downstream – Page 282

Alvin Curran Finds His (Dad’s) Trombone

And records a tribute to its weathered tone

May 16, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Alvin Curran, the composer (b. 1938), lost his dad’s trombone, only to have it relocated decades later. In a New York Times essay this past weekend, [“The Trombone Comes Home,”](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/sunday/the-trombone-comes-home.html?ref=todayspaper) Curran tells the story of the instrument’s role in his childhood education and activities, before he switched to piano and, later still, composition. He also tells the story of its reappearance. The discovery provides an emotional end to the tale:

>I let it sit for a few days to acclimatize. The with my wife, Susan, snapping pictures I carefully removed the layers of wrappings one at a time with a kitchen knife — and then opened the latches to reveal an unpolished silent brass corpse inside, smelling exactly the same as it did when I surreptitiously opened that case for the first time some 70 years earlier in Providence.

Included alongside the essay is a nearly two-minute composition by Curran, “The Lost Trombone.” It’s described, succinctly, as follows:

>A composition built on a single B flat note played on the recovered trombone by the author, electronically processed and produced with Angelo-Maria Farro.

For unclear reasons the essay itself makes no direct connection to the piece, and in no way gets into its existence, let alone its composition and recording process. It’s a riveting miniature of repetition, the threadbare note echoed and layered, its held tone circling round and round, building if not to an orchestral impact, then at least that of a sizable chamber ensemble. You enter into the weathered tone, much as Curran himself was taken by its accrued meaning and experience:

>For me, it was the essence of unabashed musical Americana, its mouthpiece an amalgam of chopped liver, Mom’s tuna salad, kosher hot dogs, kasha and planetary garlic breath fused with silver and steel and a century of house mold.

The audio isn’t embeddable, so you’ll need to click through to the [nytimes.com](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/sunday/the-trombone-comes-home.html?ref=todayspaper) site to listen in full. More from Curran at [alvincurran.com](www.alvincurran.com).

Feedback Loops from a Cork, Ireland, Print Shop

Performance documentation from Claire Guerin

May 15, 2016May 14, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Claire Guerin of Cork, Ireland, participated in an eight-hour sound performance called Feedback Loops last month. She’s posted a short (five-minute) snapshot of the proceedings. It’s a brooding, percussion-and-drone segment that is, toward the close, intruded upon by dastardly vocalizing, the dark foreboding utterances of a demonic presence. The event took place on April 17 at the Cork Community Print Shop. There’s additional video and documentation at the event’s [Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/events/632078413616800/).

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/claire-guerin](https://soundcloud.com/claire-guerin/feedback-loops-event-cork-community-prinshopmay-2016-short-exerpt-from-and-8hour-performance). More from Guerin at [claireguerin.wordpress.com](https://claireguerin.wordpress.com/). More on the Guesthouse (“a visual artist-led initiative whose objective is to create a place for production, meeting and cross-practice peer exchange that includes various forms of public discourse and encounter” that she helped found) at [theguesthouse.ie](http://theguesthouse.ie/). Guerin is part of Queef with [Laney Mannion](https://soundcloud.com/miniaturezebra).

Ambient Forged on Hip-hop Pads

A performance video by Sander van Dijck

May 14, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The MPC series, from the electronics manufacturer Akai, is best known for its employment in hip-hop, but tools have purposes beyond their initial intention, even beyond their general use. In the hands of Sander van Dijck, of the Netherlands, the beat machine becomes a trigger system for percolating ambient music. This is a performance video not a tutorial, so it doesn’t begin to document the preparation that went into the sounds we hear. The guitar and keyboard in the background hint at some of the origin points, and in addition there are snatches of spoken information that balance the music’s dreaminess with a certain amount of portent. The beauty of a performance video like this is correlating the movement with the sound. So much is happening in the service of such a placid affect, the individual cues eventually lost in the full mix of activity. The track is credited to van Dijck’s Casilofi moniker, and is titled “SNDSKP” (that is, “soundscape”).

It’s the latest piece I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine [“Ambient Performances.”](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/30/a-youtube-playlist-of-ambient-performances/) Entries in the Disquiet Downstream post series are usually of recent vintage but as I’ve been fleshing out the Ambient Performances material I’ve let the time restriction relax; this video is dated almost four years ago, to July 14, 2016, though the image filter suggests it’s from the 1970s.

Video originally posted on [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRidJQMYWYc). More from Sander van Dijck at [soundcloud.com/casilofi](https://soundcloud.com/casilofi) and [casilofi.bandcamp.com](https://casilofi.bandcamp.com/).

New Autechre Plays in Chaos/4 Time

Listen to "feed1" via BBC Radio 6

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

There was [word out](https://twitter.com/WarpRecords/status/731183045575905284?s=09) that a new Autechre track was due for broadcast at some point today. It has occurred, and the appearance of the 12-minute stretch of off-kilter beats and broken static has made its way to YouTube on several channels. How long it’ll remain online is unclear. The track is titled “feed1” according to the DJ at the start of the extracted segment, which played this evening, London time, on BBC Radio 6. It’s a perhaps uncharacteristically repetitive piece for the duo. The beat itself is difficult to nod your head to, certainly, but the overall effect is of dedicated, near-industrial perseverance. The tricky, arhythmic metrics themselves cycle on fairly steady repeat, in other words whatever chaos/4 maps to on a drum machine.

Track found via the [lllllll.co](http://llllllll.co/t/what-are-you-listening-to/2044/229?u=disquiet) discussion boards.

Disquiet Junto Project 0228: Three Mics

Make a piece of music with one sound source recorded three different ways.

May 12, 2016May 12, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

johnschneider

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 project 0228:

This project was posted in late morning, California time, on Thursday, May 12, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, May 16, 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 0228: Three Mics

Make a piece of music with one sound source recorded three different ways.

This week we’re going to explore how different microphones can alter the perception of a given instrument or other sound source.

Step 1: Find three microphones. (Music mic, laptop, cellphone, tablet, landline answering machine, etc.)

Step 2: Make three recordings, each of the same single sound source through a different one of the microphones from Step 1.

Step 3: Make a piece of music exploring the differences — some will be stark, others more nuanced — between those three recordings.

Step 4: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

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.

Deadline: This project was posted in late morning, California time, on Thursday, May 12, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, May 16, 2016.

Length: The length is up to you, though between one and three minutes feels 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 “disquiet0228.”Also use “disquiet0228”as a tag for your track.

Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

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

More on this 228th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Make a piece of music with one sound source recorded three different ways”) at:

https://disquiet.com/0228/