A new Henrik Meierkord release is always welcome. He has mastered the technologically mediated cello, striving for and achieving a steady, layered tonality that underlines the moment without overwhelming it. “Drones with my beloved cello and pedal” is his simple description of this new set, When time becomes a loop, yet from such a simple combination vast spaces and rich harmonies are made. Overdubbing and reverb and granular effects have become common elements in music-making, but it still takes a considered approach to sustain such a thing, and all the more so to explore new aspects of ambient textures. Meierkord, as always, delivers.
There’s a grain silo in Scotland I’ve been reading about for years (thecourier.co.uk, thetimes.com). In the town of Cupar in the parish of Fife, the silo originated as part of a former sugar beet processing factory. That factory, now defunct, would turn 100 this coming year. The silo is of more recent vintage, dating from 1964. In 2025, the silo — the Cupar Grain Silo, as it’s called — launched a series of live recordings, making the most of the venue’s expansive resonance. The second release is a nearly 45-minute live set by the musician Konx-om-Pax. It’s mastered by Russell Haswell, who contributed the first release in this new series. Spacious and rangy, slow-moving yet making occasionally drastic shifts in instrumentation (rich drones, echoing near silence, thick choral singing), it’s something to put on, turn up, and give one’s own room over to.
Here’s footage, from several years back, of what I believe to be musician Scott Gordon performing in the silo:
And here’s some drone footage of the outside of the silo:
On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ There’s a gorgeous collection, six sound installations, of installation soundtracks — all looping, gestural, atmospheric audio — by the late Steve Roden (1964-2023) out on the Line label. The exhibits where these works were first installed were at such places as the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art, UCLA Hammer Museum, e/static gallery (Torino, Italy), and Henry Museum (Seattle, WA), as well as at the Mercosur Biennial (Porto Allegre, Brazil), among others. Roden was a master of — and originator of — lowercase sound. Fittingly, the album, which is 3.5 hours long, includes the instruction “play at low volume.”
Steve’s friend, sometime collaborator, and now archivist, Stephen Vitiello, wrote an essay about the ongoing archival process of Roden’s audio work for thekitchen.org.
▰ Infinity Gradient is an hour-long collaboration between composer Tristan Perich and organist James McVinnie, in which McVinnie’s instrument intertwines with 100 speakers playing sounds resulting from the Perich’s fascination with low-fidelity 1-bit audio. The music is a symphony of precious — sometimes vibrant, sometimes fragile — minimalism.
The Assignment: Play with and against a steady beat.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Disquiet Junto Project 0719: Riding on the Metronome The Assignment: Play with and against a steady beat.
Step 1: Locate a metronome and set it to play at a speed of your choice. Recommended: 70 bpm.
Step 2: Practice playing with, and against, and entirely apart from the beat.
Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you start off playing with the beat, and then veer away from it, and then are drawn back to it, and then veer away, around and again. End the piece while playing apart from the beat, not in sync with it.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0719” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 719th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Riding on the Metronome — The Assignment: Play with and against a steady beat — at https://disquiet.com/0719/.
A solid five minutes of ambient industrial music from Peter Lukeson of Denton, Texas. What begins, initially, as a quiet, lofi atmosphere expands by adding a series of rhythmic patterns, notably mechanical bursts that resemble a heartbeat, and then on top of that some precise pixie stick percussion. When the music returns to original atmospherics, they don’t just carry the memory of the recent pounding. In addition, the drones are louder, and higher-pitched, and overall more threatening, more commanding. Good stuff. More from Lukeson on Bandcamp.
