- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Saturdays = an absence: the lack of an alarm clock ringing. #
- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Fridays = the way, when evening comes along, the city seems to wake up. #
- Music/arts publicists have a lot of fun with my last name. Latest bit of humor to appear in my post office box? "Marc Weidenboom." #
- RIP, bossa nova founding figure Johnny Alf (b. Alfredo Jose da Silva, 1929) http://is.gd/9N7vN #
- RIP, Robert Crafton III (b. 1962) of '80s heavily electronic hip-hop group Newcleus. http://is.gd/9GkY1 … Wikki wikki … #
- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Thursdays = it's sound art hidden amid ambiguous gallery listings in SF Chronicle's 96 Hours. #
- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Wednesdays = contrast between crowd noise at comic shop & Civic Center farmers market. #
- The puddles this morning are more MC Escher than usual. #
- Tremendous dubby beatmaking featuring samples by Haitian drummers, from @beatsantique http://is.gd/9zuHF … Funds go to disaster relief. #
- Dub45 is a great new online label from @timprebble … http://dub45.com/ #
- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Tuesdays = the noon air-raid siren, and subsequent recorded announcement. #
- RIP, T-Bone Wolk (b. 1951): accordion, Laurie Anderson's "Strange Angels"; bass, Kurtis Blow's "These Are the Breaks"; zillion more credits #
- If there's a sound for each day of the week, Mondays = the morning arrival of garbage trucks outside the front of the house. #
- Shutter Island score includes Nam June Paik, Max Richter, Brian Eno, Ingram Marshall, Penderecki, Adams & Scelsi? http://is.gd/9nSlw #
- Hive is powerful. Fact posts white-label Autechre megamix at http://is.gd/9kD24 & hive sorts out tracklist at http://is.gd/9kCWV #
- 011001000110100101110011011100010111010
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Ambient Procedures in the Light (MP3)
Birmingham, UK-based Mark Harris‘s “Duo (The Intension Becomes Masked)” is a bit of ambient procedural music. The procedure in question is quite simple:
The composition is based in a series of eight pitch shifted loop’s of each tone (14 loops). which are then time stretched four times which give us fifty six loops in the piece all running at different times so the composition is in a constant state of flux
The result is a long, still, shifting collection of hushed textures, all interacting in various ways. There is a sense of slowly increasing density and drama, but that may have as much to do with the ear’s need to lend narrative as it does with any compositional strategy on Harris’s part. At 10 minutes in length, it has more than enough space to stretch out in — space in which the listener can get pleasantly lost.
More on Harris at phasestudies.co.uk.
The Controverted Contrabass (MP3)
Michael Bullock does terrible, wonderful things with his contrabass. He rattles its thick, braid-like strings until they come to resemble a cyclone fence doing battle with a ferocious wind. He bows it with a quiet intensity that brings out every fiber of its physical being. He attacks it with alternative materials, leaving the bow aside like so much antiquated performance history. He takes the proud beast of an instrument and uses it to make expressly quiet noises. He takes an instrument capable of deeply sonorous experience, and turns it — mischievously, perhaps, but also concertedly — into a tool for sonic abbrasion.
All of this, and more, is heard in a performance made on February 18 on Rare Frequency, a weekly show at the great Boston radio station WZBC 90.3 FM (MP3).
[audio:http://www.rarefrequency.com/podcasts/Podcast_Spec_Ed_42_Michael_Bullock.mp3|titles=”Live on Rare Frequency”|artists=Michael Bullock]
Original post at rarefrequency.com.
And here’s a video of Bullock performing solo, albeit accompanied by trumpet loops, two nights later at Third Life Studio in Somerville, Massachusetts:
More on Bullock at finenoiseandlight.net.
Bridging Drone & Glitch (MP3)
Writing in brief about his six-plus-minute swath of sound recently uploaded to soundcloud.com/vourtsis, musician Tom Vourtsis described it as “drone/glitch.”
That’s a bit like saying “inside/outside” or “yes/no.” For while drones can be glitchy, and a stream of glitches can suggest a drone-like sound-field, the terms are more a matter of contrasts than of commonalities.
Drones are long held sounds that have the feeling of nearly sub-aural experience. Glitches are the noises that disrupt. Drones are background, glitches foreground. Drones are comfortable, glitches abrasive. Drones are the sound of inaction, glitches of something that’s broken. Drone suggest stasis, glitch crisis.
Which isn’t to criticize Vourtsis. He is correct, and the track is enticing for exactly that reason: the sounds are contrasting, but not incompatible. The glitches are eventually subsumed in “Brown,” as the track is named, but it’s certainly not clear from the start which element will be the victor. The opening drone is like some distant port noise, the sound of ships passing in the fog-muddied night. And then the slow wax and wane of the fog-sound gives way to Morse-code blips; the track moves from business-as-usual to urgency. In time the urgency fades, and the disruptive audio relaxes back into a drone, but even as it comes to a close, it bears the hint of continued threat: the glitch on the horizon.
More on Vourtsis at soundcloud.com/vourtsis and at radioamor.tumblr.com.
Top 10 Posts & Searches from February 2010
Eight of the top 10 most-read posts during February were what amounts to a globe-spanning list of Downstream entries — that is, of legal freely downloadable recommended listening. These included (1) a Japanese turntablism blowout, (2) Bulgarian-tinged British instrumental hip-hop, (3) truly minimal techno from Switzerland, (4) field recordings made at the South Pole, (5) Brazilian electronic music circa 1970, (6) the Gristleism a la Herbie Hancock in Russia (the cover of which is pictured above), (7) tessellations of bass loops in Nottingham, and (8) ambient-leaning post-rock (or vice versa) from Portland, Oregon.
Also making the top 10, (9) a summary of recent news, including mentions of Michael Gordon‘s return to Miami, Douglas Gordon‘s “24 Hour Psycho” (as referenced in Don DeLillo‘s recent novel, Point Omega), and a display of album covers by Josef Albers, and (10) some thoughts on iPad software bloat. In all, there were 35 posts in February on Disquiet.com.
The most popular post of the last 60 days was an MP3 of sound art produced from recordings made at an Indian call center.
The most popular post of the last 90 days was an overview of the, in my opinion, 10 best iPhone/iPod Touch music/sound apps of 2009.
The most popular post of the last year was a streaming playlist of electronica built by various artists, all made from field recordings.
The 10 most searched-for terms on Disquiet.com during the month of February were, in declining order of popularity, with some ties in there: “brian” (as in Eno), “topic,” “laptop,” “commercial,” “fm,” “ito,” “buddha machine,” “pleasing,” “unyo” (an artist on the Hexawe netlabel), and “wilkerson” (as in Phillip) — and for what it’s worth, number 11 was “Autechre,” who have a new album out, Oversteps (Warp).