Durán Vázquez’s Terror Film for Radio (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Thinking of radio, Durán Vázquez seems to have thought of the uninvited — the sounds, news, noise, and thoughts that enter our lives. For a 2008 work for the RadiaLX radio festival, he took as his source, film and news souces, including Zeitgeist by Peter Joseph (2007), Imprint by Takashi Miike (2006), Le Monde Selon Bush by William Karel (2004), Hellraiser by Clive Barker (1987), and Rosemary’s Baby by Roman Polanski (1968). Those sounds, mixed with English and Spanish repoting on war and terror, reveal the fantastical fears that underlie everyday concerns — more to the point, the exaggerated anxiety that underlies the modern sense of constant warfare. More details on his “Terror Film for Radio” (MP3) at cronicaelectronica.org.

[audio:http://download.cronicaelectronica.org/cronicast047.mp3|titles=”Terror Film for Radio”|artists=Durán Vázquez]

Top 10 Posts from May

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The relative popularity of the top 10 posts of May 2009 was fairly close, but it’s fascinating (at least to me) that tied for the most popular was (1) a list of recent Twitter posts from my twitter.com/disquiet account. They’re collected automatically each Saturday afternoon, and I set up the system purely for the sake of completion (i.e., compiling those one-off, 140-character-tops posts here).

Tied with it for popularity was (2) the second of two “MP3 Discussion Group” get-togethers I hosted this month, the one on John Hassell‘s recent album Last Night the Moon Came Dropping Its Clothes in the Street. (The other discussion was on the recent Burial/Four Tet 12″, but it didn’t make the top 10.)

Four of the site’s week-daily MP3 recommendations made the top 10: (3) a 1.5-hour mix of hip-hop renderings of Sun Ra pieces, (4) a DJ /rupture track created for the magazine Esopus, (5) some noise improv MP3s from China, and (this makes me especially happy, because I love this song) a (6) splendid folktronic gem by UV (aka Matthew Stenning).

That leaves four field-notes news reports (in addition to that Twitter one, up top) to round it out: (7) one collecting Richie Hawtin‘s Twitter DJing, news on Nam Jun Paik, and Cory Doctorow‘s excellent definition of “geek”; (8) one on a remix-thesis-turned-website and museum music; (9) a bit about a Raster-Noton exhibit in Manhattan; and (10) a Wacky Packs take on Grand Theft Auto.

I’m typing this from London, where I’ll be through the week. It’s almost 11am here, and it’s almost 3am back home in San Francisco.

Images of the Week: Roden’s Architecture of Language

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Artist Steve Roden employs the architecture of language in the construction of a sculpture being unveiled at Girard College in Philadelphia this week. The work is a great example of how Roden is always looking for new constraints the way an entrepreneur looks for business opportunities.

Girard’s will apparently stipulates that nothing not mentioned in it can be added to the building. The exact phasing is “nothing but what is therein contained.” So Roden took not just Girard at his word, but that very comment: he “took the phrase and translated it into numbers based on the alphabetical sequence of the letters, and then cut pieces of wood accordingly.”

Here are the letters in wood form:

And here, in situ, is the resulting sculpture:

More details, including other sonic aspects, at the original post at Roden’s inbetweennoise.blogspot.com blog.

Quote of the Week: Ocean Music

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

In the opening to their new book Flotsametrics and the Floating World, authors Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano describe how on May 27, 1990, some 61,820 sneakers floated to the surface of the North Pacific:

    These high-seas drifters offer a new way of looking at the seas, their movements, and, as we shall see, their music. Call it “flotsametrics.” It’s led me to a world of beauty, order, and peril I could not have imagined even after decades as a working oceanographer — the floating world.

Chapter excerpt at nytimes.com.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • As always, packing for a trip is as digital as it is physical — photos, notes, tunes, ebooks. I must get my data cloud in gear… #
  • 48 hours til London, not counting flight, of course. … Last time I was there, it was to interview Depeche Mode. Saw Billy Childish, too. #
  • Thanks for London-sound tips for trip next week. Mostly business, but some evening & day pleasure breaks. @mapsadaisical @eleventhvolume #
  • London next week. I get there Monday (June 1) and head back to San Francisco on Saturday (June 6). Anything sound-ish going on, lemme know. #
  • Hosting great Jon Hassell discussion with @eleventhvolume, @richard_kadrey & others: http://bit.ly/QWaiO … What artist & album to do next? #
  • Good way to start day: Android phone auto-upgraded to new (“Cupcake”) operating system build. Weird it doesn’t come with “what’s new” note. #
  • There are now not four but five Burmese restaurants in my neighborhood. I love San Francisco. #
  • Good music week in San Francisco: Galindo tonight, Compound show Tuesday, Lx Rudis on Thursday, Illuminated Corridor on Saturday… #
  • Man, under the wire. Finished transferring files from main computer yesterday. As of a routine program upgrade this morning, it won’t boot. #
  • Jon Hassell: “I think the key word there is atmosphere…. If you’re not conjuring up a place, it is not doing the trick.” http://is.gd/D2jJ #
  • Jon Hassell: “If you think of music as horizontal, being melody, and vertical, being harmony, I think of what I do as diagonal.” #
  • Many exhibit and performance notes to post. May go into staccato mode at Disquiet.com for awhile. #
  • Sunday morning sounds: distinctly Peruvian accent to belly rumbles, plus ticking of laptop fan that is Morse code for “transfer your files.” #