a year before Bandcamp was founded, and longer still before either became default locations for musicians to post their recordings. The track “Oomoo,” meanwhile, sounds as fresh today as it did upon its release. As I described it at the time: “it’s a film-score-ready drone that moves like a single sheet of material buffeted by wind, from rapturous peaks to rumbling valleys. Listening to it in a car alone after dark will turn any routine drive into a scene from a Michael Mann movie.” I don’t usually post tracks twice on Disquiet.com, but this seemed like a reasonable occasion to do so. Very early on in the Downstream series here I accidentally did, because so little music was freely available and I’d forgotten. A reader at the time helpfully pointed it out. Technically, the track “Oomoo” remains a free download, because it’s set at “name your price,” but do consider chipping in a little.

Music for the Pause of Time

From Shipwreck Dective of San Francisco

April 7, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com/album/rest">rest by shipwreck detective</a>

To follow up [yesterday’s video](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/06/the-ocean-a-year-ago/), more music from the musician who goes by Shipwreck Detective, aka San Francisco-based Devanand Addison Bhat. These four short, “simple tape meditations” were recorded just as the shelter-in-place orders were taking effect in the city (March 23 – 29, 2020), and then released a couple days later (the 31st) under the collective title *Rest*. They are textures comprised of melodies comprised of textures. Track “i” sets the pensive tone and tempo for the set: a warped tune that melts as it proceeds. Track “ii” introduces the slightest crackle of surface noise, and what would be listened past in most other music here becomes percussive due to the deeply quiet context. Each piece, including the plucked, echoing “iii” and the mix of fast-moving drone and sodden keyboard that comprise “iv,” has the quality of a Buddha Machine set on loop as the batteries slowly run out. There’s more to it than that, but only a little, and the restraint is key to Bhat’s success. In subtle ways, the tracks do progress, like how “iii” introduces static-like rain (or perhaps rain-like static), and how “iv,” in particular, gains substance as it goes. But as Bhat suggests, the motion here is all relative. This is music for our collective pause. The world has grown chaotic at the same moment when so many find their lives on hold. This is music for its title purpose, rest.

Album originally posted at [shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com](https://shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com/). More from Bhat at [instagram.com/shipwreckdetective](https://www.instagram.com/shipwreckdetective/).

The Ocean a Year Ago

A track by Shipwreck Detective

April 6, 2020April 6, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Located in the perfect slot between listening and not listening, this earthy drone by the musician who goes by Shipwreck Detective dates from over a year ago. The Shipwreck Detective account on YouTube has been a frequent source of comfort during the current spell of cooped-up-edness. This track’s brief description calls it “the ocean heard in a conch.” The ocean is barely a mile from where I live, and this track brings it close, indeed. When the track was first posted, I imagine the sounds summoned up a vast expanse, whereas now it feels cloistered, personal, homey.

Video originally posted at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivt1RsT6XFQ). More from Shipwreck Detective, who is based in San Francisco, at [instagram.com/shipwreckdetective](https://www.instagram.com/shipwreckdetective/) and [shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com](https://shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com/).

Personal-Space Age Music

From Grzegorz Bojanek of Poland

April 3, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Accompanied by archival footage from the height of the Space Age, the track “Quanta Skylab” by the Polish musician Grzegorz Bojanek is the background music you’re looking for right now. We’re all aboard a spacecraft at the moment, Starship Earth. We’re hurtling around the sun in our individual or shared cabins, waiting for our respective captains to give the all-clear alert. None of us expect that message to appear anytime soon. We’re balancing work and family, privacy and community, aspirations and needs, responsibilities and desires, and making the best of a bad, worldwide situation. Bojanek’s music is the proper room tone for such a scenario — for our Personal-Space Age — especially the more solitary moments. Its shifting drones match the way time feels fluid and confusing. It embraces the newfound quiet without presenting a challenge. And it introduces melodic fragments but never expects your full attention.

Video originally posted at Bojanek’s [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIRvgv5GkOc). More from him at [bojanek.bandcamp.com](https://bojanek.bandcamp.com/)