The Sixteen-Millimeter Fractal

A work of percussive wordplay by Erika Nesse

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

16millimeter-nesse

I wrote about Erika Nesse’s fractal music about a month ago ([“A Nautilus of Percussive Expressivity”](https://disquiet.com/2016/03/09/a-nautilus-of-percussive-expressivity/)), and she just posted this week another example that’s well worth a listen. Titled “You Can Wish It All Away,” the short piece, not even two full minutes in length, takes tiny snippets of source audio, in this case a woman speaking, and renders from them a slowly evolving rhythmic flurry. Slivers of syllables — not whole verbal sounds but mere bits of them, so even the softest vowel can serve as a plosive thanks to a hard truncation — become an ever-changing fantasy of computer-generated beatcraft.

Two moments seem to suggest that the piece isn’t directly the result of a computer using fractals to break and reformat the source, but that Nesse herself plays a role in the work’s composition — that she is using the fractal algorithm as a source for musical development, much as the algorithm itself is using the original source audio. The first of these moments appears at about the one-minute mark, when the previously furious mix of layered sounds gives way to a harshly minimalist, staccato metric. The second is at the end, when the original sample audio is heard in full, revealing itself as a line from an early episode of *The Twilight Zone*: “If I wish hard enough, I can wish it all away.” That’s the main character, a former film star, speaking in the episode titled “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine.”

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks](https://soundcloud.com/conversationswithrocks/you-can-wish-it-all-away). More from Nesse, who’s based in Boston, at [conversationswithrocks.tumblr.com](http://conversationswithrocks.tumblr.com/) and [erikanesse.bandcamp.com](https://erikanesse.bandcamp.com/). Film clip screenshot via [youtu.be](https://youtu.be/55ovr-SU6wI).

A Mix of Meditative and Present, Drone and Texture

The new album Glade from Hummingbird

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The opening track of Hummingbird’s tremendous new album, *Glade*, is airy and dense at the same time. The bellows-like audio has a deep, engrossing, maximal-minimalist quality that brings to mind the work of Terry Riley. Titled “Himalayah” it’s a muted raga, an ecstatic pause, a rusty halo. It builds as it goes, gaining mass yet remaining clouded. It’s the first of 14 tracks on *Glade*, which proceeds through variations on this trance-inducing, pastoral ambience.

Much of the record is built on drones that emphasize enchantment over anxiety. This sort of thing can become treacly in the wrong hands, but that’s not the case here. What grounds the work is the drones often engage with textural material, like the audible shaker in “Three Empires,” or what appears to be creaking wood beneath the echoing piano in “Six Points of Tabligh” and a similar creaking combined with a sandpaper burr amid the otherwise entirely winsome “Fragment of a Discourse.” *Glade*’s approach to drones gets orchestral on “Lesson Nine,” where the instrumentation goes in and out of phase in a way that suggests it’s being warped in real time, the fabric of some recording messed with this way and that, gently but perceptibly. The entire album is flush with this sense of heightened everydayness, a mix of meditative and present, drone and texture, placid and grounded.

This idea of “discovery” has been on my mind a lot lately, so I wanted to mention that I found *Glade* via Bandcamp, thanks to one other person than myself having publicly acknowledged on our Bandcamp user feeds that’d we’d purchased another album, *Dual Concentric* by Nature Program, which I [wrote about yesterday](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/03/nature-program-dual-concentric/). I clicked through to that person’s list of Bandcamp purchases, and then listened to several of them. My first experience to *Glade* was as an accidental overlay to Dual Concentric. They pair well.

The album is available at [facture.bandcamp.com](https://facture.bandcamp.com/album/glade), though the [fac-ture.co.uk](http://www.fac-ture.co.uk/) website (whose first release was another Hummingbird album, *Our Fearful Symmetry Remixes*) doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2013, and the [Discogs.com](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1882723-Hummingbird-2) site [attributes](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1882723-Hummingbird-2) *Glade* to [Fluid](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1882723-Hummingbird-2), whose [site](http://fluidaudio.bigcartel.com/product/hummingbird-glade) offers some glimpses of the packaging of the limited-edition physical release:

glade-fluid

It’s Unfortunate Bandcamp Lacks Playlist Functionality

It'd be nice to whittle Nature Program's excellent Dual Concetric to its ambient core

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

**Update (April 4, 2016):** My playmoss.com account was upgraded, so I was able to make the playlist discussed below embeddable:

The original post appears below.

This is the wonderfully textured yet ethereal track “Supine Anchor” off the album *Dual Concentric* by Brooklyn-based Nature Program. Nature Program appears to be the recording moniker of the individual who made the HC-TT, a device [I wrote about yesterday](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/02/landscape-hc-tt/). The HC-TT allows a musician to manipulate a standard tape cassette in real time, to edge the music forward and backward thanks to a large circular knob.

