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Disquiet Junto Project 0421: Marquee Ghosts

The Assignment: What sounds haunt a discarded movie theater in the middle of the night?

January 23, 2020January 24, 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, January 27, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 23, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0421) 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 0421: Marquee Ghosts**

The Assignment: What sounds haunt a discarded movie theater in the middle of the night?

This week’s project is just one step:

Step 1: What sounds haunt a discarded movie theater in the middle of the night?

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0421” (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 “disquiet0421” (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-0421-marquee-ghosts/

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, January 27, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 23, 2020.

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0421” 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: Consider setting 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 421st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Marquee Ghosts / The Assignment: What sounds haunt a discarded movie theater in the middle of the night? — at:

https://disquiet.com/0421/

Field Recordings of Dreams

Succumb to Sekunder, eoner from Snufmumriko, of Gothenburg, Sweden

January 22, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/sekunder-eoner">Sekunder, eoner by Snufmumriko</a>

The atmosphere is so thick on “Kasta loss,” the opening track of the Snufmumriko album *Sekunder, eoner*, that your ears may not pick up on the emergent rhythm until well after it has set a determined pace for what feels, at its heart, more windblown than metronomic. Blurry, static-dabbled white noise gives birth to EKG pulses and pin-prick hi-hats, and then subsumes them again well before the track is over, at which point vinyl surface abrasions are working in parallel with sustained, woodwind-like drones.

There’s a stately quality to Snufmumriko’s music. Take “Jordeliv,” which has pizzicato strings, redolent of their synthesized origins, alongside aquatic field recordings, and yet the main impression is made by the hush that serves as both the track’s background and foreground, the thick, warm noise that envelops the other sounds. The way field recordings are treated throughout the album is Snufmumriko’s greatest accomplishment. Close your eyes and listen to the closing track, “Drömmens tassemarker,” which doesn’t merely suggest a walk in the forest; it takes you on one, crumpled leaves yielding to echoed, scattered fragments of birdsong. To be clear, this isn’t all hyper-naturalism. The title track, for example, features throaty robospeak before its club beat kicks in. But it is the dreamy, slightly-altered-reality quality that is the album’s greatest accomplishment.

*Sekunder, eoner*, six tracks in all, was released on the Moscow-based Dronarivm label a little over a month ago, in early December 2019, at [dronarivm.bandcamp.com](https://dronarivm.bandcamp.com/album/sekunder-eoner). More from Snufmumriko, aka Ingmar Wennerberg of Gothenburg, Sweden, at [soundcloud.com/snufmumriko](https://soundcloud.com/snufmumriko) and [twitter.com/snufmumriko](http://twitter.com/snufmumriko).

Chorus of One

Listen as r beny granulates himself

January 21, 2020January 20, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Even the most talented musicians can be self-conscious about something. In the case of r beny, the focus of his doubt is, apparently, his voice. Here, for the track “A Path Opens in the Bloom,” he takes a sample of himself vocalizing (“trying to hold a C, I cannot sing”), and then processing it through granular synthesis. What this means is he is taking tiny slivers of the voice and holding them for an extended period, essentially turning a little thing into a whole. Further, he is layering the same sample played at different note values, creating a chorus of one. Without getting too technical, if you’re wondering where that raspy texture comes from, beny is running the audio through the cassette deck seen in the upper left. The deck isn’t merely recording the audio; it is also immediately outputting what it records, so we’re hearing the result of the degradation that the tape impresses upon the source material. Beny writes in more detail about the track’s impetus and his process at his [YouTube page](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAyW4GgHoDc). He’s great about not only notating what he does in the text accompanying his videos, but also replying to the comments.

This is the latest video added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist of live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). More from r beny, aka Californian musician Austin Cairns, at [rbeny.bandcamp.com](https://rbeny.bandcamp.com/).

Patricia Wolf, Live

At Holocene in Portland

January 20, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Between glistening notes and processed field recordings, Patricia Wolf’s voice appears as a series of echoing phrases. The live recording was made at the Holocene in Portland, Oregon, on June 19 of last year. Wolf just added it to her [SoundCloud page](https://soundcloud.com/patriciawolf_music/patricia-wolf-live-holocene-pdx-june-19-2019) late last month. While she could easily spend more than the piece’s nearly quarter hour exploring these lush, ethereal spaces, Wolf has more in mind for her listeners. In time, surprisingly abrasive tones appear, rubbery and textured and chaotic, and a thorough contrast to what came before. Amid them, Wolf’s voice persists, no longer an element of comforting ease, and instead a durable, yet no less elegant, opposition to the rising forces.

Track originally posted to [soundcloud.com/patriciawolf_music](https://soundcloud.com/patriciawolf_music/patricia-wolf-live-holocene-pdx-june-19-2019). More from her at [instagram.com/patriciawolf_music](https://www.instagram.com/patriciawolf_music/). The audio was recorded by Glenn Sogge, and the performance photo is by Marcus Fischer.

Abstraction for Charity

Five pieces by as many artists for a women's shelter in Glasgow, Scotland

January 17, 2020January 15, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/the-stochastic-method">The Stochastic Method by Various Artists</a>

*The Stochastic Method* is a beautiful collection of largely instrumental music with a purpose. The purpose is to raise funds for and awareness of the Ubuntu Women’s Shelter in Glasgow, Scotland. Participating are Paul Michael Henry, Painted in Shadows, Jenn Kirby, Graham Dunning, and Leslie Deere. It was Deere who produced an event at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow this past December that brought the musicians together (details at [cca-glasgow.com](https://www.cca-glasgow.com/programme/the-stochastic-method)). The tracks range from Celtic-accented shoegazey lushness (Painted in Shadows) to layers of twitchy noises above lulling tones (Henry). Kirby’s piece has a modern-ecclesiastic quality to it, zither-like instrumentation mixed with pillowy choir. Deere’s is a collage of drones and voices, slipstream artifacts and distant rhythms. Dunning’s begins as a kind of abstract rave music before dissolving into haunting sound design that suggests a forest deep in the night.

Get the release (and give what you can) at [fractalmeat.bandcamp.com](https://fractalmeat.bandcamp.com/album/the-stochastic-method). More on the Ubuntu shelter at [ubuntu-glasgow.org.uk](www.ubuntu-glasgow.org.uk).