Reznor & Ross’ New Anti-Social Network (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have now scored two films about socially awkward people using computers to invade others’ privacy. The first was The Social Network, director David Fincher’s collaboration with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (for which they won the film-score Oscar). The second is Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The movie comes out later this month, but the score by Reznor and Ross — the Adler and Ross of downtempo surveillance thrillers — is out a week from today.

Judging by the six tracks made available for free download (at nullco.com) last night, when Reznor announced colorfully on his @trent_reznor Twitter account that he would “push the button,” it is even stronger than The Social Network. The sample tracks have none of the occasional ventures into corporate Muzak that purposefully smudged The Social Network‘s Information Age sheen. Instead, it’s all mixes of swelling ambience and intricate percussives, most notably the detuned plinking of “Hidden in Snow.”

A wide array of Dragon Tattoo purchase options, ranging from mid-fi digital to fetish collector’s object, is introduced at nin.com, and layed out in detail at nullco.com. The full score includes no fewer than 39 tracks. This movie, by all initial appearances, will be saturated in sound.

Sonic Nostalgia from the Man Behind Rothko Everywhere (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Ambienteer, aka James Fahy, sums up what he’s up to as well as anyone might aspire to: “Another experiment scanning the shortwave bands,” he writes of a recent track (MP3). He continues: “Seeking out some odd melodic interlude and once captured, adding reverb and a few other effects and tricks to transform it into a sleepy, filtered soundscape.” He’s describing “A Song From 7.30 MHz.” The song is a brief escape into ethereal nostalgia that he recently posted on his website, ambienteer.com.

His description doesn’t end there. The soundscape, he explains, is intended to be “reminiscent of the imperfect signal, bandwidth and output of my little 1970”²s transistor radio.” In other words, the sounds he was seeking out, as he puts it, were intended to begin with to be tweaked, transformed. So he wasn’t so much seeking out an odd melodic interlude as he was a specific sort of odd melodic interlude that would allow him to contort it into this depiction of his aural past. Which means as he was scanning the airwaves, his imagination was already performing a kind of mental filter on what he was hearing. Having located and captured that sound, he then warped it to his desired end. The result is a refreshing wash of sound, neither maudlin nor treacly.

[audio:http://www.ambienteer.com/dl/a_song_from_7.30MHz_96kbps.mp3|titles=”A Song From 7.30 MHz”|artists=Ambienteer]

It’s worth noting that Fahy is also the creator of the excellent website rothkoeverywhere.com, where everyday images — of roadsides, threadbare walls, and rust-stained concrete — are shown to resemble the swaths of contrasting colors that comprised the most famous works of painter Mark Rothko. (The one shown up top is titled “French Graffiti II.”) Fahy’s Rothko site is subtitled “The joy of finding his work hidden in the everyday world,” a phrase that could just as well apply to Fahy’s sonic efforts.

Track originally posted for free download and streaming at ambienteer.com. More from Fahy as well at twitter.com/ambienteer.

Breaking Apparat: Top 10 Posts & Searches from November 2011

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Among the top 10 posts on this site last month were (1) “What’s Japanese for ‘Netlabel’?” (on the translation of my list of suggestions for giving away music) and (2) a viewing of Brian Eno‘s appearance on The Colbert Report.

Seven of the top 10 tracks were drawn from the site’s Downstream department of free/legal downloads: (3) the Apparat instrumental that appeared in the season-closing episode of TV’s Breaking Bad (pictured up top), (4) new essential instrumental hip-hop from Philadelphia’s Y?Arcka, (5) a film score by Sun Hammer we’re hearing before seeing the film, (6) a track from a Hungarian collection of dubstep, (7) click music by Krotos, (8) Gregory Chatonsky‘s music from a broken hard drive, and (9) Mark Broude‘s punk drone.

And, as is often the case, among the top posts was (10) one of the automated weekly summaries of what was tweeted at twitter.com/disquiet.

The most popular post of the last 30 and 60 days is a collection of field recordings by Richard Devine of various types of information technology.

The most popular searches of the month, in descending order: outra-g, autechre, dub, cronenberg, custom label, music, fernando pessoa, gold, ingram, kidstreet, rjdj, salvagione, sunn, youtube, accidental psaltery, akumu, alan lockett.

While My Guitar Gently Beats … (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Aeroc is Geoff White, and “For Sake” is a free track made available from his soon-to-be-released (December 13) album with the promising title R+B=? on the label Ghostly. The album title brings to mind that of rock critic Robert Christgau’s long-running “Rock & Roll &” column (once upon a time in the Village Voice, of late at the website of Barnes & Noble). Both formulae suggest pop music as a medium of accrual. It’s a suggestion that can be taken at least two ways. It can mean over an extended period of time. It can mean in a given instance. The former is a suggestion that rock’n’roll gathers constituent parts like a cultural Katamari Damacy ball. The latter recognizes that a given track, a given song, a given studio-constructed composition, is the sum of a set number of tracks, and that many songs are orchestrated only to the extent that we hear those layers play against each other.

The second of these is quite clearly the case in Aeroc’s “For Sake,” wherein several concise layers are added, one at a time, until a whole is completed. These layers consist primarily of a beat and a guitar figure. It’s a classic case of cooked and raw, digital and analog. Many such conglomerations succeed by emphasizing the differences. Aeroc appears to, admirably, have his ear on the similarities. It’s a downtempo track, which lets the ear focus on the parts. Nothing rushes by eagerly. And what makes it work is how, texturally, the beat and guitar aren’t so far apart. The guitar plays a largely rhythmic role, and the beat comes across like a slightly harder and slightly colder version of the sound made when a finger scrapes a length of a guitar string.

Track available for free download at soundcloud.com/ghostly and ghostly.com, the latter of which address has additional information on the R+B=? album.

Interesting Goings-on at Uncertainform.com

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

David Nemeth is doing something very interesting a uncertainform.com, which is subtitled “The Culture of Creative Commons Music.” He is employing the Creative Commons to explore and promote the Creative Commons. The site, which launched in the past few days, exists as a collection of works on the Creative Commons that had themselves been licensed in the Creative Commons (the site will also publish newly produced pieces). In general, this Creative Commons license allows the material to be shared for non-commercial usage. And so I am honored that my “netlabel checklist” (title: “If You’re Thinking of Starting a Netlabel …”) is among the pieces with which Nemeth is launching the site. Other initial pieces on the site include Rick Falkvinge on “The Copyright Industry: A Century of Deceit,” Fernando Fonseca on how “PIPA Is the New SOPA,” and Adam Porter on “Making a Case for Sharing.”

Each piece is accompanied by an illustration or photograph, itself made available thanks to the Commons (in the case of my article, it is a flickr.com-hosted photo by Ed Yourdon).

I originally published the list-as-essay here, on Disquiet.com, on April 11 of this year. The next month it was translated into Italian, unbeknownst to me, at indieriviera.it. In mid-June it was reprinted at netlabelism.com, as it has been at other sites, including angeldustrecords.com. And earlier this month it was translated into Japanese. And that’s not counting the various discussion sites where it has appeared.

It’s exciting to see it in a new context at Nemeth’s uncertainform.com site. The context is new because it’s a site about “Creative Commons music” that isn’t putting the music front and center (as I tend to here, and as Nemeth does at both actsofsilence.com and theeasypace.com). It is putting the Creative Commons front and center.