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Disquiet Junto Project 0393: Mix Master

The Assignment: Make a new composition from your favorite parts of three of your previous recordings.

July 11, 2019July 13, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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, July 15, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, July 11, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0393) for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0393: Mix Master**

The Assignment: Make a new composition from your favorite parts of three of your previous recordings.

Step 1: Choose three pieces of music you recorded previously.

Step 2: From each of those three pieces, choose one element you particularly like.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music combining the three elements whose selection resulted from Step 2. (Additional elements may be added, certainly.)

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0393” (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 “disquiet0393” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation 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-0393-mix-master/

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, July 15, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, July 11, 2019.

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0393” 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 393rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Mix Master / The Assignment: Make a new composition from your favorite parts of three of your previous recordings — at:

https://disquiet.com/0393/

Disquiet Junto Project 0392: Another Country

The Assignment: Compose the national anthem for a fictional country.

July 4, 2019July 5, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, July 8, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, July 4, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0392) for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0392: Another Country**

The Assignment: Compose the national anthem for a fictional country.

Step 1. You will be composing a national anthem for a fictional country.

Step 2. Either think of a fictional country that exists already, for example in a novel or film, or create a new country using your imagination.

Step 3. Compose a national anthem for the country you selected in Step 2.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0392” (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 “disquiet0392” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation 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-0392-another-country/

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:**

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0392” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

**For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:**

More on this 392nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Another Country / The Assignment: Compose the national anthem for a fictional country — at:

https://disquiet.com/0392/

Disquiet Junto Project 0391: Front Page

The Assignment: Make music that fills in where the news trails off.

June 27, 2019June 29, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, July 1, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 27, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0391) for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0391: Front Page**

The Assignment: Make music that fills in where the news trails off.

Step 1. Select a news article from a prominent, local-to-you newspaper or news website. The article should originate from the day when you begin this project.

Step 2. Select a sentence from the article, likely the first sentence but any sentence will do.

Step 3. Record yourself or, perhaps better, a machine reading that single sentence.

Step 4. Create a short piece of music to initially accompany and then supplant the sentence being read. Include the recording from Step 3 at the start, but have it glitch and fracture toward the end of its run time, so that the full reading of the source text isn’t completed. Have the music then continue after the reading is over, filling the void that the truncated sentence has left behind. Continue the music for as long as you see fit.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0391” (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 “disquiet0391” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation 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-0391-front-page/

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, July 1, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 27, 2019.

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0391” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

**For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:**

More on this 391st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Front Page / The Assignment: Make music that fills in where the news trails off — at:

https://disquiet.com/0391/

A Feast of Collaborations

Mark Fell x Jim O'Rourke, Christina Vantzou x Jasmine Guffond, and many more

June 25, 2019June 26, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://crxssings.bandcamp.com/album/crxssings-fundraiser-for-city-plaza">CRXSSINGS (fundraiser for City Plaza) by various artists</a>

*Crxssings* is the title of a massive new album of collaborations, 34 tracks in all featuring a variety of interactions between pairs of musicians. Many are remixes, while many others appear to be more directly interactive. (Update: These are all remixes. I received a copy of the press release. It’s a very promising collection, nonetheless.) Just check out the lineup:

>Shelly Knotts x Jan St. Werner, Ipek Gorgun x Mira Cali, Aaron Dilloway x Lucrecia Dalt, Laura Luna Castillo x Leyland Kirby, France Jobin x Anne Guthrie, Mads Emil Nielsen x Jan Jelinek, Alessandro Bosetti x Yannis Kyriakides, Seth Graham x Yves De Mey, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma x Le Révélateur, Mark Fell x Jim O’Rourke, Christina Vantzou x Jasmine Guffond, Kreng x Celer, Bjarni Gunnarsson x BJ Nilsen, Jerusalem In My Heart x Black To Comm, Klara Lewis x Lawrence English, Gabriel Saloman x Machinefabriek, BEAST (aka Koen Holtkamp) x Chuck Johnson.

