Apparently this zone had a previous life as a lane.
Shifts
Somewhere on Long Island
Category: field notes
News, essays, reviews, surveillance
Submitting Music
Please read carefully, thanks
I’ve updated the part of this site’s FAQ (disquiet.com/faq) that relates to submitting music for review consideration. Here is the revised section, and I’ve italicized the two most important sentencesbelow:
2. Does Disquiet.com accept music for review consideration?
I want to hear your music, but I also want to hear other people’s music, and so the less time I spend doing correspondence, the more time I can spend listening. Please don’t expect me to reply to correspondence, not even with a quick confirmation of receipt. I don’t have the time to engage in back-and-forth emails about whether I plan on covering a given release. I receive an enormous amount of music from musicians and their record labels, and that doesn’t count all the time I spend seeking out music (and sound-related art). I can’t promise to write back — either in a timely manner, or at all. If you include the word “teiuqsid” (no quotation marks, and that’s “disquiet” backwards) in your email, I’m far more likely to find your email message, because your including it means you’ve read these instructions. Also, if you include me in bcc list containing many Bandcamp “yum” download codes to try, I may ignore it, because that’s time-consuming, and my experience has been that when I do try, all of them have been used already. What I can promise is the following: I will listen to as much music I receive as possible, without diminishing the attention I can pay to what I do elect to listen to, and I will consider it for coverage. I listen constantly, and when something really strikes me, that’s when I write about it — either here, or for other publications to which I contribute. My preference is that you email me a link to a zip archive containing lossless files, and also include a link to it streaming somewhere, so I can preview it before downloading. If you feel the need to send me a CD (or vinyl copy, or some other physical format), you can email me (visit this site’s contact page) to get my address in San Francisco, where I live — though, again, there’s only a small likelihood I will reply. Please don’t send audio files as attachments: they clog up my email, and I immediately delete them. And don’t pitch me your music via social media, as I’ll just direct you to this page.
Live at Smalls
A darn good night
That’s Frank Lacy giving it everything he’s got last night at the Manhattan jazz club Smalls in the West Village. He led a septet of — also seen here — Nicoletta Manzini (saxophone), Felix Moseholm (bass), and Brian Simontacchi (trombone), plus Mike Lee (saxophone), Miki Yamanaka (piano), and Wen-Ting Wu (drums). Wu was a standout, maybe because the show leaned on Lacy’s time with Art Blakey’s band, and Blakey was, himself, a drummer. Moseholm seemed familiar, and only later did I realize he was in a Brad Mehldau trio video (with drummer Jorge Rossy) from October 2024 that I’ve watched on repeat on YouTube. The full video of the septet show is on the club’s website.
Door Way
While reading Ali Smith
If you’re reading a Booker Prize finalist novel in a cafe and the inside of the bathroom door doesn’t look like this you’re doing it wrong.
On Repeat: Tortoise, Badalamenti, Earth
Home/office playlist
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.
▰ There are worse ways to wake up than to news there’s a new track of trademark slacker exotica from Tortoise. Apparently it’s their first new recording in almost a decade. All percolating rhythms and dreamy washes, it almost sounds like they’re auditioning some theme music for an espionage TV series. The most “Tortoise” thing about it may be not so merely how it switches gears at the last moment, but how the contrast let’s you hear the gears grind.
[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=2267318020 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]
▰ I’m sure I’ve heard, and even seen, the guitarist Simon Farintosh (whom I’ve interviewed about his Aphex Twin transcriptions), play electric — rather than acoustic or, more frequently, classical — guitar, but I don’t recall having done so. Here he performs “Sycamore Trees,” from the score to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The thing about musicians who do a lot of work in the realm of covers and transcriptions is how those pieces of music then, in turn, become their set of repertoire. Thus it’s interesting to think of Badalamenti alongside Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada and the other musicians whom Farintosh has explored.
▰ Listening to the band Earth, you may hear things you’ve heard before, from the rousing bravado of Social Distortion to the fuzzed-out roots rock of Neil Young to the drone metal of Sunn O))), but those are just flavors, not the real thick of it. Earth is its own special entity, and the key to the sound is the pace, set by drummer Adrienne Davies, half the band, alongside with founder Dylan Carlson, in this iteration. This video has been online for a year, but I only just stumbled on it.