Back at the very end of 1980, Eliane Radigue performed a lengthy concert on the radio station KPFA. The nearly two hours of music included the world premiere of her Triptych, a work of trenchant drones that originated as a piece for choreography. The second of its three parts had premiered two years earlier, in 1978, as part of Dancehall/Theatre of Nancy production. (I know little to nothing of Dancehall/Theatre of Nancy. If anyone has information to share, I would appreciate it. I’m assuming the Nancy is Nancy, France, and this is related to Jack Lang’s work there in the arts.)
That original composition was, as of 1980, now bookended by two other pieces, similarly built from tones whose slight variations yielded intense beading, patterns, the minimalism of which didn’t even make an effort to belie what was, in fact, a quite forceful sonic presence.
And those Triptych recordings have now, thanks to Important Records, been remastered for the album 11 Dec 1980. Also included is “Chry-Ptus,” a piece for synthesizer originally composed in 1971, and the sounds of which are slightly more varied, ranging from white noise to metronomic pulses to high-pitched whirs to warbling wave forms that sound like science-fiction effects, à la the BBC Radiophonic Workshop — but all still held tight and close, exhibiting Radigue’s refined control. This is exhilarating music, at once static and energizing, meditative and fierce.
Brief mentions each Sunday of my favorite listening from the week prior:
▰ Nathan Wolek’s bench 6, every morning edits a year’s worth of just pre-pandemic field recordings made at DeLeon Springs State Park in Florida. The cuts jump around in time: near silence, then water, then chatter, then an announcement, a car, bugs, all at various volume levels. Moments of extended natural silence glitch into stutters of quite different experiences of the exact same spot. Wolek’s approach both enlivens and gives lie to the concept of a soundscape, emphasizing inherent change over idealized stasis.
▰ A live performances by a string ensemble of a beautiful work by Roger Eno from a series of EPs. This is “Venerable Dilemma.”
▰ Eliza Brown has been posting weekly selections of field recordings since September of last year. The one from two weeks back, “TLY Week 31 – February 3, 2023” (“TLY” is for “the listening year”), is seven-plus minutes of an icy creek — the highlight being that Brown breaks the near silence by narrating what it is she’s witnessing.
▰ Roily, haunted sounds — muddy with a glistening surface — comprise the track “Language” by Christopher Hanlon. Set this ambient treat on loop.
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.
/ 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 over four 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 13, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 8, 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.
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.
Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.
Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0580” (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 “disquiet0580” (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. Evolution takes a long time, but depicting it needn’t.
Deadline: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 13, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 9, 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 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: https://disquiet.com/0580/
Brief mentions each Sunday of my favorite listening from the week prior:
▰ Just loving this Vladislav Delay EP, Hide Behind the Silence, three tracks of what sounds like desiccated dub. It’s epic and intimate, glitchy and static, antic and attenuated all at once. Apparently he’s putting out four more of these EPs over the course of 2023. Can’t wait. And as someone let me know on Mastodon, Delay is doing a simultaneous area-long series called Dancefloor Classics, of which the first volume is out. (Delay, born Sasu Ripatti, is originally from Finland.)
▰ Night Ride is a splendid collection of (mostly) downtempo and reflective tracks from a musician (Drumcorps, formerly also known as Aaron Spectre, based in Amsterdam) more widely associated with metal-driven breakcore:
▰ Japan-based Corruption is still at it, some 1,696 SoundCloud tracks and counting. “Bq” is just under two minutes that charactertistically merge/confuse/blend noise and field recordings and more overt if deeply submerged musical material into something entirely its own realm of experimental psychogeographic soundscaping:
▰ While bands are in short supply these days, one benefit of the rise of solo musicians is the subsequent rise in collaborations, such as this team-up of Loscil (aka Scott Morgan, based in Vancouver, Canada) and Lawrence English (based in Brisbane, Australia), Colours of Air, thick with vaporous wonders, discomfitting slomo percussion, and cinematic undercurrents:
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, 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. (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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 2, 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.
Step 1: The goal of this project is to simply perform and record again something you’ve performed and recorded previously. Think about something you’d like to revisit.
Step 2: Now rerecord the piece of music you decided upon in Step 1.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0579” (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 “disquiet0579” (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: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 2, 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 579th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Memory Serves (The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music), at: https://disquiet.com/0579/
