downstream – Page 205

Stasis Report: Laraaji (Remixed) ✚ Lori Scacco ✚ Classic Eno

Four recent tracks and one Brian Eno favorite newly added to the ambient playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music as of October 7, 2018

October 7, 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 7. Two of the tracks are brand new, two are from earlier this year, and one is three decades old and due for vinyl reissue.

✚ “Luminous Snow” off *Visible World* by **Seigo Aoyama**, released October 3, 2018, on Audiobulb Records: [seigo-aoyama.bandcamp.com](https://seigo-aoyama.bandcamp.com/album/visible-world).

✚ “Ocean Flow Zither (Mia Doi Todd Remix), a remix by **Mia Doi Todd** off *Sun Transformations* from **Laraaji**, released April 21, 2018: [laraajimusic.bandcamp.com](https://laraajimusic.bandcamp.com/album/sun-transformations), [miadoitodd.com](http://www.miadoitodd.com/2018/03/14/mia-remixes-laraaji-sun-transformations/).

✚ *Læms” off Brødløs by **Geir Sundstøl**, released October 5, 2018, on the Hubro label: [hubromusic.com](http://hubromusic.com/geir-sundstol-brodlos-cdlp/).

✚ “Other Flowers” off *Desire Loop* by **Lori Scacco**, released July 6, 2018, on Mysteries of the Deep: [loriscacco.bandcamp.com](https://loriscacco.bandcamp.com/album/desire-loop).

✚ “2/1” off *Ambient 1: Music for Airports* by **Brian Eno**, released 1978, and due for a November 16, 2018, vinyl reissue: [pitchfork.com](https://pitchfork.com/news/brian-eno-announces-vinyl-reissue-series/), [enoshop.co.uk](https://www.enoshop.co.uk/BrianEnoAmbientSeriesReissue).

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks (by **Ian William Craig**, **Deru**, **Helios**, **Klara Lewis** [there’s another track by Lewis still in the report], **Machinefabriek**, **H. Takahashi**, and **Vida Vojić**) 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 0353: Warp & Weft

The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition.

October 4, 2018October 5, 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, October 8, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, October 4, 2018.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0353) 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 0353: Warp & Weft**

The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition.

Thanks to Kim Rueger for proposing this project, to John Horigan for allowing us to use this fabric as our source image, and to Mark Lentczner for the photography and for participating in this project’s gestation.

Step 1: Download the following image and look at it closely:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/brauliz2ryvdram/warp%20weave%20full.jpg?dl=0

Step 2: If you’re not familiarize with the terms “warp” and “weft,” understand them as relating to the act of weaving. Per the Wikipedia entry, “The lengthwise or longitudinal warp yarns are held stationary in tension on a frame or loom while the transverse weft (sometimes woof) is drawn through and inserted over-and-under the warp.”

Step 3: Study the image with this concept of “warp and weft” in mind. Consider how the image can be interpreted as a musical composition.

Step 4: Compose a piece of music that, reflecting your thoughts from steps 1 through 3, reads the image as a music score.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0353” (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 “disquiet0353” (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-0353-warp-weft/

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 “disquiet0353” 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 353rd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Warp & Weft / The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition) at:

https://disquiet.com/0353/

Jessica Kert in the Frame

A live modular synthesizer performance video

October 2, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A hand comes into view, the nape of a neck, a shoulder, a tattoo, then another. The camera moves continuously, seemingly the musician’s own viewpoint, until it isn’t. The perspective switches back and forth for the video’s nearly six-minute runtime, but its focus does not. The focus is always on a nest of synthesizers, patch cords going in every direction, lights signifying whether they are in or out of sync with the beat. The beat is everything in this performance by Jessica Kert. The beat is heavy and insistent, but also nudged, slightly off the initial cadence, an act of industrial dub.

This video is the precise opposite of the live performance synthesizer video [I wrote about yesterday](https://disquiet.com/2018/10/01/reuma-with-a-view/). Where yesterday Alan Dear left his modules to all the work, here Kert is ever coaxing, adjusting. There is a consonance between action and sound. Motion suggests intent and intent is mapped to how the sound alters, how it is altered. The result is formidable.

