Three Short Improvisations for Sine Wave

From Portland-based OO-Ray (aka Ted Laderas)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The OO-Ray, aka Ted Laderas of Portland, Oregon, has begun the year with a welcoming suite of sine wave improvisations. Titled “Daijobu,” the 11-plus minutes are divided into three segments of pulsing, lightly percussive sequences. Each passing moment contains casual contrasts between varied elements: pads against grains, warping audio against genteel ambience, warbles against glistens. That the source is mere sine waves can boggle the mind, so distinct are the resulting components that Laderas puts into play. It’s also great that it’s one full piece, rather than a playlist of three tracks. It works better as a whole this way. Sure, you can direct someone to your favorite third, or your favorite instance, but it’s best heard as intended: from beginning to end. It’s also interesting, for long-time listeners of OO-Ray’s music, because there’s no cello, which is his main instrument. Laderas sets the pace for the year — modest, economical — by starting with the simplest of source material.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/ooray](https://soundcloud.com/ooray/daijobu). More from Laderas at [15people.net](http://15people.net/) and [twitter.com/ooray](https://twitter.com/ooray).

Will the Circle to Be Broken

By the Boston-based Erika Nesse

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Erika Nesse does tremendous work with fractal processing of sound. For “Unbroken” she takes her own singing of the classic hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and then proceeds to break the soft, slow rendition into numerous infinitesimal little pieces, countless splinters. Those are then rectified into a stream of unintelligible matter that nonetheless seems to retain much of the emotion, much of the sad-toned truth, of the original. Nesse then layers longer segments of her own voice, held vowels and looped syllables, atop the frayed, expertly random, blissfully raging current. She wills the classic to be broken, and then challenges it to reassemble itself. How much of that reassembly takes place in the music and how much takes place in the listener’s imagination is the question that lingers.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks](https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks/unbroken). Based in Boston, Nesse explores the topic of fractal music at [fractalmusicmachine.com](http://www.fractalmusicmachine.com/). More from her at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQp1jNAvGzwg6e_XhAJG8FQ) and [terraneanrecordings.bandcamp.com](https://terraneanrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/let-my-machine-talk-to-me).

The Cloudscapes of Off Land

A new collection from the Massachusetts-based musician

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This collection of outtakes and revisions was released last year by the Massachusetts-based musician Off Land. If the moniker suggests a variation on one of the founding ambient works, Brian Eno’s album *Ambient 4: On Land*, then it’s not without reason. The music on *(Drone Variations) Vol. III* suggests an ethereal take on ambient, less field recording than vapor exploration, less landscape than cloudscape. These are drones with an emphasis on vast choral effects and upper register accent marks. They unfurl very much like clouds — albeit entirely fantastical ones — the layers interacting and creating momentary densities, gaps, and blurs, all rendered here as sonic images of slow motion splendor.

Album originally posted at [offland.bandcamp.com](https://offland.bandcamp.com/album/drone-variations-vol-iii). It’s nine tracks in all, and available for just $1 (US). More from Off Land, aka Tim Dwyer, at [offlandia.tumblr.com](http://offlandia.tumblr.com/) and [twitter.com/OffLandMusic](https://twitter.com/OffLandMusic).

Buchla Music Easel Video for the New Year

A live performance by Tokyo-based Ozashiki Techno

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This extended, 15-minute piece of synthesizer space music is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine [“Ambient Performances.”](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/30/a-youtube-playlist-of-ambient-performances/) The Japan-based musician who goes by Ozashiki Techno is using the Buchla Music Easel in a live setting. The delicate balance of power between player and played is in evidence. A synthesizer session on something like the Buchla unfolds as much by instruction and cycles as it does by touch, and thus Ozashiki’s occasional intrusion into its space to adjust a fader or flip a switch or attend to a key occurs with the listener’s understanding that if no such motion was made, the Easel would likely persist in making music nonetheless. Ozashiki is there as much to guide as to play, to nudge and shift. The piece proceeds from filmic drones to beading percussives to wispy intonations. It’s the 19th in [a series of live Buchla Easel recordings that began back in mid-September 2014](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5jJ5o7my3Z9s5xJ2aKQLT18JS8F5pey_). For Ozashiki, the video was a way to end the year; for viewers and listeners, it will be a way to start a new one.

Track originally posted at Ozashiki’s
[youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syBe3HuRjBE) channel. More from Ozashiki, who is based in Tokyo, at [twitter.com/ozashikitechno](https://twitter.com/ozashikitechno).

End the Year with Aphex Twin

A new track titled “tnodvood104”

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

In the United Kingdom it’s nearing midnight, so as I type this in San Francisco mid-afternoon it feels fairly safe to say that the track “tnodvood104”is the last bit of music that Aphex Twin released to the public in a characteristically — well, newly characteristically, after years of his quasi-silence — eventful 2016. It’s a refreshingly straight-ahead, 4/4 piece. There is no chaotic, entropy-loving IDM to its beats, and though there’s an ambient miasma in the background, the track as a whole is in no particular way ambient techno. Even in his ambient work, Aphex Twin rarely has suggested a strong influence by Brian Eno, but here, around the midway point, when layers of slightly nasal, casually atonal singing appears, it sounds very much like a bit of Eno’s slow-motion pop music. Otherwise it’s entirely instrumental, and a fine, understated way to ring in the new year.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/user18081971](https://soundcloud.com/user18081971/tnodvood104), the account where Richard D. James initially unspooled heaps of archival audio when he returned to active public service in 2014.