Repetition as a Cultural Force (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The despondent techno of Sherbe‘s excellent EP Mellow Pike provides a pithy manifesto with the title of its second track, “Repetition as a Cultural Force” (MP3). Repetition is inherent in techno, as beats shift ever so slightly — it’s music less as a melodic or harmonic development than as an atmospheric array of elements. In this central track, snippets of a vocal edge in from the start, clipped just shy of being intelligible, and remaining in that static state until, midway through, there’s a break and the sentence is heard in full.

[audio:http://media.sonicsquirrel.net/auflegware/alw040/2.ALW040_Scherbe_Repetition_as_a_cultural_force.mp3|titles=”Repetition as a Cultural Force”|artists=Sherbe]

Voices bring so much texture to a track, it’s only by breaking a syllable that Sherbe can force the voice into the overall structure, a structure built from slurred beats that move like tectonic ruptures. Another highlight is “But Loisy,” the EP’s closing track, which opens with a fuzzy circuit of sound, live wires looking for a ground, before a hiccup beat kicks in to lend tempo (MP3).

[audio:http://media.sonicsquirrel.net/auflegware/alw040/3.ALW040_Scherbe_but_loisy.mp3|titles=”But Loisy”|artists=Sherbe]

Slowly the piece is fleshed out, eventually employing a cymbal, but one that has very little attack; it’s all shimmering gloss. Repetition may be a cultural force, but if repetition is a form of change, then Mellow Pike is an example of a musician moving things forward.

Full release of three tracks at the netlabel auflegware.de.

Strings & Beats (MP3s)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The synthetic strings and looming backbeat of IoNizer‘s EP Infused Fear, available for free download from dustedwax.org, turn any afternoon into a spy game. The backstreet ambience, all raspy pneumatics and hazy atmospherics, have the appeal of a modern-day espionage flick, minus all that bother about plot. Not that the album’s entirely free of the human element. Warped bits of spoken word are twisted and yanked in the title cut (MP3), sounding like snippets of intercepted transmissions, while “Artificial Intervention” (MP3) has a throaty female vocal that suggests recent turmoil. Throughout, the almost continuous strings and beats lend thematic consistency. The real keeper may be “Unnatural Calm,” not just for the hair-raising bird chatter and short-circuit buzz, but for the way the trip-hop-derived beat and orchestral swells are at times just out of sync enough to provoke not just anxiety but anticipation (MP3).

[audio:http://www.archive.org/download/DWK068/IoNiZeR_-_06_-_Infused_Fear.mp3|titles=”Infused Fear”|artists=IoNizer] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/DWK068/IoNiZeR_-_03_-_Artificial_Intervention.mp3|titles=”Artificial Intervention”|artists=IoNizer] [audio:http://www.archive.org/download/DWK068/IoNiZeR_-_05_-_Unnatural_Calm.mp3|titles=”Unnatural Calm”|artists=IoNizer]

More on IoNizer at myspace.com/IoNiZeR_.

Top 10 Posts & Searches from October 2010

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The list of most-read/visited posts of the past month is evenly divided between entries that did and didn’t focus on recommended (legally) free MP3s. First up, the latter: (1) An interview with the developer of the ShapeSeq music app, Paul Apfrod, who discusses interactive music (screen shot at left); (2) thoughts on John Cage and the poetry of sound in The New Yorker; (3) comments from netlabel proprietors regarding the impact of HTML5; (4) the seventh entry in the Sketches of Sound series, featuring Megan Kelso‘s kazoo; and, as is occasionally the case, one of the site’s automated weekly roundups of tweets from twitter.com/disquiet.

The most visited/read free downloads were: (6) Vanessa Rosetto‘s auto-documentation of packaging; (7) Guy Birkin‘s data-intense Listen to the Weather entry; (8) Thomas Ankersmit doing deep-listening solo sax in an Estonian hanger; (9) Janek Schaefer‘s installation score for an art exhibit on Japanese fashion; and (10) Landrecorder‘s mixed-loops set of breathy chanting, guitar strums, and what appears to be resonant field recordings (cover pictured at left).

