The word “stillhet,” I’ve been informed by Google Translate, means “calm” in English. The correlation isn’t much of a surprise, not given its first four letters — or its application as the title to three tracks released by Sweden-based cellist Henrik Meierkord. The collection is a gorgeous exploration of stillness — the cello echoed and layered, as likely to drift in the background as soar overhead, and more to the point to do so simultaneously, along with other iterations, often transformed by gentle electronic effects into something placid, ethereal, and introspective. The set is absolutely beautiful, though like so much stillness, underneath lurks a certain current of gravitas.
Disquiet Junto Project 0624: Fresh Pair
The Assignment: Combine two influences, however disparate they may be.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 18, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 14, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). Note that this service will change shortly, likely to Substack, due to Tinyletter shutting down.
Disquiet Junto Project 0624: Fresh Pair
The Assignment: Combine two influences, however disparate they may be.
Yesterday, the 13th of December, marked the 27th anniversary of Disquiet.com, and I figured it makes sense for this week’s Disquiet Junto to pay tribute to two cultural figures who have informed it.
Step 1: Think of two cultural figures who have made unique and strong impressions on you.
Step 2: Rather than think of what they have in common, think about the individual impact they have had on you.
Step 3: Record a piece of music that expresses the two, distinct forms of impact you arrived at in Step 2.
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0624” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0624” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0624-fresh-pair/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 18, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 14, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, 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.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 624th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fresh Pair (The Assignment: Combine two influences, however disparate they may be), at: https://disquiet.com/0624/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0624-fresh-pair/
The photo of the painting, by Joseph Siffrein Duplessis, of Benjamin Franklin is in the public domain. The photo of Fernando Pessoa in the public domain.
Disquiet Junto Project 0622: Know the Shadow
The Assignment: How do you depict a shadow in sound?
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 4, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 30, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).
Disquiet Junto Project 0622: Know the Shadow
The Assignment: How do you depict a shadow in sound?
Step 1: Think about what a shadow is.
Step 2: Think about how a shadow might be expressed in sound.
Step 3: Record a piece of music employing the ideas that arose in Step 2.
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0622” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0622” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0622-know-the-shadow/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. Is it a low winter sun or high noon?
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 4, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 30, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, 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.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 622nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Know the Shadow (The Assignment: Use recently discarded material to make something new), at: https://disquiet.com/0622/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0622-know-the-shadow/
Disquiet Junto Project 0621: The Leftovers
The Assignment: Use recently discarded material to make something new.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 27, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 23, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).
Disquiet Junto Project 0621: The Leftovers
The Assignment: Use recently discarded material to make something new.
Step 1: At the end of the calendar year, people often participate in holidays that result in lots of leftover food. Think about the leftovers — discarded tracks, or MIDI files, or ideas — that result from your music-making process.
Step 2: Scrounge around on your hard drive and recording equipment, and in your memory, to access the sort of creative leftovers that came to mind in Step 1.
Step 3: Make a new track primarily using the resources that surfaced in Step 2. You can, of course, add new material. And be sure to reheat sufficiently.
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0621” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0621” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0621-the-leftovers/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. How far can you stretch your leftovers?
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 27, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 23, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, 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.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 621st weekly Disquiet Junto project, The Leftovers (The Assignment: Use recently discarded material to make something new), at: https://disquiet.com/0621/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0621-the-leftovers/
TWiS Listening Posts (0014, 0015, 0016)
Summaries of three recent paywalled issues
Most Wednesdays I send a special thank you to paid subscribers to the This Week in Sound email newsletter, and I usually do a short summary here. I fell behind on those summaries, so here are the three most recent:
TWiS Listening Post (0016)
November 15, 2023
This issue is an experiment. Technically every issue of This Week in Sound is an experiment, because I’m always fiddling with structure, and also a lot of the concepts and subjects are themselves still at a stage more about experimentation and theory than about certainty and canon. This issue is an experiment because it’s unlike the first 15 weeks of the TWiS Listening Post, which consisted of three (or more) tracks (or albums or videos) I happened to recommend, most of them fairly fresh. There wasn’t a theme, per se. This week, however, the intent is to share three tracks to help a listener new to Scott Tuma triangulate, as it were, what makes him special.
I should note that Tuma was one of the first musicians I ever interviewed professionally. I moved to New York City after graduating from college, and the first articles I wrote for Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine, in 1989 — before moving to Sacramento, California, and joining the magazine full time — included an interview with the band Souled American, of which Tuma was a member (they were in town to perform). As I recall, he was the quietest of the group’s line-up when we met in person (the other two interviews I did at that phase were cellist Hank Roberts, whose excellent Black Pastels had just come out, and the hip-hop/rock band 24-7 Spyz, who had just released an excellent cover of Kool & the Gan’s “Jungle Boogie”).
Tuma is a master of quiet music, often mixing simple recording techniques, rough hewn guitar, and an ear for minimalism. These three tracks exemplify his work, both solo and in collaboration. If I were to have added a fourth, it would have been from his tenure as part of the ever-changing Boxhead Ensemble.
. . .
TWiS Listening Post (0015)
November 8, 2023
This issue included (1) my top 10 of 2023 (I’ll post a more detailed top 20 soon), (2) the fantastic collaboration, LP2, between electronic musician and producer Joseph Branciforte and vocalist Theo Bleckmann, and (3) Jeannine Schulz’s recent album Elements, Cycles.
. . .
TWiS Listening Post (0014)
October 25, 2023
This issue included reflections on (1) a lengthy soundscape recording from midtown Manhattan by the prolific Nomadic Ambience, (2) the electronics/cello album Wave Cycles by Mikael Lind and Johanna Sjunnesson, and (3) a drone I recorded in an apartment.