downstream – Page 203

Stasis Report: Kelly Moran ✚ Classic Isham ✚ More

Three recent tracks and one classic added to the Spotify and Google Play Music ambient playlist as of November 4, 2018

November 4, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg) and [Google Play Music](https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXylvMU-QFhCR1_vMgMgwndCq6WD-bq1MPNrUfZ9zXbCPE5IGbMj8aWwsLhjdTtH0QbKDa5dZkKizJ2pUmTHJ4Ib9Ws1_5A%3D%3D). The following four tracks were added on Sunday, November 4. Three are recent, one dates back to 1989.

✚ “Calm Before” from the album *Glowing Pains: Music from the Gardens Between* by **Tim Shiel** of Melbourne, Australia. And, yes, the next track on the album is titled “The Storm”: [timshiel.bandcamp.com](https://timshiel.bandcamp.com/album/glowing-pains-music-from-the-gardens-between).

✚ “Water Music” from the album *Ultraviolet* by **Kelly Moran**: [bleep.com](https://bleep.com/release/108583-kelly-moran-ultraviolet).

✚ “Souvenir of Bliss” off the album *Reveries* by **Phillip Wilkerson**: [phillipwilkerson.bandcamp.com](https://phillipwilkerson.bandcamp.com/album/reveries).

✚ And this week’s archival track is “Part II” of the 1989 album *Tibet* by **Mark Isham**: [isham.com](https://isham.com/tibet/).

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from **Emily A. Sprague**, **Brian Eno** (solo), and Eno with **Kevin Shields** — are now in the [Stasis Archives](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=vXVq2rneQAekHlWwcn-7nw) playlist (currently only on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=vXVq2rneQAekHlWwcn-7nw)).

Disquiet Junto Project 0357: Clock Work

The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours.

November 1, 2018November 8, 2018 / 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, November 5, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 1, 2018.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0357) 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 0357: Clock Work**

The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours.

Step 1: Think about your previous 12 hours as of the moment you begin this project.

Step 2: Note one single thing that best summarizes each of those 12 hours. That is: one thing for each of those 12 hours. Each “thing” should be one strong association with that hour, such as what you did, what you felt, what you thought, where you were, and so forth. This step’s process will result in a list of 12 things in sequence.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music consisting of 12 segments that reflect each of the 12 items that surfaced as a result of Step 2. You might make transitions between the segments, or have them immediately follow one to the next.

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0357” (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 “disquiet0357” (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-0357-clock-work/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

**Other Details:**

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0357” 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 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).

**Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:**

More on this 357th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Clock Work / The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours) at:

https://disquiet.com/0357/

Listen to the Landscape

Liner notes I wrote for an album from experimental kite videos by Michel Banabila and Gerco de Ruijter

October 31, 2018November 1, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

*The experimental musician Michel Banabila worked with innovative kite filmmaker Gerco de Ruijter on collaborations in which Banabila composed scores for De Ruijter’s all-encompassing landscape videos. The pair asked me to write liner notes for the album release of Banabilia’s music,* Stop Motion. *The above video, an example of their work, premiered at [ambientblog.net](https://www.ambientblog.net/blog/2017-03-29/dissolve/).*

*These are my liner notes:*

“Listen to the Landscape”

The landscape does not stand in opposition to the abstract. The landscape is itself a form of abstraction. The landscape presents geometries and colors and textures. The landscape, as seen in Gerco de Ruijter’s kite footage, encompasses us. We can touch the land but the landscape is beyond our touch. We are alienated from the landscape because its scale is beyond our comprehension. The lens of De Ruijter’s camera must warp the landscape, must warp reality, in order to bend it to our attempts at comprehension. Our eyes scan the landscape, requiring memory to do much of their work, the work of imagining the whole. Our memories are patchwork semblances of the patchwork landscape.

