Disquiet Junto Project 0015: RGB Interaction

The Assignment: Mix sounds as if they were representing RGB.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

*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, April 12, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, April 16, as the deadline.

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

>Disquiet Junto Project 0015: RGB Interaction
>
>Deadline: Monday, April 16, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Plan: This week’s effort is the 15th weekly Junto, and it is probably the most theoretical one yet. Think of it as sonic color theory. It veers into matters of synaesthesia (what might be, casually, referred to as the confusion or mixed-association of the senses). We’re going to explore color, and we’re going to do it through sound. You’re going to represent the way Red, Green, and Blue interact with each other and form other colors in the process. You’ll accomplish this through two steps. First, you will create three simple sounds, one representative of each of three primary colors. Second, you will cause them to interact, in the form of a composition. The initial sounds might be tones, or beats, or chords, or even note sequences.
>
>You’ll symbolize Red with a sound derived from the number 600, Green from the number 540, and Blue from the number 450. And certainly, you might choose to explore the ratios between these numbers, rather than the specific numbers themselves (e.g., 60/54/45 or 30/27/22.5, just as two examples).
>
>Please be sure, when posting your track, to include a brief written explanation of how you chose to interpret the colors/numbers as sounds (e.g., “Red is 60bpm, Green is 54bpm, and Blue is 45 BPM” or “Red is 600Hz, Green is 540 Hz, Blue is 450 Hz” — something like that).
>
>Background: The three numbers were chosen because — and this is both technical and inexact — they represent the median range of the associated wavelength as perceived by cone cells in the human retina.
>
>Length: Please keep your piece to between two and five minutes in length.
>
>Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0015-rgbinteract”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.
>
>Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

The Industrial Nuance of Prong

Talking with Tommy Victor about industrial music present and past

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


I have an interview up at the Colorado Springs Independent with Tommy Victor, leader of the metal band Prong for some 26 years. The occasion is the release of the band’s new album, Carved in Stone, and its attendant tour. There are several ways in which metal and ambient electronic music have interacted or overlapped, and a lot of attention gets paid, rightly, to metal’s drone caucus, bands like Earth and Sunn O))) who slow down metal even further than Black Sabbath ever managed to, and get at something heavier in the process.

But there are other branches, and Prong’s employment over the years, and to varying degrees, of industrial music less as genre and more as nuance has been an interesting, and often enjoyable, thing to observe and listen to. Early on, the essential agent in this was arguably drummer Ted Parsons, who through the simple act of gating his drums — that is, of truncating the sound, lending them them a slightly clipped effect — adopted the aura of electronic percussion. And in turn, those sounds informed the band’s compositions. (Research for this Prong interview led me to get up to date on Parsons’ work, which delightfully led to learning about his Teledubgnosis work: “Digital Dub’s Metal Past.”) Sadly, my favorite Prong track, the one that best exemplifies this approach, never became a core part of the Prong repertoire. Here is a brief segment of the interview that didn’t make the final cut of the story:

Weidenbaum: I interviewed you last in 1990 or 1991, around the time of the Beg to Differ album. I was addicted at the time to the song “Prime Cut.”

Victor: We were recently rehearsing that song, and I knew there was someone who was deeply into that song. So, I guess that was you.

Weidenbaum: Will it be on the greatest hits collection?

Victor: It’s, you know, a little too avant-garde for that compilation.

The compilation mentioned here is due out later this year. Parsons, who is no longer with the band, may, or may not, have been primarily responsible for Prong’s early industrial approach, but Victor certainly himself came to prominence, notably as a participant in Ministry, as well as in Trent Reznor’s Tapeworm project.

Read the full piece at csindy.com.

IoNiZeR Previews Forthcoming Album (MP3)

"The shape of things to come"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A new IoNiZeR track is always a welcome thing. The Belgium-based producer actively recalls the more dramatic episodes in the early Ninja Tune catalog, work like that of Amon Tobin and Funki Porcini, and from them spins new yarns. If so-called IDM took the sounds of dance music and warped them into something more headphone-oriented, then IoNiZeR takes production touches from industrial, techno, and even aspects of drum’n’bass and house and renders from them something just short of pure atmosphere. The beat on “4th Dimension” is so slowly paced, it’s almost there simply to remind the listener, on occasion, that indeed this is a song. Sampled dialog and spacious breaks further the impression that this is less a song and more a forgotten episode of The Outer Limits leaking through from your neighbor’s living room. One phrase in particular, “The shape of things to come,” encodes a practical message, in that the song is intended as a teaser for an album due out later this year.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/ionizer-ion. Previous Disquiet coverage of IoNiZeR includes the New Global Disorder and Infused Fear albums.