Video originally posted on [Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/290541304). More from Kert at [instagram.com/jessyandthechords](https://www.instagram.com/jessyandthechords/) and at [soundcloud.com/jessicakert](https://soundcloud.com/jessicakert).

“Reuma” with a View

A gorgeous track from Alan Dear, as he completes his debut album

October 1, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Don’t take Alan Dear’s working title for this live performance as a requirement for expert ears, or for music-technology expertise, for that matter. The piece may be titled (“reuma – ambient eurorack w/mutable instruments rings, morphagene and Bastl microgranny”) primarily after the technology employed to make it, but the deluge of that information has no parallel to the sheer, evocative simplicity of what transpires in the track’s duration. It measures just under six minutes, but the time is also meaningless, because you’re almost certainly going to want to set it on loop.

What transpires is sonic dust, frayed bits of noise, all petal crunches and mote sways. It’s expressly gentle, a choreography for shadows and silhouettes. The video itself is a document of automation. What happens is the result of communication between devices. Toward the end, the camera cuts in close to focus the eye, but there is no human present, except behind the lens, and in advance of the performance. Someone set these sounds in motion. Someone — Alan Dear, of course — set the clocks for the filters and effects. Someone foresaw the interaction between elements. But at some point, that someone let go, and let the machines do their thing.

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.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9w9WvvgfQ4). More from Alan Dear at [instagram.com/dearalanmusic](https://www.instagram.com/dearalanmusic/) and, soon, one hopes, at [dearalan.bandcamp.com](https://dearalan.bandcamp.com/), where Dear’s debut album is due to appear. The YouTube video’s accompanying note says “late 2018” for the album’s release.

Stasis Report: Hecker ✚ Sprague ✚ Classic AFX

Four new tracks and one Aphex Twin favorite newly added to the ambient playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music as of September 30, 2018

September 30, 2018October 6, 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, September 30. Four of the tracks are new, and one is a classic from almost a quarter century ago:

✚ “Synth Two” off the new **Emily A. Sprague** album, *Mount Vision*: [mlesprg.bandcamp.com](https://mlesprg.bandcamp.com/album/mount-vision). I wrote [a bit about its title track](https://disquiet.com/2018/09/17/taking-mount-vision-by-strategy/) during its prerelease. (This track wasn’t initially on the Google Play Music version of Stasis Report [because the album wasn’t](https://llllllll.co/t/mount-vision-emily-a-sprague/16229/37?u=disquiet), but eventually it popped up.)

✚ “Mend,” the closing track from *Care*, the new album from **Klara Lewis** and **Simon Fisher Turner** on Editions Mego: [editionsmego.com](http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO-253), [soundcloud.com/editionsmego](https://soundcloud.com/editionsmego/klara-lewis-simon-fisher-turner-8-excerpt).

✚ “Through the City,” the track by **Marcus Fischer** on the new **Field Works** collaborative album, *Pogue’s Run*: [fieldworks.bandcamp.com](https://fieldworks.bandcamp.com/album/pogue-s-run).

✚ “Is a Rose Petal of the Dying Crimson Light” off the new **Tim Hecker** album, *Konoyo*, on the Kranky label: [timhecker.bandcamp.com](https://timhecker.bandcamp.com/album/konoyo).

✚ As of this installment of the Stasis Report, I’m going to start introducing one archival track most weeks, starting with [“Tree,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKyD6n2DHPU) the 10th track on *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2* from **Aphex Twin**. The album was originally released in 1994, and is the subject of my 2014 book in the 33 1/3 series: [aphextwin.warp.net](https://aphextwin.warp.net/release/68148-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii)

Some previous Stasis Report tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly two hours. Those retired tracks (by **Anna Meredith**, **Robert Rich**, **Olafur Arnalds**, **Simon Stalenhag**, **Mary Lattimore**, **Ellen Arkbro**, **Mark Van Hoen**) 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)).