Disquiet Junto Project 0741: Balance Beam

The Assignment: Write music for bell and drone

/ 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 five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0741: Balance Beam
The Assignment: Write music for bell and drone.

Step 1: There is a church near where I live that is next to a telephone pole that makes a loud buzz on the street. The church has bells that ring several times a day. This parallel, this contrast, seems quite interesting: bell and drone, sacred and mundane, acoustic and electric, intention and byproduct, ancient and modern. The bells are more than loud enough to erase the drone when they’re playing. But … what if they weren’t?

Step 2: Record a piece of music for bell and drone informed by the scenario described in Step 1.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0741” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0741-balance-beam/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long is the service?

Deadline: Monday, March 16, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 741st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Balance Beam — The Assignment: Write music for bell and drone — at https://disquiet.com/0741/

Resident Evil ASMR

Courtesy of Atmospheric Gaming

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

My ability to play video games is limited by my less than stellar dexterity, my patience, my time, and my priorities, but I do spent a lot of time enjoying games second-hand, by watching others play them, and by immersing myself in their sonic (and, by extension, visual) pleasures. Atmospheric Gaming is one of numerous channels on YouTube where extended stretches of game ambience are captured and shared — perhaps the most applicable term is documented. They are field recordings of artificial soundscapes. This extended sequence, 10 straight hours, of windy background sound is from the new game Resident Evil Requiem, just out this year. It’s all quiet dread and threatening weather, and the billowing window does double duty as a kind of visualizer, filling the central space when gusts take it.

On Repeat: Machinefabriek, Tasselmyer, McGregor

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ A haunting new album, Lijnverkenning, from Machinefabriek, aka Rutger Zuydervelt, on the Quiet Details label. This is the SoundCloud upload, but it’s also on Bandcamp. For some reason the latter embed wasn’t working when I posted this.

▰ Beautiful live piece by Andrew Tasselmyer, working with a variety of gentle instrumental loops.

▰ Nice little live set on processed guitar by CJ McGregor for the latest Disquiet Junto project, which involves polychords:

Disquiet Junto Project 0740: Polychord Amorous

The Assignment: Write a piece of music based on a chord progression of polychords.

/ 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 five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0740: Polychord Amorous
The Assignment: Write a piece of music based on a chord progression of polychords.

Thanks to Robert Precht for having proposed this project.

Step 1: If you’re not familiar with the idea of polychords, read up a bit. Here are some initial resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polychord

https://musictheory.pugetsound.edu/mt21c/polychords.html

Step 2: Record a piece of music that is based on a progression of polychords. Don’t make it too complicated.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0740” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0740-polychord-amorous/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. 

Deadline: Monday, March 9, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 740th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Polychord Amorous — The Assignment: Write a piece of music based on a chord progression of polychords — at https://disquiet.com/0740/

Corr(u)ption Goes on a Trip

From the prolific and mysterious musician and field recordist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I generally have no idea what exactly is going on in the music attributed to Corruption (or Corrption) on SoundCloud, as it veers from dub to noise to field recording to strange combinations thereof, much of it more like an audio diary entry than like a considered composition. The latest such track, intractably titled “runakuna hunt’a trenpi ñut’usqa wañusqa,” sounds mostly like voice announcements at public transportation hubs in something other than English, perhaps Japanese, which is Corruption’s native tongue. The prolific musician now has well over 2,000 tracks on SoundCloud, and this one isn’t even the most recent. Whatever the track is, it’s a trip, perhaps also literally. It’s a snippet of daily existence that may have been edited to feature highlights, or may have been selected whole for its readymade collage qualities. (And for some reason at the moment embeds aren’t working, so just click through to listen.)