Disquiet – Page 1105 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Putting Aside the Concept (MP3)

August 3, 2011August 2, 2011 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A concept album’s concept isn’t necessarily as essential as the resulting sounds. There is an enormous amount of music made from field recordings, as well as music that focuses in on the cagey aspects of technology that turn everyone into both observer and observed. Knowing that Scanner’s early work sourced audio captured from unprotected communications did loan it a certain amount of moral-gray-area frisson, even giving it a political undercurrent, but it worked as music primarily because, well, it worked as music. The three tracks that comprise m_area, a new EP by Humeka, reportedly derive their source material from various forms of communication, but you needn’t know the facts of the music’s origins to enjoy it. The brief liner note explains, in part:

All the samples in this release were captured through some kind of communication device (i.e. mobile phone, answering machine). From the streets of Paris to the private messages …

But the fact is, on m_area those sounds are so reduced to their rhythmic essentials that it scarcely matters to the listener from whence they came. What matters is “Ecotone.” That is the set’s second and central track, which brings to mind the Mille Plateaux label’s fabled Clicks and Cuts series at its zenith: it makes delectably percussive music from brittle little samples (MP3), their cold, hard sounds belying just how nimble they prove to be in Humeka’s hands.

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/edp040/Ecotone.mp3|titles=”Ecotone”|artists=Humeka]

The other two tracks are fun, too, notably for the aridly glitchy opening of “De Barbes a Ordener,” before a more orderly melody kicks in, and the humorous funk (or funky humorousness) of “Mum Phoned Me Tonight.”

Get the full set at archive.org. More on Humeka at twitter.com/humeka and soundcloud.com/humeka. Also visit the releasing netlabel, editoradoporto.blogspot.com.

Cloud on a Short Loop (MP3)

August 2, 2011August 2, 2011 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s a tension at the heart of “Good Evening, Ghosts,” a recent track made available for free download by Carl Ritger, who is based in Boulder, Colorado (formerly Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and who records and performs under the name Radere. On the one hand, the piece provides a truly blissful expanse, a quavering mass that, while not without texture (it sounds at times like a microphone or speaker has purposefully peaked out), has both the glacial pacing and the soft contours of a slow-moving cloud. (The cloud comparison would have come to mind even if Ritger hadn’t paired the track with an Instagram-ified vision of the sky.)

On the other hand, there is the way that cloud-like mass proceeds. It’s heard as a brief loop of gauze, but it repeats with an urgency that’s in strict contrast with its sonic material. That contrast is what makes the track initially arresting, what provides its tension, what makes it more than another swath of ease: it is both soft as could be, and yet relentless in its trajectory. In time, the cloud wins, the edges of the loop slowly blur, but it takes nearly a quarter of an hour for that to occur — almost as much as for a cloud to cross the sky on a summer afternoon.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/radere. More on Radere/Ritger at falsereactions.tumblr.com and twitter.com/falsereactions.

My Upcoming GAFFTA Talk: “Sound as Commentary”

August 1, 2011August 6, 2011 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If you’re in San Francisco this week, please consider dropping by the digital-arts organization GAFFTA on Wednesday for a 6:00pm discussion session at which I’ll be talking.

I’ll be presenting on the subject “Sound as Commentary: Recent Experiments in the Netlabel Remix Community.”It’s an overview of such Disquiet.com remix and free-culture projects as the Brian Eno / David Byrne open-source Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet, and the group-effort sonic activism of Despite the Downturn and Lowlands: A Sigh Collective. I’ll be talking about how how sound (both music and sound art) can serve as a central component of online conversation, procedural parallels between curating and editing, and related topics.

Also speaking are musician and sound artist Roddy Schrock (fundamentallysound.org), who has contributed to two Disquiet.com remix projects, and technologist Barry Threw (barrythrew.com). The moderator is Luc Meier, who is the Interdisciplinary Programs Manager at swissnex San Francisco, “a Swiss knowledge outpost for science, education, art and innovation” (swissnexsanfrancisco.org). [Update 2011.08.03: Barry Threw wasn’t able to make it, so Shane Myrbeck, composer and acoustic consultant, accepted a last-minute invitation to fill his seat.]

Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) is a tremendous institution in San Francisco, dedicated to fomenting digital culture. It’s brought the work of artists such as Zimoun to town, and regularly hosts events on game development, audio synthesis, data visualization, and other such intersections of art and technology. This Wednesday’s discussion is cosponsored by GAFFTA and Eyebeam, a New York “art + technology center” with which it shares many overlaps. Schrock is Eyebeam’s Associate Director: Creative Residencies.

More on this Wednesday’s talk at gaffta.org. It’s scheduled to run from 6:00pm until 8:00pm. Cost is listed as follows: “$5 ”“ $20 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds).”

White Noise, White Like Rauschenberg (MP3)

August 1, 2011July 31, 2011 / By Marc Weidenbaum

When Jason Sloan ponders minimalism alongside noise, he observes similar concerns. To some listeners, the comparisons that Sloan pursues will seem off, for isn’t noise a maximalist approach, rather than a minimalist one? Doesn’t noise blot out rather than subdue? Doesn’t it exhibit contrasts through force rather than through subtlety? Perhaps, but just as likely, in fact more than likely — for I, at least, tend to agree with Sloan — noise is simply minimalism with the volume turned up.

To investigate the concept of noise and its discontents, Sloan has begun a series of sonic art projects, each of which, he proposes, will, in his words, “recycle a particular medium’s inherent, undesirable sonic traits.” He lists among the examples radio static and digital music compression. First, though, comes the hiss of a tape cassette, which is especially timely given the cassette tape’s popular resurgence. The work, in an edition of nine, presents three quarters of an hour of tape hiss (MP3) on each side of a cassette, as pictured above and heard below, in 15-minute excerpt:

[audio:http://jasonsloan.com/audio/IECtypeII.mp3|titles=”Signal to Noise: IEC Type II.”|artists=Jason Sloan]

In describing his thinking, Sloan writes, in part:

Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the general understanding of noise. Most people would consider it a distrubance to an otherwise desired experience. Static during a weak radio or television transmission or a child crying during a church sermon could be seen as anomalies that “ruin”the expected outcome of an otherwise desired event. Over the years we’ve attempted to purify these experiences with technologies that attempt to filter the noise from our lives

The issue almost certainly is about interruption, or what Sloan terms “disturbance.” The white noise heard here would be the rush of a river
were one in a lovely cabin in the woods, or the whir of wind were one speeding along a highway toward a vacation destination. Were the sound to suffocate the intended listening on a tape, it would indeed be noise. But on its own, as the pure content of the tape, it is minimalist, simple in concept and in execution, as white as one of the Robert Rauschenberg paintings that Sloan cites as inspiration.

Track originally posted at jasonsloan.com last month.