Brief mentions each Sunday of my favorite listening from the week prior:
▰ Years of Ambiguity from keyboardist Kjetil Husebø teams the musician with electronically enhanced guitarist Eivind Aarset and equally post-human trumpeter Arve Henriksen. Seven tracks deep in the territory first homesteaded by Miles Davis and Jon Hassell.
▰ It’s sort of amazing when one of your favorite bands puts out a new album and it becomes of your favorites. Such is the gift that is the Necks‘ ambient jazz set Travel, which manages to be blissful and funky, soulful and ethereal, often all at the same time.
▰ I’ve been really digging Cheat Codes, the team-up of Danger Mouse and Black Thought, especially “Strangers,” the full version of which adds rappers A&AP Rocky and the duo Run the Jewels to the mix — and which, in its locked-groove minimalism, is also the source of one of the most intense instrumental tracks from the album.
I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media (as well as related notes), which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means post.lurk.org (on Mastodon). Sometimes the material pops up earlier or in expanded form.
▰ My childhood: the delay between lightning and then the thunder
My adulthood: the delay between lighting and then the app on my phone that tells me there was lighting nearby and then the thunder
▰ The rain is so intense it sounds like I’m inside a dishwasher
▰ I love that there’s an app called Lightning Pro because it suggests a presumption of amateur lightning
▰ Honk if you’re listening to the new Necks album, Travel
▰ Long day. TV doing it thing from another room. Dryer droning intently in what must be Ridley Scott cycle. In the back, so no cars passing. The rain is on pause, so none of nature’s white noise. Bliss.
▰ Yo, book peeps. Anyone out there read both Convenience Store Woman (2016) by Sayaka Murata and Chemistry (2017) by Weiki Wang? I read (and loved) the Murata, and I started the Wang this week. A lot of interesting parallels.
▰ Alvin Lucier, but from his next door neighbor’s perspective
▰ I’m trying out the terminal tool Tut as a means to post to Mastodon. This is Tut:
Weekend plans with Wildfire Laboratories (wildfirelaboratories.com). And if someone has a used Lucy Says No (same manufacturer) module up for grabs, please let me know. Thanks. I’d appreciate it.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four 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, March 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 2, 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.
Step 1: You’re going to use a wall in a building, perhaps your workplace or residence, as a filter. Consider these instructions carefully before selecting the appropriate wall. Some trial and error may be required.
Step 2: You’re going to record a track in which the rhythmic element is heard through a wall. That is: you’ll record the rhythm track, and then play it loud from another room (or outside), and record what it sounds like as separated by a wall. Choose a wall.
Step 3: Record the rhythm, track.
Step 4: Re-record the rhythm track from Step 3 by playing it on one side of a wall and recording from the other side of that wall.
Step 5: Record a piece of music using the recording from Step 4 as the foundational rhythm track.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0583” (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 “disquiet0583” (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:
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: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, March 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 2, 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:
More on this 583rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Wall to Wall (The Assignment: The Assignment: Use a building as a filter), at: https://disquiet.com/0583/
Coming off the dark intensity of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season, I’m treating myself to the simple pleasures of a very John le Carré-esque spy story, the novel Box 88 by Charles Cumming. It’s the most Carré thing I’ve read by a contemporary writer. It’s not an arch character study like Mick Herron. It’s not as baroquely plotted a puzzle as Olen Steinhauer. It does, however, emphasize elements we expected from Carré: elite private schools, class warfare as cold war, a distant parent (here a demanding, widowed mother in place of Carré’s usual flamboyant, dissolute father), and personal moments that a lesser writer couldn’t pull off — and that readers of those writers likely wouldn’t tolerate. And like any solid teller of spy stories must be, Cumming is an excellent listener. There is an extended sequence about a third of the way through Box 88 when two MI5 agents are tailing a suspect primarily by listening to what’s happening with the suspect thanks to hidden microphones. We don’t just hear what they hear. Cumming helps us hear as they hear — the straining, the confusion, the headache-inducing consideration of possible inferences.
