downstream – Page 277

The Monk by the Desert

A conflicted meditation by Zagreb-based Ivan Ujevic

June 22, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The track has a protean rattle, a breathy noise that shares kinship with the antic blare of the vuvuzela, with the mystic call of the didgeridoo, and with the vibrant particulate of the rain stick. But since the sound is not as immediately recognizable as any of those, it shifts easily into a nether zone. Thick overtones charge the track with meditative spaciousness, even as that reflective cast is challenged by arid textures and an underlying sonic turmoil. Swells introduce pause-like structural moments as they die down, and an anxious sense of narrative as they inevitably rise back up again. Titled “Desert,” it’s a nearly three-minute piece by Ivan Ujevic of Zagreb, Croatia, who records as the Monk by the Sea. It’s from his album [*Drones*](https://themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com/album/drones), which includes a collaboration with Victor Yibril, released earlier this week.

Track originally posed at [soundcloud.com/themonkbythesea](https://soundcloud.com/themonkbythesea/desert). More from the Monk by the Sea at [twitter.com/UjevicIvan](https://twitter.com/UjevicIvan), [themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com](https://themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com/), and [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/user/ujevicivan).

A Pixel Fire

Three frames capture the performance, and occasional "brutal digital audioclipping"

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The musician working from the traumaduo/spacebox720 account on YouTube apologizes at the opening of this video for the “brutal digital audioclipping” — his exact words — that occurs in the track. The clipping is especially evident right after the nine-minute mark, when a harsh rupture, a pixel fire, briefly invades the previously placid, lightly padded space. That sonic fire quickly recedes, and the patient, soft music, gently percussive music proceeds. The clipping there is as much an echo as it is a rupture, bringing to mind a quieter fissure at the three-minute mark, and other punctuations that occur over the course of the piece. I note this video not only for its listening pleasure, but for the format of the performance presentation. It appears as three images: one large, two small, each showing a different perspective on the instrumentation, allowing him to move freely among the tools and almost always have his actions captured. (Such a format has been on my mind for a possible project, and then I stumbled on this employment while searching for music that uses devices by the musician-designer Meng Qi, who’s based in Beijing, China). In addition there are computer-generated images that lend some science-fiction drama to the undertaking.

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWpmoCtPC2c). It’s the latest piece 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/)

Disquiet Junto Project 0233: Netlabel (NND Remix)

The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

June 16, 2016February 12, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

jetlee

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on [SoundCloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) and at [disquiet.com/junto](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. 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.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 2016.

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 0233: Netlabel (NND Remix)

The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

Seeing the “ND” tag on a netlabel release is a major buzzkill. The “ND” tag denotes a Creative Commons license that rules out creating derivative work. Fortunately lots of netlabels do allow for creative reuse, and this occasional series of collaborative remixes seeks to celebrate that activity, and encourage other netlabels to switch off the ND tag. Take “NND” to mean “not no derivatives.”

Step 1: Download the three tracks that will provide source audio for this remix:

Use the first 30 seconds of “HNY” off the album Wormbole by ÊžÄ±k (Karl & Karlik) on the Bump Foot netlabel:

http://www.bumpfoot.net/bump207.html

Use the first 30 seconds of “Pepper Jelly” off the album Recombinations by Andre Darius and Riley Theodore on the Haze netlabel:

https://hazenetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/recombinations

Use the first 30 seconds of “Autista 3” off the album Autista by Pablo Reche on the Impulsive Habitat netlabel:

http://www.impulsivehabitat.com/releases/ihab113.htm

Step 2: Create an original piece of work including that source material.

Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 2016.

Length: Length is up to you, though between two and three minutes seems about right.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0233.”Also use “disquiet0233″as a tag for your track.

Download: It is necessary that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing and attribution, per the Creative Commons license of the source audio.

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

More on this 233rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license”– at:

https://disquiet.com/0233/

Space Age Surveillance Thrills

Courtesy of the new album from Italy-based Sonologyst

June 14, 2016June 13, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s much to recommend the new Sonologyst album, starting off with its evocative title, *Silencers – the conspiracy theory dossiers*. That colorful language may set a high bar for sonic surveillance thrills, but the album delivers, especially with its final track, “NASA Secret Tapes.”

Barely two minutes in length, “NASA Secret Tapes” loops snippets of space-age chatter with sonar swells. It’s a testament to those swells — which ring like massive bells pitched high, their tones extending unnaturally relative to their frigid timbre — that the track would be just as effective minus the “This is Houston. Say again?” dialogue, flavorful as it is in its retro flourish. Those tones are endlessly listenable. Sonologyst artfully tweaks them, turning the background ambience into something with subtle rhythmic purpose.

The “NASA Secret Tapes” track is up top, and here’s the full album:

<a href="http://sonologyst.bandcamp.com/album/silencers-the-conspiracy-theory-dossiers">Silencers – the conspiracy theory dossiers by Sonologyst</a>

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/sonologyst](https://soundcloud.com/sonologyst/nasa-secret-tapes). Full album at [sonologyst.bandcamp.com](https://sonologyst.bandcamp.com/album/silencers-the-conspiracy-theory-dossiers). More from Sonologyst, who’s based in Italy, at [twitter.com/sonologyst](https://twitter.com/sonologyst).

Playing a Keyboard with a Phone Book

Peter Speer puts a little pressure on the definition of a live performance.

June 13, 2016June 13, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Just how little action can one take and still be considered a performer? If [yesterday’s featured video](https://disquiet.com/2016/06/12/genaura/) nudged at the inherent idea of a “live” performance by [showing generative software mid-process](https://disquiet.com/2016/06/12/genaura/) (no human required), then today’s video re-introduces human physical interaction but in a very simple way.

The video, titled “Yellow Pages Tone Cluster,” begins with a humorous touch worthy of John Cage: A few seconds in, the artist Peter Speer places a massive phone book, its front cover ripped off, atop an electric keyboard, and thus sets in motion a broad, dense uber-chord that plays for nearly 11 minutes straight.

“Motion” may not be the right word. What the phone book creates on the keyboard is a multi-octave held chord, quite the opposite of motion. That chord changes only due to the ear’s sensitivity to overtones and waveforms, and Speer’s subsequent small changes. He alters the chord as it proceeds. Specifics aren’t laid out at the video link (the only text is “The lost art of playing a keyboard with a book”), but as it goes the organ tone takes on beading and phase-shifting, glitch wonderment and reduction to a sheer shimmer. And at then end Speer removes the phone book. The ceremonial bow is implied.

One side note: This video is a good example of how the very thing that can make computer music a tough sell in a concert setting works exceptionally well on streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo, where the audience has such GoPro-style proximity (“goproximity”?) to the sort of small gestures that are lost with a live audience. The only way something like this would register in front of a group of people is if there were an effort made to include a properly framed live video projection during the performance — of course, while the scale would make the performer’s movements legible in concert, it would also potentially overstate their gravitas. (I should mention, I’ve seen plenty of shows where this sort of projection occurs but it’s usually for more flamboyant playing styles and often isn’t framed particularly well.)

Unfortunately I can’t add this to [my “Ambient Performances” playlist](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/30/a-youtube-playlist-of-ambient-performances/) because the playlist is on YouTube and this video is on [vimeo.com](https://vimeo.com/126705785). More from Peter Speer, who’s based in Chicago, Illinois, at [diode-ring.com](http://www.diode-ring.com/). Video found in a discussion about minimal physical mixing consoles at [llllllll.co](http://llllllll.co/t/minimal-mixers/1897/97?u=disquiet).