5 Reasons to Participate in the Creative Commons

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Ever since ASCAP, the performing-rights organization, sent out a fundraising letter to its members in which it singled out Creative Commons as a underminer of copyright, the subject of the business of the creative process has sparked yet another round of online discourse. I was invited by the websbite weallmakemusic.com to summarize the arguments in favor of Creative Commons — a non-profit organization that develops licenses that help artists (musicians, yes, but also painters, photographers, filmmakers, and so on) navigate a world so mightily transformed by the Internet and associated technologies.

I’ll post, for archival purposes, the full piece here in a week or so, once it’s had its run at We All Make Music. The five most pertinent reasons I came up with are (1) Creative Commons is non-exclusive, (2) you choose the license that’s right for your work, (3) Creative Commons is optional, (4) traditional performing rights organizations don’t necessarily have your individual interest at heart, and (5) Creative Commons is wired for networked creation.

The Creative Commons is an important topic for all the art discussed on Disquiet.com — issues of authorship, of sampling, of piracy, and of free distribution (the latter being the reason there’s enough music for me to recommend a legal free download every weekday) are at the core of this site’s mission.

Read the full piece (“Five Reasons For a Musician to Consider the Creative Commons”) at weallmakemusic.com.

For background on that troubling ASCAP mailer, check out the discussion at Molly Sheridan’s artsjournal.com/gap.

More on Creative Commons at creativecommons.org.

Surachai & Justin (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Beat-driven instrumental electronica often builds as it goes along — following a disorienting bit of opening noise, there’s a rhythm track, then some half-broken sound that’s treated like a lead instrument, then a sinuous unknowable that adds flesh to the bones, then variations on that sequence, one after another, perhaps one or another dropping out, momentarily, but ultimately moving forward, and gaining in dimension. The elements gather force. The overall structure may bear the hallmarks of, or otherwise hint at the structure of, the pop song — the verse, the chorus, the repetition thereof interrupted by a bridge — but the strength of it is how those elements join up, get confused, reveal something about each other as they come into conflict.

In “The Pain” by Surachai and Justin, the sounds get heavier and thicker as they move along (MP3). Patterns come into view as the piece makes its way, splintering occasionally, like a module’s short circuited or a plug-in has crashed, until the monotony becomes its own force, and then the splintering comes back for real, and the whole thing just collapses, beautifully.

[audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/48421/RenderError%20-%20The%20Pain.mp3
|titles=”The Pain”|artists=Surachai and Justin]

The track’s part of a two-piece set at trashaudio.com.

Two Ambient Fugue MP3s

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The sounds are just select enough, just refined enough, just stretched-to-near-breaking enough to seep into the background. The music presents a dreamstate of melodic progression, each note held until it seems to make a move from one ear to the next, passing like scenes outside the window as you make your way across the country by car. These are “Absence” and “The Big Empty,” the two tracks that comprise Dissociative Fugue, the new free release by I’ve Lost (aka Bobby Jones).

<a href="http://feedbacklooplabel.bandcamp.com/album/dissociative-fugue">Absence by FeedbackLoop Label</a>

 

The subtle fugue-like activity that the album’s title uses to announce Jones’ approach takes place as a casual layering of elements. Just as one ribbon of sound comes to a close, another has just about come into the sonic foreground. The pieces work particularly well because the lead lines, such as they are, never seem to stand apart from the background; there’s a heavy “depth of sonic field” at work here, and that resonance, that sense of density and presence, may be the EP’s greatest accomplishment. Yes, it arguably counts as an EP, even though it only has two tracks, because combined they’re almost 30 minutes in length.

Rest assured this isn’t pure sonic prettiness for its own sake. At times the tones have an almost harsh, razor edge to them, sharp and prickly — nothing too aggressive, mind you. But for once, it’s less a matter of melody than of tone that keeps your mind focused on what might, in less able hands, have been relegated entirely to the background.

Get the full release at feedbacklooplabel.bandcamp.com and feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com.

Sketches of Sound 4: Dylan Horrocks

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the fourth occurrence of a relatively new little Disquiet.com project, called “Sketches of Sound”: inviting illustrators to sketch something sound-related. I post the drawing as the background of my Twitter account, twitter.com/disquiet, and then share a bit of information about the illustrator back on Disquiet.com. Call it “curating Twitter.”

The above drawing was done for me for this project by Dylan Horrocks, two of whose comics long ago (one in 1994, one in 1999) were part of the series I edited for Tower Records’ Pulse! and Classical Pulse! magazines. (Full list: disquiet.com.)

Asked to say a bit about himself to accompany his illustration, he wrote: “Some things about me are: My graphic novel Hicksville was recently reissued in a new edition by Drawn & Quarterly. I did 10 issues of Pickle (published by Black Eye) and 3 issues of Atlas (from DQ). I also wrote for DC Comics for a while, ambivalently. Lots of new comics (including serials) can be read at hicksvillecomics.com. When I was still at school, I did monthly illustrations for my uncle’s monthly jazz column in a NZ magazine. These days I listen to a lot of low-fi stuff. I live in New Zealand.”

Elisa Luu’s Distorted Vocalese (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The variety on Elisa Luu‘s recent release, The Time of Waiting, from the netlabel known playfully as La Bèl (labelnetlabel.com), is enough to suggest less an album than a reel — less a collection of interrelated music than a set whose lack of self-evident correlation serves the primary purpose of expressing the wide range of which Luu is capable. And to that end, it more than succeeds. There are playful beats, distorted as if through a watery mirror. There is quasi-orchestral extravagance, shot through with a theremin-like lead. But if one track must be selected, the keeper is the set’s opener, “r735,” which has four distinct elements that balance each other perfectly (MP3).

[audio:
http://www.archive.org/download/LBN003_-_Elisa_Luu_-_The_time_of_waiting/01lbn003_01_-_elisa_luu_-_r735.mp3.mp3|titles=”r735″|artists=Elisa Luu]

There is the opening vocal of children playing (sharing a theme from the album’s cover photograph), and the percolating guitar they’re set against; there is the mood-setting synthesizer. And then there is the synthesizer-like material that in time reveals itself as cleverly transformed vocals, vowels stretched until they bead, and that in turn provide a common ground between all the other components.

Vocals remain a conflicted subject and source in electronic music, and the way in which Luu treats them for “r735” is exemplary — the field recording recognizes them as merely one part of the aural landscape, while the digitally manipulated ones are adopted as source material, useful for their texture and intrinsic sonic qualities.

Get the full set at archive.org. More on Luu (aka Rome-based Elisabetta Luciani) at myspace.com/elisaluu.