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Disquiet Junto Project 0371: Concrete Ambience

The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?

February 7, 2019February 7, 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, February 11, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, February 7, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0371) 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 0371: Concrete Ambience**

The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?

Step 1: Consider the concept of wallpaper music.

Step 2: Consider wallpaper designed to look like concrete.

Step 3: Consider what concrete wallpaper music might sound like.

Step 4: Record concrete wallpaper music.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0371” (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 “disquiet0371” (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-0371-concrete-ambience/

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.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0371” 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: Please for this project be sure 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:**

More on this 371st weekly Disquiet Junto project (Concrete Ambience / The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?) at:

https://disquiet.com/0371/

We Don’t Need the Human Touch

The drum machines can dance — or at least sway — well enough on their own.

February 6, 2019February 6, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

One possible definition of — or, perhaps, alternative phrase for — the increasingly employed term “generative” would be “Look, Mom, no hands.” That’s the route that many modular synthesizer videos follow: using various techniques that coax machines to be led by what seems to be their own initiative, devoid of any evidence of human touch. The result is work in which a machine’s lights are signs of life, in which no hands ever enter the picture’s frame. The absence of a human in “Koto Ward” by Chanse Macabre is signaled by the cars passing in the distance. There are people to be seen, or at least sensed, but they are far away, locked in other machines, and moving considerably more quickly than the music this placid machine has elected to emit. The gentle, rhythmic plucking of “Koto Ward” challenges the ear to listen for repetitions in the patterns, to find a moment where the loop begins again. That moment never comes, such are the slight variations that keep the bobbing, gently percussive apparatus moving in such a convincingly improvisatory, lifelike manner.

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 originally posted at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM1ywQU_mHc). More from Chanse Macabre, based in Houston, Texas, at [chansemacabre.bandcamp.com](https://chansemacabre.bandcamp.com/) and [instagram.com/chanse.macabre](https://www.instagram.com/chanse.macabre/).

Joe Colley’s Human-Scale Noise

A live performance from late 2018

February 5, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Joe Colley (sometimes also known as Crawl Unit) is a master of human-scale noise. His noise is rarely of the industrial scope that so many bands aspire to. He probes and proposes intimate spaces, rather than massive ones — substructures rather than infrastructures. Which isn’t to suggest his noises are quiet. As evidenced by this recording — live from last October at the Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival — his exploration of desktop devices yields all manner of abrasive aesthetics.

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFqYePQ1s6o&index=5&list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIHT5J3qouD6Bgj6mjgqWnN&t=368s). More on the festival at [2018.luff.ch](http://2018.luff.ch/).

Fridman Études

Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree performing live at the start of the year

February 4, 2019November 9, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The Fridman Gallery in Manhattan has recently uploaded a host of videos to [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/fridmangallery) from its New Ear Festival, which ran in early January of this year. It had a great lineup, including Mary Lucier, Susie Ibarra, a workshop with the New York Theremin Society, and a screening of the documentary *Milford Graves Full Mantis*, about the accomplished percussionist. One highlight is a duo performance by frequent collaborators Stephen Vitiello and Taylor Deupree. The half-hour set is built around the pair’s modular synthesizers, though it also leaves room at the opening for Vitiello’s electric guitar, a mix of long dreamy lines and anxious, muted plucking. The marvel of the performance is the ambient nature of their effort, which is to say: their collaboration is, in effect, purposefully less than the sum of its parts. The work is focused on nuance, on slight variations of tonality and layering. Gorgeous stuff.

Video originally posted at [vimeo.com](https://vimeo.com/314167082). More on the Fridman at [fridmangallery.com](https://www.fridmangallery.com/).

Guitar Learning: Maybe (A minor on EBow)

A chord in individually held guitar lines

February 2, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the first attempt I’ve made to record something with my newly obtained EBow. It’s also about ten minutes into my first attempt to even use the EBow. The electric bow employs a magnetic field to strum individual strings for you, which explains the gorgeous and limitlessly held tones it is capable of. Here I layered three notes, one by one, from a single chord, an A minor, and then put a separate note on top of that — the device was so new to me, I didn’t even pay attention to what the fourth note was; I just listened for something that sounded complementary. The accrual process isn’t evident in this recording. I didn’t hit record until the chord was accomplished.

I did this all in a Ditto Looper, recording directly from my amplifier into my cellphone. I used Adobe Audition to limit the higher frequencies in the audio, and to introduce a fade-in and a fade-out. The track’s title is “Maybe” (adapted from the first two letters each from “EBow” and “A minor — E, B, A, M — backward).

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/disquiet](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/module-learning-fixed-fourses).