Our ears, however, take in more than what is ahead of us. Our ears survey the landscape front, back, and side, above and below. Our ears know that the seeming correlations between sound and image are cursory, especially from such a distance. Our ears know that some of the sounds that Michel Banabila has mated to De Ruijter’s images are real in the sense that they were captured in the place. Our ears know that other of Banabila’s sounds are real in that they express the musician’s sense of that place. Our ears don’t care one way or the other.

There is a music to the moving image, even when there is no sound. There are patterns and rhythms. There are movements. There is development.

And when there is sound, when De Ruijter’s eye has met Banabila’s ear, the moving image becomes something else — not a recapitulation of the landscape, but something new, something comprehensive, something to be explored, something that rewards exploration.

*Get the album at [banabila.bandcamp.com](https://banabila.bandcamp.com/album/stop-motion).*

Stasis Report: Saloli ✚ Kirby ✚ Classic Jon Hassell

Three new tracks, one recent, and one classic added to the Spotify and Google Play Music playlist as of October 28, 2018

October 28, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg) and [Google Play Music](https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXylvMU-QFhCR1_vMgMgwndCq6WD-bq1MPNrUfZ9zXbCPE5IGbMj8aWwsLhjdTtH0QbKDa5dZkKizJ2pUmTHJ4Ib9Ws1_5A%3D%3D). The following five tracks were added on Sunday, October 28. Three are from the past month or so, one is just under a year old, and one is a classic from 1977.

✚ “Hey Ahh” by **Saloli** (aka **Mary Sutton**) off the new album
*The Deep End*, released by the Kranky label on October 26, 2018: [saloli.bandcamp.com](https://saloli.bandcamp.com/album/the-deep-end).

✚ “Four Years Away,” the title track off the new **SineRider** (aka **Devin Powers**) album, released by the Sound in Silence label on October 26, 2018: [soundinsilencerecords.bandcamp.com](https://soundinsilencerecords.bandcamp.com/album/four-years-away).

✚ “Moments” by **Lucid Structure** (aka **Colin Mayo**), off the December 2017 album *We Were Never Here*: [lucidstructure.bandcamp.com](https://lucidstructure.bandcamp.com/album/we-were-never-here). A new album, *Measures*, is due out November 22.

✚ “II” by **John Carroll Kirby** off the album *Meditations in Music*, released by Leaving Records on September 22, 2018: [johncarrollkirby.bandcamp.com](https://johncarrollkirby.bandcamp.com/album/meditations-in-music).

✚ This week’s archival track is “Blues Nile” off the 1977 **Jon Hassell** album *Vernal Equinox*: [jonhassell.com](https://jonhassell.com/vernal-equinox/)

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks — from **Field Works** and **Marcus Fischer**; **Tim Hecker**; **Seigo Aoyama**; **Klara Lewis** and **Simon Fisher Turner**; and **Geir Sundstøl** — are now in the [Stasis Archives](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=vXVq2rneQAekHlWwcn-7nw) playlist (currently only on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=vXVq2rneQAekHlWwcn-7nw)).

Disquiet Junto Project 0356: Ground Swell

The Assignment: Derive something spooky from a specific place.

October 25, 2018October 27, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, October 29, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, October 25, 2018.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0356) 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 0356: Ground Swell**

The Assignment: Derive something spooky from a specific place.

Major thanks to Chris McAvoy for having proposed this project.

Step 1: The goal is to create a piece of music that uses layers to create a sense of unease, eeriness, or disquiet.

Step 2: Think of a place that summons up the sensations described in Step 1.

Step 3: Derive sounds from the place that came to mind in Step 2. If you have access to the place, consider strategies to accomplish this (from field recordings, graphic notations, etc.). If you do not have access to the place, use your memories and impressions as a resource.

Step 4: Create a short piece of music using the sounds in Step 3 to achieve the goals of Step 1.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0356” (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 “disquiet0356” (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-0356-ground-swell/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0356” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 356th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Ground Swell / The Assignment: Derive something spooky from a specific place) at:

https://disquiet.com/0356/

Major thanks to Chris McAvoy for having proposed this project.