I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ The second in the ongoing “diary” series from the French label Sonic-dialogue is out, and it’s a lovely set of dreamy demos by Aldrin, aka Oslo-based musician Øystein Dale Svendsen.
▰ Gorgeous muffled piano study from the Bell Mechanical.
▰ I’m an enormous fan of Nils Petter Molvær, the Norwegian trumpet player, and yet I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him play live solo for a full concert until I witnessed this fantastic hour-long video — of course, he’s only solo to the extent that you don’t grant performer status to his battery of inventive electronic processing.
From the duo Mikael Lind (electronics) and Johanna Sjunnesson (cello, voice)
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
The album Wave Cycles is the result of a collaboration between electronic musician Mikael Lind (a Swede based in Reykjavik, Iceland) and cellist Johanna Sjunnesson (based in Sweden), who also lends a subtly intoned vocal to one track. This is classic post-classical music: an airy combination of pulsing minimalism, often stark ambient processing, and spacious harmonies that leave plenty of room for the listener’s imagination to roam free. It has a lot of the elements one has come to expect: gaseous pauses, closely mic’d instruments, a sense of a sizable space (even if it only exists as a fiction of Lind’s digital workstation). Particularly distinguishing it are some elegant touches of percussion, as on the closing track, with which the album shares a title, and a comfort with slightly more strident tonality than post-classical music generally explores. There is a closely controlled chaos, a dangerous fuzziness, to the opening track, “In Rest and Motion,” that elevates the work considerably.
The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
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, October 30, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 26, 2023.
Disquiet Junto Project 0617: Haunt Scape The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing.
There is just one step to this project: Halloween is nearly here, so make some haunted sounds for people to play for trick-or-treaters.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0617” (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 “disquiet0617” (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:
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.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.
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, October 30, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 26, 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 617th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Haunt Scape (The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing), at: https://disquiet.com/0617/
I just returned home to San Francisco after 11 days in New York, much of it on Long Island with extended family, and a third of the trip in the city proper — hotel in Manhattan, wanderings through Brooklyn and Queens. I got as far north as 155th Street, in order to catch a fantastic concert of choral music at the massive Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. I am currently in my tiny office getting work done while listening to (and occasionally taking a peek at) an uncut, multi-hour recording out a window onto the city. (Some straightforward sleuthing seems to confirm it was shot — roughly southward-facing — on 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue, perchance not far from where I stayed. I walked close by a few days earlier on my way to Hell’s Kitchen for dinner.) The experience is oddly centering, maybe even assisting by taking the edge off the brain-melting jet lag I’ve experienced since my return Monday night. I recommend tuning in at the 27-minute mark to hear a street musician’s saxophone echo upward, bouncing off of — and in turn softening — the city’s hard surfaces. I listened to it on headphones for quite a while. However, it really took root — really came alive — when I unplugged my ears and let the sounds fill the room: the honking, the chatter of passersby, the air traffic, the congealed hum of urban life in the single densest city in the United States, and that saxophone. This is room sound, and it makes sense in a room: the audio of one place transported to — superimposed atop — another.
The Assignment: Explore, in music, the nuanced differences between two closely related words.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
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, October 23, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 19, 2023.
Disquiet Junto Project 0616: Definition Jam The Assignment: Explore, in music, the nuanced differences between two closely related words.
Step 1: Think of two words in any single language of your choosing that mean “quiet.” For example, in English you might choose from “quiet,” “silence,” “hush,” and “tranquil,” among others. (Alternate: You could choose any base word for this project. “Quiet” is simply a recommendation. You might, instead, choose two words that mean “noise,” or something else entirely. Given the nature of this project, it may be best to choose a word related to sound.)
Step 2: Spend time coming to understand the nuanced differences between the definitions of the two words you selected in Step 1.
Step 3: Think about how you can render, through sound, the two different definitions, based on the thinking that you developed in Step 2.
Step 4: Record a piece of music that begins with the sonic rendition of one word and morphs slowly into the other.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0616” (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 “disquiet0616” (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:
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.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.
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, October 23, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 19, 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 616th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Definition Jam (The Assignment: Explore, in music, the nuanced differences between two closely related words), at: https://disquiet.com/0616/
