downstream – Page 208

Disquiet Junto Project 0349: Got Glitch?

The Assignment: Help define "glitch" by glitching something, and explaining what you did.

September 6, 2018September 7, 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, September 10, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the early evening, Oregon time, on Thursday, September 6, 2018.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0349) 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 0349: Got Glitch?**

The Assignment: Help define “glitch” by glitching something, and explaining what you did.

Major thanks to Sevenisn, Mark Lentczner, and other folks in the Junto Slack for pitching in on this project’s development.

Step 1: Consider what “glitch” means in music/sound.

Step 2: Make a piece of music employing a glitch that arose from your thinking in Step 1.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0349” (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 “disquiet0349” (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-0349-got-glitch/

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 “disquiet0349” 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).

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

More on this 349th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Got Glitch? / The Assignment: Help define “glitch” by glitching something, and explaining what you did) at:

https://disquiet.com/0349/

Major thanks to Sevenisn, Mark Lentczner, and other folks in the Junto Slack for pitching in on this project’s development.

Dappled by Gadgetry

A live suitcase gig by Nicklas Lundberg

September 5, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This 30-minute segment of Nicklas Lundberg shows the musician milking noise from a sizable, jam-packed metal suitcase, opened like the maw of a giant mechanical fish and filled to both its mirror-twin brims with all manner of CD players, keyboards, cellphones, controllers, and countless other gadgets, many of which aren’t immediately associated – and this is sort of the point — with the production of sound. The music those things are summoned to produce is a rolling churn of glittering murk, of vibrating flotsam, random tools recycled into a semi-portable one-person orchestra. It’s a bit like a sonic equivalent to the dappled video projection that washes over Lundberg for the majority of the performance, except at several times the speed. Where the visual dappling is placid, serene, the sonic dappling is madcap, a chaotic flux that has no core pattern and yet provides a sense of continuity in its constant motion.

Video originally posted to [the YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMH6lycyDj4&list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIHT5J3qouD6Bgj6mjgqWnN&index=2&t=56s) of Powcademy, more from which at [instagram.com/powcademy.tv](https://www.instagram.com/powcademy.tv/).

The Fractal Heart

A live performance by Erika Nesse

September 3, 2018September 4, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“You broke my heart into a million pieces,” sing-says the voice. The voice is itself divided into many pieces, if not a million then certainly hundreds, perhaps approaching thousands. At a macro level it is a fifty-fifty split between sung and spoken. The phrase, however, is splintered further, courtesy of a musician seen seated in this video with her laptop perched on a folding table. The location and date, plus her name, provide the context in the form of the video’s title. It’s Erika Nesse at Firehouse ([firehouseworcester.com](http://firehouseworcester.com/)) in Worcester, Massachusetts, on January 1, 2018, New Year’s Day. (The YouTube channel is that of Samual Hadge, who recently uploaded a slew of live sets from Firehouse, as well as from venues in Georgia, Florida, and [elsewhere](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC15b8mnfMHGLan7TRkrFfLg)). Judging by the winter date and the puffy outerwear of the members of the audience, it is also very cold. Nesse is a poet of sonic fractals, of not just splintering sound into little piece but having those piece play out in patterns, systems, and processes, all of which entice the ear’s imagination. If we’re used to pop songs where the chorus takes on new meaning as it is repeated, one verse after another, here the phrase — “You broke my heart into a million pieces” — becomes its own meaning: the more the voice is disturbed by Nesse’s digital intrusions, the closer the listener comes to experiencing its truth.

Video originally posted at Hadge’s [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTf0m_HPFgw&list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIHT5J3qouD6Bgj6mjgqWnN&index=4&t=0s). More from Erika Nesse at [fractalmusicmachine.com](http://www.fractalmusicmachine.com) and [erikanesse.bandcamp.com](https://erikanesse.bandcamp.com).

Stasis Report: Deru ✚ Machinefabriek ✚ More

Six tracks newly added to the ambient playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music as of September 2, 2018

September 2, 2018September 2, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist. It started out just on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg). As of two weeks ago, it’s also on [Google Play Music](https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXylvMU-QFhCR1_vMgMgwndCq6WD-bq1MPNrUfZ9zXbCPE5IGbMj8aWwsLhjdTtH0QbKDa5dZkKizJ2pUmTHJ4Ib9Ws1_5A%3D%3D). The following six tracks were added on Sunday, September 2. All the tracks are fairly new, with the exception of the Klara Lewis, which is posted in expectation of her upcoming new album.

✚ “Two High” off *Engel* by **Machinefabriek**. The self-released album seems to get louder and more insistent as it proceeds. This is the second track. The album is the score to a performance by Marta Alstadsæter and Kim-Jomi Fische: [machinefabriek.bandcamp.com](https://machinefabriek.bandcamp.com/album/engel).

✚ “Eventually” is off *Veriditas* by **Helios**, on Ghostly: [ghostly.com](https://ghostly.com/products/veriditas).

✚ “Opposite Day” from *Invisible Threads* by **Mark Van Hoen**, on Touch: [touch333.bandcamp.com](https://touch333.bandcamp.com/album/invisible-threads).

✚ “No One Cares as Much as You” is from the score to *Impulse*, by **Deru**, released by Lakeshore: [derusoundtrack.bandcamp.com](https://derusoundtrack.bandcamp.com/album/impulse-original-series-soundtrack).

✚ “Unseen” is from *FTS002* by **Vida Vojic** and **Chihei Hatakeyama**, released on First Terrace: [firstterracerecords.bandcamp.com](https://firstterracerecords.bandcamp.com/album/fts002).

✚ “Try” is from *Too*, the 2016 album by **Klara Lewis**: [klaralewis.bandcamp.com](https://klaralewis.bandcamp.com/album/too). Lewis has a new album (a collaboration with Simon Fisher Turner) due out later this month: [editionsmego.com](http://editionsmego.com/release/EMEGO-253). Both are on Editions Mego.

Usually some [Stasis Report](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg) tracks are removed to make room for new tracks, but this week the Stasis Report was expanded to two hours from one and a half. Past tracks are in the [Stasis Archives](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=5RmtEbbSQcKNbK1ho2Vyog) playlist (currently only on Spotify).

A Collective of Two

A peek into a cloud atlas

August 29, 2018August 30, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The Oxford Ambient Collective is an individual, though here it’s also a duo, working in tandem with Encym. The music of “London Departures” is vast as only a bedroom beatmaker can craft — which is to say unimaginably — though here there are no beats, per se, just a vast, ever-quivering mass of light sounds. It’s full-on cloud mode. A glance at a “types of clouds” STEM page for elementary-school students suggests perhaps the cumulonimbus clouds: massive structures of humidity that form on hot days.

Track oroginally posted at [soundcloud.com/oxfordambient](https://soundcloud.com/oxfordambient/london-departures-collab-with-encym). More on the Oxford Ambient Collective, aka David Smith, at [oxfordambient.com](https://oxfordambient.com/) and [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/user/oxfordambient). More from encym, aka Roland Reinke, at [encym.bandcamp.com](https://encym.bandcamp.com/).