Synthesizer workstations can look like the inside of NASA command modules for spaceflights, so it makes perfect sense that a synthesizer session could be used to create an ersatz field recording of an orbital space station. Such “space ambience,” or satellite ASMR, is heard here as an array of clanking and voices and beeps and signals, and an overall metallic reverberance that lends the whole thing a sense of place. It’s the work of a musician who goes by BRiES, and this piece is one of seven tracks that make up a recent album, simply titled binaural, which emphasizes the spaciousness, the space-ness, of the work. BRiES writes of the recordings: “The tracks are an effort to create realistic sounding ambiences with binaural beats and music mixed in.” There’s also a recognition that work like this can have utility: “The album can be used as a masking tool in loud environments, for relaxation or even to fall asleep to.”
This coming Monday, December 9*, will mark that we have gone eight months since project 0640, which means that it will then be time for me to post the audio that was recorded for it. If you don’t recall — or weren’t around for — that project, the idea was to record a piece of music, send it to me, and then delete it from your hard drive. (Yeah, kinda scary — for me as well as for the musicians.) When I post the music this coming week, none of the resulting 27 tracks will have been heard by the musicians who made them since they were recorded. (Project 0640, which was titled Time Vault, is highly unusual for the Junto. Every other project since we started, back in January 2012, involved participants more or less immediately posting a track online.) My original plan was to simply post the Time Vault tracks myself on my soundcloud.com/disquiet account, attributing the music to the individual artists, but it occurs to me that some participants may want to post the tracks themselves, in which case I can return the tracks to them directly. Either way is fine. I’ll be in touch, and you can let me know if you want me to post it myself, or if you want me to return it to you so you can post it.
*I accidentally had this as January 9, rather than December 9, in the email and initial Lines BBS announcement. Thanks to RPLKTR for pointing that out.
The Assignment: Record a drone that goes from simple to complex to simple.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Disquiet Junto Project 0675: Arc of the Drone The Assignment: Record a drone that goes from simple to complex to simple.
Step 1: You may, yourself, be experienced recording drone music, or you may never have recorded any. You may not even be sure what drone music is, in which case read up a bit. Not matter your experience and familiarity, please give some thought as to what constitutes drone music.
Step 2: Now think about what makes a drone simple and what makes a drone complex.
Step 3: Now record a piece of drone music that begins simple, gets complex, and then gets simple again. And note: The simple drone at the end needn’t necessarily be the same sort of drone with which the piece opens.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0675” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 675th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Arc of the Drone — The Assignment: Record a drone that goes from simple to complex to simple — at https://disquiet.com/0675/
I believe that this Ambient Tea Party, on the YouTube channel Den Pat, took place in Saint Petersburg, Russia, as that is where the associated Bandcamp page is based. Den Pat is, I think, the Denis Vladimirovich Patrabaev (or Патрабаева Дениса Владимировича — thanks, online translation tool!) listed in the label’s description as its founder. This solo set, which I listened to on repeat while working, is a treat, an admirably consistent, nearly hour-long mix of modulated tones and gently abrasive intrusions. Highly recommended. I’ll be working through the label’s catalog shortly.
I voted in this year’s Pitchfork “best albums of 2024” list (and The Wire’s), and was asked to hold off on publishing my personal list until the full Pitchfork list went up on their website, which it now has, and the issue of The Wire with their look back came out today, too. (The Wire does a cool thing when listing the contributors to the voting: they list each contributor’s #1 album of the year.) So, here are my favorites. I have friends and colleagues who actively refine and adjust their lists of the best albums over the course of the given year, and even continue to do so, revising years and decades as time passes. I am, quite simply, not one of those people. Were I not asked to make a list, I would likely not. But I was, and I have, and I recognize these lists are very useful to people, so I share here happily. These are 25 records I enjoyed (or: appreciated, admired, got lost in) the heck out of this year:
Bill Frisell/Andrew Cyrille/Kit Downes: Breaking the Shell (Red Hook Records)
Jeff Parker / ETA Vtet: The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem / Nonesuch)
KMRU: Natur (Touch)
The Necks: Bleed (Northern Spy Records)
Taylor Dupree: Sti.ll (Greyfade)
Sarah Davachi: The Head as Form’d in the Crier’s Choir (Late Music)
Dialect: Atlas Of Green (Rvng Intl.)
Lia Kohl: Normal Sounds (Moon Glyph)
Prefuse 73: New Strategies for Modern Crime (Lex Records)
Eiko Ishibashi: Evil Does Not Exist (Drag City)
Dirty Three: Love Changes Everything (Drag City)
Eli Keszler: Live 2 (LuckyMe)
Christopher Bissonnette: In a Second Floor Window (12k)
