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When the Looped Is to Be Looped

A track from An Imaginal Space

February 21, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The track is titled “Looping,” and looping it contains, what sounds like a brief guitar sequence, a brief trace of notes, above a waft of synthesis, the series set on repeat, their paths overlapping in varying ways. A note can be heard, here and there, to stray, to be pulled at length, extended from the sequence. It stretches from its original place and becomes part of the waft. It’s just gorgeous how it unfolds. It’s titled “Looping” because that is what it contains, but it is also to be set on loop itself.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/an-imaginal-space](https://soundcloud.com/an-imaginal-space/looping-210216). More at [animaginalspace.com](http://animaginalspace.com/).

Drones That Aspire to Sound Design

Which is to say, not "music," whatever that might mean

February 20, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

In space no one can hear you scream, but plenty of sounds bring space to mind nonetheless. The sounds we’ve heard from space in recent years, between the [Einstein chirps](https://disquiet.com/iMZjB) and the [plasma songs](https://disquiet.com/6vYur), were beyond our hearing initially, the frequencies shifted after the fact so we could experience the original waveforms in a manner that we’d more naturally categorize as audio.

Still, a century of film, not to mention television and radio drama, has provided a sonic signature to space, a sonic context for extra-planetary exploration. This is what one might make of “Iris Study,” a drone-like two-minute sketch in audio by William Boldenweck. There is much drone music, in particular on SoundCloud, and much of it aspires to a compositional state. Such drone music can be heard as a descendant of Olivier Messiaen and Mortan Feldman, traversing Eduard Artemyev and La Monte Young toward an aesthetic of stasis.

What Boldenweck has recorded here is apart from that. “Iris Study” sounds like it transpires not in musical time but in narrative time. It’s less a composition than it is the sound of a deep-space ship being walked late in the non-night/non-day of interplanetary travel. It captures the echo and contours of physical space, of systems humming with a vast vacuum just outside the door. Then again, this could be program music, the program being the footsteps of an astronaut pacing, the drone matching the protagonist’s emotional arc as well as the physical map of the stroll.

More likely Boldenweck has some other story entirely, some other design and structure, in mind, but the piece’s inherent absence leaves plenty of beautiful space for the mind to fill.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/boldenweck](https://soundcloud.com/boldenweck/iris-study). More from him at [baseltrash.tumblr.com](http://baseltrash.tumblr.com/).

Processing Music as if It Were a Field Recording

Taylor Deupree takes on Kodomo

February 19, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Taylor Deupree’s is not a name one immediately associates with remixes. The founder of 12k Records, he has a singular vision that manifests itself in solo records and occasional collaborations and, through 12k, his support of like-minded musicians. But hearing his take on Kodomo’s “Endless Waves,” the correlation between his own work and remixing makes perfect sense. So much of Deupree’s music released under his own name is about processing something pre-existing, source material, often field recordings and the pure tones of standalone acoustic instruments making their way through his equipment, ultimately yielding something more akin to erasure than accrual. That is exactly what he does with the Kodomo piece, etching away the pop-infused original until what we hear are small bits echoed and looped, frayed and otherwise dissected.

And here, [for reference](https://soundcloud.com/kodomo/11-endless-waves), is the original version of Kodomo’s “Endless Waves,” a pulsing, droning piece that wavers between arpeggio momentum and film-score synthesizer atmospherics. The track is from Kodomo’s 2014 album, *Patterns & Light*. It can be informative to locate the source moments of a remix in the original, a bit like solving a puzzle, and it can be all the more so to locate the source aesthetic — how the first version inspired the approach of the second. Here, at 1:35 into the 2:07-long track, there’s a fleeting moment, a final swell experiencing an elegant torque, just before the piece’s long fade. It has in it a touch of Deupree’s own favor for gently warped wisps.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/kodomo](https://soundcloud.com/kodomo/endless-waves-taylor-deupree-remix). More from Kodomo, aka Chris Child of Brooklyn, New York, at [kodomomusic.com](http://www.kodomomusic.com/). There are two other remixes in the series, by Kodacrome and Allies for Everyone.