What makes the listings especially promising is how the ordering of the participants appears in sets of pairs, suggesting that, for example, where musician A is listed as having been remixed by musician B, a different track flips the relationship, with musician A remixing musician B. What brings all the musicians together is a cause:

>All the funds generated by the sales of this album will be donated directly to City Plaza Hotel, a squatted refuge located in the heart of Athens, Greece, organized for and by migrants from Africa and Asia. These funds will support their struggle to provide material needs for those fleeing economic, environmental, political and military disasters in their home countries. At City Plaza Hotel residents work together in ways that center their own agency, dignity and solidarity with each other. One early, pre-release highlight is “Not to Decide is to Decide (Remixture),” a reworking by Jasmine Guffond of unidentified tracks by Christina Vantzou. It’s a gloriously slow-moving mass of heavily textured strings.

Album available at [crxssings.bandcamp.com](https://crxssings.bandcamp.com/album/crxssings-fundraiser-for-city-plaza). The release date is July 1. As of today a half dozen tracks are already available.

In the wait for the full release, one thing the collection brings to mind is an early album, dating from 1996, on the Lo Recordings label titled *Lo Recordings Vol: 2 Collaborations*, featuring such heady combos as Mike Flowers Pops and Funki Porcini, David Toop and Bedouin Ascent, Scanner and David Cunningham, and Lol Coxhill and Paul Schütze. It’s on streaming services, but the listings for *Collaborations* seem in some cases to not credit both artists. Metadata remains something of a nightmare.

Two Free Hours of Early Autechre

Warp Tapes 1989-1993, fresh from Warp's NTS takeover

June 24, 2019June 24, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Listening to these early Autechre recordings is like the start of the old movie *Gremlins*, when those little fuzzy beasts are still all cute and friendly. You know, before the various rules are broken and they turn into frightful, feral, and even more memorable itsy bitsy monsters. The rules, if you don’t recall: no bright lights, no water, don’t feed after midnight.

When I first made that joke on Twitter earlier today, I accidentally typed “fuzzy beats” instead of “fuzzy beasts.” The error was, no doubt, Freudian, for the beats comprising these early Autechre recordings are, indeed, fuzzy. They’re fuzzy like an adolescent’s chin. A few years would pass before the Autechre, the duo of Sean Booth and Robert Brown, would gain the electronic-music equivalent of a full beard. Before they showed their true, feral side.

What early Autechre recordings, you may be asking? This past weekend the duo was part of the three-day residency in which the Warp Records label took over the British online radio station NTS ([nts.live](https://www.nts.live/)). Autechre shared two hours of audio dating back to 1989 and up through 1993. Subsequently the audio, in the form of a single zip archive that weighs in at well over a gigabyte (it contains two separate .wav files, each exactly an hour long), was posted for free on Autechre’s page on Bleep, which is Warp’s long-running digital-audio storefront.

To access the tracks, go to [autechre.bleepstores.com](https://autechre.bleepstores.com/) and scroll down to the bottom, which at the moment means directly below the five thumbnail images, vaguely reminiscent of Joseph Albers’ covers for Enoch Light’s Command Records label, representing the *elseq 1-5* collection from 2016. The link goes to [an Autechre page on WeTransfer](https://autechre.wetransfer.com/downloads/3ced4067d9a7754dbdee72ff25191a9820190624140839/05ebe9), which provides push-button access to the audio.

The music is almost entirely vocal-free, with some occasional spoken and sung samples, notably on the first of the two tracks. The emphasis is beats, here in the form of contrarian glosses on hip-hop and various club styles. You’ll recognize the period drum machines, but you’re hearing them in a slightly different context. To a degree, that context is far more recognizable in hindsight, in that at times you can hear antecedents of the harsher, stronger, more abstract Autechre to come, notably a favor for metallic percussion, and the deep pleasure of putting those thudding rhythmic elements through a sequence of filters. In this period, Autechre wasn’t quite breaking rules yet, but they were sure getting ready to.