Disquiet Junto Project 0012: Alternate Rurality

The Assignment: Use "cut and paste" to combine two 1928 recordings of rural music.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


Each Thursday evening at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com 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.

For the 12th weekly project, the participants were given a pair of source recordings, both from 1928, and both representing rural sound. The nature of the source material differed significantly, between the hoe-down quality of one from the American south, and the slavic tinge to the one from Slovenia. The goal of the project was to utilize material from both tracks to create one new track, reconciling the disparate sounds, and locating, or forcing, a semblance of unity. Some participants’ tracks found a klezmer-like flavor to the latter material, and then walked back from that to the dance-oriented former source.

The project included a particularly restrictive instruction: participants could only employ cut and paste in creating their works. The idea was in part to suggest a rural-like sensibility in the cut and paste approach, given how rudimentary a tool it is.

The assignment was made late in the day on Thursday, March 22, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, March 26, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries: disquiet0012-cutpaste. As of this writing, there are 30 tracks associated with the tag.

Here are the instructions that were presented to members of the Disquiet Junto:

Disquiet Junto Project 0012: Alternate Rurality

Instructions:

Deadline: Monday, March 26, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Plan: The 12th weekly Junto project requires you to take two existing recordings and to make something new by combining them. You will accomplish this solely by using “cut and paste,” and you will only use audio from the two provided source tracks. By “cut and paste” it is meant that you will use segments, however brief or lengthy, in the construction of your track. (You will not .otherwise transform them: i.e., you won’t slow, speed, or process them.) This project explores two matters. One is the historically important technique of cut and paste. The other is alternate conceptions of “rural” sensibilities: while both recordings date from 1928, one is from the American south, while the other is a Slovenian folk song.

Length: Please keep your piece to between two and five minutes in length.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0012-cutpaste”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.

Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:

The two source tracks originally made available at:

http://www.archive.org/details/Stomp
http://www.archive.org/details/Michael_Lapchaka-Rezeda_Czardas

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

The image up top accompanied the track by Echosonic, who is based in Hampshire, Britain.

Digital Dub’s Metal Past (MP3)

An unreleased 2000 EP from the trio Teledubgnosis

/ By Marc Weidenbaum


There is a new record due out from the rigorous metal trio Prong. On the surface, that release has little to do with ambient electronic music, but the continued development of Prong has had many overlaps with excursions into technologically enhanced music. The band’s leader, Tommy Victor, has played extensively with the industrial rock band Ministry. As for Prong, its most electrified recordings were, arguably, among its earliest, when the band still included its founding drummer, Ted Parsons, who has also played with Foetus, Bill Laswell, Swans, Godflesh, Jesu, and Killing Joke. Parsons now lives in Oslo, Norway, and he has over the years been part of another trio, Teledubgnosis, which teams him with Jason Wolford and Gregory Damien Grinnell. Wolford has recently been posting the Teledubgnosis catalog for streaming on his Soundcloud account. And he set one of them, apparently an unreleased EP dating from 2000, for free download. Folks who like the cut’n’paste aesthetic of early Ninja Tune, and the dub jazz of Grassy Knoll, just to note two points of referential orientation, will appreciate the dense, hip-hop”“associative tracks like “Ladies and Gentlemen” and “Sonic,” and the the deep echoes of “Superdub.”

Set available for free download at soundcloud.com/wirerecordings. More on Teledubgnosis at teledubgnosis.com.

It’s not entirely clear if Parsons performs on this album. The notes on the post read: “There is an interesting story behind this very dated and lofi gem. This one could’ve gone a totally different direction. Ask me about it sometime. But I like it as it is. It’s the little EP that could but never did. Guest vocals and trumpet by Regina Chellew, Norman Westberg and Kurt Wolf on guitar. David Wm. Sims on Bass. Heather Pauwe on violin. And the very much missed George Javori on percussion.”