Disquiet Junto Project 0216: Thin Layers

The Assignment: Add a thin foundational bed to beats of pin-prick audio.

February 18, 2016February 18, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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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 at noon, California time, on Thursday, February 18, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 22, 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 0216: Thin Layers

The Assignment: Add a thin foundational bed to beats of pin-prick audio.

Step 1: For this project you’ll be adding sounds to a pre-existing track of your choosing. Select one track from the previous Junto project, in which beats were made with five tiny, pin-prick sounds:

https://disquiet.com/0215

Step 2: Confirm the track you selected in Step 1 is available for creative reuse. If you’re not sure, correspond with the musician. If you’re short on time, select a different track.

Step 3: Create a new track by adding a thin layer, or several thin layers, of an ambient foundational bed to the pre-existing track. Don’t alter the pre-existing track significantly. Maintain its original length.

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process — identify the source track and include a link to its SoundCloud page.

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

Deadline: This project was posted at noon, California time, on Thursday, February 18, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 22, 2016.

Length: The length of your track should be the same as that of the source track.

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 “disquiet0216-thinlayers.”Also use “disquiet0216-thinlayers”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 216th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“The Assignment: Add a thin foundational bed to beats of pin-prick audio”) at:

https://disquiet.com/0216

disquiet.com/ambientalist

A Spotify playlist of recent(ish) ambient(ish) music

February 17, 2016February 17, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ve tried this before, on Spotify and on SoundCloud, and again I’m giving a go at putting together a regularly updated public playlist. This is resulting from three things: (1) my switch to Spotify after Rdio’s shutdown (and after a recognition that neither Google Play and Apple Music has a functioning social component), (2) my endlessly delayed plans to get a proper podcast together, and (3) my desire to investigate the (apparent) popularity of playlists (and of Spotify) by working in the form. (For all this Spotify activity, the vast majority of my listening is still SoundCloud, Bandcamp, and promotional copies I receive. One thing I’m repeatedly struck by is how little of the music I listen to on SoundCloud appears on Spotify — in fact, how few of the musicians I listen to on SoundCloud appear on Spotify.)

For me, context is everything. I don’t like listening without having access — not necessarily for immediate, but for eventual, consumption — to more of a sense of what I’m listening to, which generally means written context. I’m likely in the minority in this regard, or so the streaming services seem to believe. Then again, I listen to refrigerators hum for pleasure and get turned down for sound design projects because my RFP feedback begins “you really don’t need to add music.” Spotify provides little more information than Apple or Google. It’s a little frustrating that Spotify’s playlists don’t allow for unique cover art (as a podcast might have) or even liner notes, but I’ve done a low-rent hack by titling the podcast with a URL ([disquiet.com/ambientalist](https://disquiet.com/ambientalist)) that might invite individuals to click through and read more.

The first edition is 41 minutes and features tracks from Kid606, Nonkeen (a new trio including Nils Frahm), Taylor Deupree in a duet with Marcus Fischer, Lisa Gerrard (from her score to *Jane Got a Gun*, recorded with Marcello De Francisci), Scott Tuma (off *Eyrie*, which I thought I’d written about when it first came out, around the time I initiated an interview with him, but I can’t find any mention), Grouper, Marina Rosenfeld, DJ Krush, Lesley Flanigan, and Stephen Mathieu.

The playlist is at this inelegant URL, if you have a Spotify account:

https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/2W8PS8cf2aHe72vZDRdN8Y

I’m not sure how this is going to develop, whether I’ll switch out all the tracks, or just add over time so the thing gets entirely out of control, length-wise. I do know the current plan is to stick to current work. Everything here was released (or re-released) in 2015 or 2016, with the exception of those artists who have nothing that recent in the Spotify database. In those cases I’ve selected something from their most recent release that Spotify does provide access to.