The top searches of the month were: DJ Food, Aairira, Alan Morse Davies, Aphex Twin, app, Broque, Buddha Machine, Constellation Records, Corridors, double bass, dub, Family Tapes, Japan, Michael Bullock, Notion Ink, and Oval.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Morning sounds: spoon against bowl, baby's small cries as she wakes, cars passing on wet street, hard drives. #
  • RIP, bassist Walter Payton Jr. (age 68), link between Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Lee Dorsey; father of Nicholas Payton http://is.gd/gtdRt #
  • I love getting packages from Russia http://ow.ly/i/51dO #
  • iPod Touch (gen 4) + Bluetooth keyboard (Stowaway) + G1 phone + Barnacle Wifi Tether (app) = pretty darn good and highly mobile setup #
  • Picturing the vast warehouses where the robots making pre-election robo-calls will be stored once election day passes. Sleep well, robots. #
  • .@tedfriedman Good question, where to start listening to Milton Babbitt. I'd say this great Babbitt/Amirkhanian interview http://is.gd/gsqNZ in reply to tedfriedman #
  • Morning sounds: hard drives, baby's breathing and trumpeting, light traffic, and what may be a neighbor's dryer. #
  • Trading emails with Nigerian scamster trying to trick me out of iPod I put up on Craigslist is like communicating with brain-damaged cyborg. #
  • Dreaming of a Wayne Thiebaud / Steve McQueen mash-up, "24th Street Intersection" meets Bullitt. #
  • Man, now Nitzer Ebb is back. Who isn't back at this point? I want a Skylab reunion. #
  • Dear @myspace congrats on redesign; now howzabout including blog posts in emails instead of just providing a generic link back to yourself. #
  • Used to cafes playing music. Used to earbud sound bleed. Not used to multiple people at cafe on laptops watching videos without headphones. #
  • Gotten in the habit lately of turning off music shortly before noon, in order to hear the bells. As habits go, it's a good one. #
  • Once again don't notice that I've left the kid's Fisher Price Calming Vibrations seat on for half an hour, empty — calming, indeed. #
  • "The National Do Not Call Registry doesn't cover political messages…you've probably noticed that lately" via @lifehacker #chatterpollution #
  • Fireworks. #
  • "Decibels measure…intensity of…trouble…physicist gets into because he didnʼt take off his shoes first" per CNiemann http://is.gd/glq5N #
  • The iOS autospell for "Napster" is "baldish" #
  • Happiness is discovering a brand new izakaya in your neighborhood. #
  • The Radio Shack (excuse me, the Shack — oy) near my house is closed today due to "technical difficulties," according to handwritten sign. #
  • Tuesday noon siren heard from inside ramen shop in SF's Union Square, muffled by walls, conversation, and slurping. #
  • Elevators are Tetris in reverse, bodies shifting at each floor so as to maximize mutual distance. #
  • According to the revamped Electric Company, the "ninja of the alphabet" is … the silent e. #thistweetisbroughttoyouby #
  • RIP, tuba player Harvey Phillips (b. 1929), whose Ringling Bros apprenticeship taught him music serves an alarm: http://nyti.ms/aynoN0 #
  • Honking from numerous automobiles pierces my headphones on the bus; it signals a win by the Giants. #
  • "'the people's version' of the [Brion Gysin] dreamachine cell phone app" http://is.gd/geqc5 via @tommoody #

When Voices Intrude (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Richard Francis‘s solo synthesizer and computer performance at Fotofono in New York this past July 15 took every microsonic musician’s nightmare and turned it into a performance (MP3). The nightmare is a simple one: people start talking. Quiet music like that which Francis lets slowly seep from his equipment is the sort that barely is audible over the tone of the room in which it is heard, music that can be mistaken for — music that can draw inspiration and source material from — the buzz inherent in the equipment on which it is made.

[audio:http://m-i-c-r-o.net/fotofono/fotofono_media/snd/100715/100715ff3.mp3|titles=”Live at Fotofono”|artists=Richard Francis]

The voices in the piece are muffled, to the extent that in documentary evidence like this MP3, they could be mistaken for actual, thoughtless, inconsequential yet consequential conversation, the kind that frequently mars live recordings — not an audio component determinedly acted upon.

Track originally posted at fotofono.net, where it shares space with two other sets also recorded that evening. More on Francis at richardfrancis.net.nz.