Disquiet Junto Project 0615: Introspective Failure

The Assignment: Fall short again, this time on purpose.

/ 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 just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. 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. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 12, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 16, 2023.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).

Disquiet Junto Project 0615: Introspective Failure
The Assignment: Fall short again, this time on purpose.

Thanks to Junto member XHG (aka Alex) for having proposed this week’s project.

The goal of this project is to purposefully produce an unsatisfactory piece of music in a systematic way, in the hope of potentially learning from the experience. Your approach should be introspective and technical but also lighthearted and humorous.

Step 1: Think about a piece of music you have produced that you were not satisfied with.

Step 2: Try to analyze why this was the case. Is it possible to identify a main reason — like the concept, the process, the instrumentation, or simply the outcome?

Step 3: Take a break and let these thoughts simmer for a while.

Step 4: Try to produce a different unsatisfactory piece of music than you analyzed in Step 2, purposefully replicating the failure. (It might be sensible to keep it short so as to torment yourself not too much.)

Note: Before you start the process, plan something fun and gratifying to do after you finish your piece of music, in case the process lowers your mood.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0615” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0615” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0615-introspective-failure/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. 

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 12, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 16, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

Thanks to Junto member XHG (aka Alex) for having proposed this week’s project.

More on this 615th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Introspective Failure (The Assignment: Fall short again, this time on purpose), at: https://disquiet.com/0615/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0615-introspective-failure/

Does Disquiet.com Accept Music for Review Consideration? 

From the site FAQ

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I would love to hear your music and watch your videos. However, please don’t expect me to reply to correspondence — not even with a quick confirmation of receipt.

I simply don’t have the time to engage in back and forths via email about whether I plan on covering a given release. I receive an enormous amount of music from musicians and their record labels, and that doesn’t count all the time I spend seeking out music (and sound-related art). I can’t promise to write back — either in a timely manner, or at all. What I can promise is the following: I will listen to as much music I receive as possible, without diminishing the attention I can pay to what I do elect to listen to, and I will consider it for coverage. I listen constantly, and when something really strikes me, that’s when I write about it — either here, or for other publications to which I contribute.

My preference is that you email me a link to a zip archive containing lossless files, and also include a link to it streaming somewhere, so I can potentially quickly preview it before downloading. If you have the music on Bandcamp, then just send me a “yum” download code. If you feel the need to send me a CD (or vinyl copy, or some other physical format), you can email me (visit this site’s contact page) to get my address in San Francisco, where I live. Please don’t send audio files as attachments: they clog up my email, and I just delete them. In closing, I do want to hear your music — but I also want to hear other people’s music, and the less time I spend in correspondence, the more time I can spend listening.

. . .

The above is from the recently updated Disquiet.com FAQ.

Death Hags’ 2nd Junto x Bern Podcast

A new set of tracks collected on her listen.camp show, Big Grey Sun 2.0

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

For the October 7, 2023, episode on her listen.camp show, Big Grey Sun 2.0, the L.A. musician/producer Lola G. (aka Death Hags) played tracks from the second of three Disquiet Junto projects that participants did this year in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern, as well as some of her own music. The theme of this project, number 0595, Filter Progression, was: Make music by processing a static sound.

This is the playlist from “Big Grey Sun 2.0 / 07th October 2023,” which is hosted at Death Hags’ mixcloud.com account:

  • Death Hags — “Photons in the Sky”
  • Noodle Twister — “Tiniest Cloud”
  • the bell mechanical — “a shiny curtain”
  • colmkil — “Minimal Blend, Coffee Sips”
  • halF unusuaL — “halF miiniimaaliisT [10 minute version]”
  • Death Hags — “Airlift V”
  • Ossimuratore — “Prone to Logic Mind”
  • he_nu_ri — “Entrenched and Incised Meanders”
  • RabMusicLab — “Les rencontres entre éléments”
  • caustic_gates — “drone blend”
  • Sonic Search — “Ruminations”
  • Death Hags — “Photons in the Sky (Alt)”

Terror from Above

Singing those Blue Angels blues

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The admirably synchronized Blue Angels circled our fine city once again this weekend, during Fleet Week, and I thought I would whittle my mix of cultural curiosity and anxious disgruntlement down to two points. For whatever reason, I found this year’s display of might less abrasive than in the past. Perhaps the flights were more muted, and perhaps I’m somewhat inured. Somewhat. My nerves were still on edge.

Types of Noise: I am fascinated each year that there is even any debate or discussion about these planes flying overhead and making enormous amounts of house-shaking, nerve-rattling noise. I truly mean that, when I say I’m fascinated. I personally can’t imagine anything other than wanting the whole thing to be brought down a few notches, and yet it’s quite clear there are a lot of people who revel in the ferocity of it all. I can’t access that enthusiasm, myself, and I’d like to better understand what pleasure people take in it. I mean, I listen to some really harsh music. I’ve seen Slayer and Godflesh in concert, just to name a few bands. I listen to intense industrial music. So, I’m not opposed to noise, per se. But if there’s a line, then to me the Fleet Week planes passed over it.

The Negative Impact: I really don’t think people fully appreciate how horrible all that noise is for animals, for the elderly, and for infants. There are also several major hospitals in San Francisco, as well as the VA Medical Center, which among other things deals with PTSD and mental health issues for veterans. The VA is at the top of Lands End, and it has incredible views of the San Francisco Bay. Most of the year that location is pretty blissful. However, during Fleet Week I imagine — and I could be entirely wrong — that for some the experience serves up a host of troubling memories. I’d be interested in the VA’s perspective on this. Maybe the walls are thick enough that it just doesn’t matter.

In any case, the skies ironically were no longer clear the day after Fleet Week ended. It even rained a bit, but they were quieter, welcomingly so. Local journalist George Kelly has a good piece in sfstandard.com on the annual event that mentions two websites I didn’t know about previously: flyquietoak.com, a service of the Oakland airport that is focused on noise issues, and webtrak.emsbk.com/oak3, which maps noise matters in this handy live data visualization:

About This Weekend

Three nights, six photos, eight musicians

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s been a long time since I attended three concerts on three consecutive nights, all the more so when those nights weren’t all part of a single festival. I broke the pandemic-era spell this weekend here in San Francisco, characteristically masked, and caught Loraine James at Thee Parkside, then the final night of Naut Humon’s Recombinant Festival at Gray Area, and tonight Dan Burke (aka Illusion of Safety) and Thomas Dimuzio at the Center for New Music. For now, these photos will have to suffice, but I’ll be publishing proper reviews soon.

Loraine James in her first San Francisco appearance, at Thee Parkside on Friday, October 6

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Daniel Menche opens the final night of the Recombinant Festival at Gray Area on Saturday, October 7

Victoria Shen and Aaron Dilloway momentarily below their noise tables

Olivia Block does surround sound from the center of the audience

Kevin Drumm in sonic assault mode

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Dan Burke (aka Illusion of Safety) and Thomas Dimuzio at Center for New Music on Sunday, October 8, performing together after each did a solo set