Disquiet Junto Project 0018: 3×3

The Assignment: Explore relative prominence as a compositional tool.

*Each Thursday evening at [the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com](http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) 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 to the Junto is open: [just join and participate](http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/).*

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 3, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 7, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list:

>Disquiet Junto Project 0018: 3×3
>
>Deadline: Monday, May 7, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>This project is about how a simple matter of sequence can provide a sense of development and compositional momentum.
>
>First step: Construct three simple, self-contained sounds (or sonic elements) that are distinct from each other. For example, don’t use three similar drones, or three tones that are the same note value, or three interchangeable percussives. Use one of each, or some other assortment of three distinct sonic elements: a snippet of a field recording, a bit of static, a short melodic segment, a spoken word or phrase.
>
>Second step: Make a three-minute track out of these sounds, based on the following rules. For each of the three minutes, one of the three sounds should be prominent, and the other two should be less prominent. By the end of the complete three minutes of your track, each of the three sounds, thus, will have been prominent for one full minute and will have served a background purpose for two full minutes.
>
>You can transform the individual sounds, certainly, but they should still be somewhat recognizable even in their transformed state.
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>Length: By definition, your piece will be three minutes long.
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>Information: Please along with your track include a description of your process in planning (what sounds you selected, for example), composing, and recording it.
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>Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0018-3×3”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.
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>Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:
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>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

Alan Morse Davies, Circa 1984

Where the action was – or, more to the point, the enjoyable inaction

Alan Morse Davies has been posting some of his earliest work recently. He’s associated with the process of slowing down, though his work is often more complicated than simply the mechanical action of reducing the pace of his source material. A single dating from 1984, released under the moniker AED, shows him on the gentle side of things from early on. By his telling, the single made it onto the John Peel show, and sold some 17,000 copies. The A side, “Infer Ships Sink,” has a British folk feel to it, with hints of Robert Wyatt and, perhaps, Syd Barrett. The B side is where the action was — or, more to the point, the enjoyable inaction. Titled “Emporium Halls Pt. 4,” it’s described by him in his post briefly as “layered slowed down birdsong” (MP3). The overall effect is gothic and funereal, and delectable. The layering yields a cycling pattern that manages to be both anxious and muted.

[audio:http://www.at-sea.com/today/Emporium%20Halls%20Pt.%204.mp3|titles=”Emporium Halls Pt. 4″|artists=AED (Alan Morse Davies)]

Track originally posted at alanmorsedavies.wordpress.com. Image of the cover of the single, above, from the great resource that is discogs.com.

Live Test (MP3)

Nils Quak tests his performance set up

Nils Quak is playing a show in Hamburg, Germany, on June 1. In advance of the event, he is prepping his live rig. We know this because he has posted an extended test run of his rig. It’s an attenuated sliver of ethereal momentum, aptly titled “Live Test.” The music is quite lovely. It’s also an interesting application of the term “live.” The rig could easily have been given a test run and been judged in the moment. Or been given a test run, which was recorded, and then listened to by Quak for confirmation. But instead he’s gone the step further, which is to share the performance. As with Dave Seidel’s live performance post back in October, there’s something going on here that feels like a peek ahead, something about how acknowledgement of a dispersed Internet-based audience is part of the conceptualization of a local event.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/nq_nhlsqaik. More on Quak at nhlsqaik.com.

Patch & Static: The Top 10 Posts & Searches of April 2012

Among the top 10 most popular posts of the past month, April 2012, were (1) an interview with Morton Subotnick (“The Patch Cord Godfather”) and (2) the announcement of a live Disquiet Junto concert in Chicago on April 19.

Five of the 10 most popular posts were drawn from the daily recommended free downloads: (3) thoughts on hotel bedside radio (“The ‘Classical’ Button”x), (4) a sound collage by Jane Burton and Doris Lake (together working under the moniker Public Domain), (5) Carl Ritger (aka Radere) working with a tape-based four-track recorder, (6) the static-based work of C. Cu, and (7) a preview track from the forthcoming IoNiZeR album.

Also in the top 10, not (8) one but (9) two weekly automated collections of what is posted at twitter.com/disquiet, and (10) the top-10 list from March 2012.

The most popular searches on the site during the month of April were: junto, salvagione, weidenbaum, mallet, would-be messiahs, autobiography, automaton, bitlabrecords, modular, Peter 7 Paelinck, rjdj, subotnik, Vitiello, ableton, amirkhanian, autechre, bars, cacophony, friends.

Music of/from/for/with Turntables (MP3)

Achim Mohné (minimalist) and Philip Jeck (maximalist) and their wheels of steel

The first half of the hour is Achim Mohné on a trio of turntables (Omnitronics), and the second is Philip Jeck on a pair (Dansettes, we’re informed) and in place of a third, Jeck employs a sampler. Both musicians take a device intended to project, to reproduce, sound and then they explore the device’s unintended sonic mechanisms and consequences. In Mohné capable hands, this means a revelatory series of details born of the tight circling patterns of a record needle caught in a groove, of the turntable’s aged gears moving in place; it’s a fantasia that erupts from the sleep induced by the cycling’s monotony. Jeck, with his sampler, layers his source material for a rousing, seesawing haze (MP3).

[audio:http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio77.mp3|titles=”Live on TouchRadio”|artists=Achim Mohné and Philip Jeck]

The set was recorded by Philip Marshall (“from desk to hard drive”). Track originally posted at touchradio.org.uk. More on Mohné at achimmohne.de, and on Jeck at philipjeck.com. Photo above by credited to Mike Harding and Philip Marshall.