downstream – Page 178

Basinksi in Blue Light

Recorded at the Empty Bottle in Chicago

January 10, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Close the work week out with a short segment of William Basinksi performing live at the Empty Bottle, the Chicago venue. Presumably this is from January 3 of this still very new year. Washed in bright blue light that manages to nonetheless get consumed by the club’s natural darkness (a metaphor not inappropriate for Basinski’s brand of quietly foreboding ambient soundscapes), he nudges his tools just out of view. The sound is all arching tones and rumbling crosscurrents and whistle-like flourishes that travel in slow motion, so intimate in combination that the set seems to reshape the whole concept of a concert venue.

Video originally posted at [the YouTube channel of Seijin Lee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3db0rvfBNg&list=WL&index=6&t=0s).

Disquiet Junto Project 0419: Dischoir

The Assignment: Make music from 100+ vocal samples of held syllables by members of the Disquiet Junto.

January 9, 2020January 10, 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 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 9, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0419) 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 0419: Dischoir**

The Assignment: Make music from 100+ vocal samples of held syllables by members of the Disquiet Junto.

Step 1: Welcome to a large, asynchronous, distributed choir. The Dischoir consists of 113 samples of held syllables by over 50 participants in the Disquiet Junto. You can access the files at the following URL. Note that a few of them deviate from the initial [instructions](https://disquiet.com/2019/12/23/dischoir-a-call-for-voices/):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pkuvmzwcdz6dx27/AACUsNclLLqToLp-OJWVkaQXa?dl=0

Step 2: Create a piece of choral music from the provided samples. You are encouraged to make music that feels “human,” that feels like it is simply a lot of people singing at once. However, of course, the end result is up to you; you can and should mix, mash, and create as you please.

Background: This all came about as a result of something Alan Bland mentioned on the Junto Slack. He pointed out that my having misspelled Disquiet as “Disquier” in the December 19, 2019, project title made him think of “Dischoir,” a possible Junto project. Thanks to Alan and to Jason Wehmhoener for helping me think this project through, and to everyone (over 50 contributors) who sent in samples.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0419” (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 “disquiet0419” (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-0419-dischoir/

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

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0419” 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 419th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Dischoir / The Assignment: Make music from 100+ vocal samples of held syllables by members of the Disquiet Junto — at:

https://disquiet.com/0419/

This all came about as a result of something Alan Bland mentioned on the Junto Slack. He pointed out that my having misspelled Disquiet as “Disquier” in the December 19, 2019, project title made him think of “Dischoir,” a possible Junto project. Thanks to Alan and to Jason Wehmhoener for helping me think this project through, and to everyone (over 50 contributors) who sent in samples.

Listen Closely to Cory Ryan

But not too closely

January 8, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If the sheer, highly detailed sound-design particulate and effortlessly modulated quietude of “states [excerpt]” lure you into the track’s warm embrace, do pay attention to its less comforting undercurrents. Heed the ghostly intonations about 30 seconds in, in addition to the muffled voices later on. Do this in part because by focusing on the discrete elements of Cory Ryan’s recording you’ll gain access to just how much is going on in what, by most objective measurements, is deep, subtle hush. Do so as well because just as the piece is coming to a close its less savory aspects rise to the surface in a burst of possessed-ham-radio noise that will knock your headphones off.

Like the track I wrote about yesterday, [Midori Hirano’s “Remembrance,”](https://disquiet.com/2020/01/07/midori-hirano-invisible-island/) Ryan’s takes common aspects of experimental sound, namely a stately silence and an attention to minute variations, and puts them in service of a larger, narrative-driven purpose.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/coryryancomposer](https://soundcloud.com/coryryancomposer/states-excerpt). More from Ryan, who is based in New York City, at [coryryancomposer.com](http://coryryancomposer.com/).

A Midori Hirano Preview

From her forthcoming Invisible Island

January 7, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This track, a preview of Midori Hirano’s forthcoming album, *Invisible Island*, does crazy things to whatever space I’m in. It’s playing on my laptop, and just as I succumb to its warpy pleasures, it pulls some sort of widescreen magic trick and places sonar pings — half nextgen submarine, half ancient cetacean — as if they’re far far away from me: across the room, down the hall, in another dimension entirely. Twice I have paused this track, titled “Remembrance” (despite the fact that it keeps me moored in the moment, like it’s less something I’m listening to and more the score to me listening to it), so as to check if, in fact, something is making the sound elsewhere, but no, it’s just my laptop, having been hijacked by Hirano and put to her extended binaural purposes.

A Japanese musician based in Berlin, Hirano here explores a deeply filmic proposition. What begins as ambient spaciousness gathers a very slow pulse, the spaciousness gaining structure, and then, thanks to that sonar imaging, it takes on a sudden narrative heft. It’s a very promising first taste of what’s to come when *Invisible Island* is released.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/sonic-pieces](https://soundcloud.com/sonic-pieces/midori-hirano-remembrance). The album is due out February 7 on the Sonic Pieces label. More from Hirano at [midorihirano.com](https://midorihirano.com/) and [midorihirano.bandcamp.com](https://midorihirano.bandcamp.com/).

Harmonica Clouds

And variations within

January 6, 2020January 5, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The layering comes quickly in this video from Ryan Kunkleman. A button is pushed and the harmonica disappears off-screen. We hear a few notes, and we expect the playing to complete a phrase, for the player to pause for a breath. This doesn’t occur. Instead, before the original phrase ever ends another one is layered atop it. Looping has been enacted. There will be no pause for breath for the nearly 13 minutes of this piece. What there will be is a steady accumulation and movement between the held tones of the harmonica, chords giving way to phrases giving way to chords, little moments occasionally peeking (and peaking) through the sonorous clouds.

The tools, in addition to the harmonica and microphone, are a recent piece of software called Cheat Codes ([github.com/dndrks](https://github.com/dndrks/cheat_codes)), running on a Norns, an open-source sound computer from Monome ([monome.org](https://monome.org/docs/norns/)).

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video first posted at Kunkelman’s YouTube channel, under the moniker [esc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLTNGWyBSj4).