Screen Shot 2016-04-03 at 8.34.41 PM

The website for the HC-TT, [hc-tt.com](http://www.hc-tt.com/), on its Letters page includes a link to [the Bandcamp page of Nature Program](https://tonewheel.bandcamp.com/), where there is currently one album: *Dual Concentric*. Elsewhere on the HC-TT site there’s a “Why” page — the sort of thing more makers might consider. (That is, if the why isn’t justifiable, maybe there’s a better problem out there for you to solve.) The Why for the HC-TT is compelling, even if you haven’t heard the super cool sound samples associated with it. The site makes a clear case for the cassette’s unique sonic properties and the HC-TT’s potential as part of an electronic musician’s kit. Also, it’s written from the perspective of a curious, exploratory musician:

>This device was made for a fairly selfish reason: For years, I’ve wanted to have a compact, organized device that mirrors the compact, organized cassette medium. It’s an obsessive-compulsive dream to create your own library of tape loops which stay safely packaged and organized inside individual cassettes.

“Supine Anchor” is among the most relaxed of the tracks on *Dual Concentric*. It is a sequence of layered loops whose texture and warped quality suggest they originated on physical tape, perhaps even involved the HC-TT in their production. There’s a lush voice, a falsetto, that brings to mind Brian Eno’s, and it appears about midway through the piece, after the initial bout of fractured minimalist abstract beatcraft melts into something ever more echoing and lush. There’s a lot more to the record than “Supine Anchor” might suggest: techno, light gamecore, electro, instrumental proto-hip-hop. But within that expansive coverage, 20 tracks in all, are about a half dozen or so with a more ambient quality to them.

It’s unfortunate that Bandcamp doesn’t have a playlist function. Unlike services from Spotify to SoundCloud, Bandcamp lacks the ability for listeners to serve as collators. You can learn a lot from following and looking into the acquisitions of fellow Bandcamp users, but you can’t do much more than that. You speak through your wallet (and your wishlist) on Bandcamp. If you buy something, it’s associated with your account (mine is at [bandcamp.com/disquiet](http://bandcamp.com/disquiet)), but you can’t, for example, create an ersatz hits collection for an artist with multiple albums, or, as I was drawn to do with *Dual Concentric*, whittle 20 tracks down to their background-music essentials.

Fortunately there are other services, such as [playmoss.com](https://playmoss.com/en/disquiet/playlist/dual-concentric-select), which do allow for collecting material found elsewhere on the web. I can’t embed it (*note: my account was upgraded, so I now can embed playlists — see the top of this post*), but I’ve made a playlist at [playmoss.com](https://playmoss.com/en/disquiet/playlist/dual-concentric-select) that collects seven key tracks off of *Dual Concentric*, the ones that largely do away with rhythm in favor of something more murky and enticing. The tracks are, in order of appearance, “Sources Say,” “Nature Program – Breathers,” “Supine Anchor,” “Flourishings,” “Inclement,” “Fulfillment Center” and “Understand.”

The full album is available at [tonewheel.bandcamp.com](https://tonewheel.bandcamp.com/). More on the HC-TT at [hc-tt.com](http://hc-tt.com).

Playing a Tape Cassette by Hand

Listening to a new device, the HC-TT

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

static1.squarespace

This little device, called the HC-TT, is a “human controlled tape transport.” It plays standard tape cassettes with no motor, no automation. The only power is a turn of that large knob. The knob moves backward and forward, allowing for gestural effects, as demoed in this Instagram from the account of the manufacturer, the Brooklyn-based Landscape:

A video posted by Landscape (@landscape_hc_tt) on

In this next example, it’s paired with a looping machine, the Elektron Octatrack:

A video posted by Landscape (@landscape_hc_tt) on

There’s a large set of audio examples at Landscape’s [SoundCloud account](https://soundcloud.com/landscape_hc-tt), drawing from flamenco, hip-hop, business self-help, and other sound sources:

The tape cassette has proved to be a useful tool for musicians in recent years to inexpensively release physical documents of their recordings. It’s also prevalent as an instrument, for such things as old-school tape echo and looping, thanks to both reclaimed reel-to-reel systems and cassettes. The HC-TT brings a modern, gadget-maker ingenuity to the medium.

More on the HC-TT at [hc-tt.com](http://www.hc-tt.com/). It ships with a power supply and “one randomly selected old cassette tape.”

Disquiet Junto Project 0222: Bounded Foundation

The Assignment: Compose a piece for contemporary dance – with a "soft top" and a "shifting bottom."

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

tomgill

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 morning, California time, on Thursday, March 31, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 4, 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 0222: Bounded Foundation

The Assignment: Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom.”

This is the second project we’re doing with artist and engineer Paolo Salvagione for an extended piece of choreography he’s working on. The result of the project is intended for potential use as a sonic backdrop for the dance performance, and also as a form of research into the materials and ideas being explored by Salvagione and the dancers. (Audio produced for this Junto project will not be used by Salvagione without its composer’s permission.)

Step 1: You will be creating a short, roughly four-minute piece of music. First, take into consideration the setting. Visualize that the piece would be performed by a young solo female dancer. She is dancing in a large space. The sounds of this Junto are the only sounds accompanying her movement.

Step 2: Your piece should have two perceived “levels.” The “top” level should be soft and cloud-like. The “bottom” level should be firm but ever-shifting.

Step 3: Make a piece of sound/music roughly four minutes long that meets the criteria of Step 2.

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 the morning, California time, on Thursday, March 31, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 4, 2016.

Length: The length is up to you, though between two and five 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 “disquiet0222-boundedfoundation.”Also use “disquiet0222-boundedfoundation”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 222nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom”) at:

https://disquiet.com/0222/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

https://disquiet.com/forums/

The image associated with this project is by Tom Gill and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

Sheets of Ice