Disquiet Junto x Musikfestival Bern

Pictures of an exhibition

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It is with great excitement that I share these photos of the John Cage Room at Musikfestival Bern, which runs in Bern Switzerland from September 7 through September 11. Longtime Disquiet Junto participant Tobias Reber, who works for the festival, shared these photos, and many more, as he worked on arranging the display in advance of the festival’s start. Included are listening stations and graphic-score visuals of work that the Disquiet Junto music community did this year when taking up three composition prompts developed in collaboration with the festival. These included [responding to a conversation](https://disquiet.com/2022/07/28/disquiet-junto-project-0552-the-radio-in-my-life/) between composers Cage and Morton Feldman, being inspired by [everyday randomness](https://disquiet.com/2022/07/14/disquiet-junto-project-0550-abrupt-probability/), and building on [a drone from a chord by Cage](https://disquiet.com/2022/08/11/disquiet-junto-project-0554-cage-chord/) — which became a lengthy, nearly two-hour [mega-mix](https://disquiet.com/2022/08/30/cage-chord-compilation/), thanks to Tobias’ edits.


Continue reading “Disquiet Junto x Musikfestival Bern”

Vladislav Delay’s Gnashing Gears

The tracks are dire, corrosive, and insistent — which is to say, they're great.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Apparently the recordings that constitute this excellent album by Vladislav Delay, *Isoviha*, are four years old but it has only just been released. The tracks are dire, corrosive, and insistent — which is to say, they’re great. The music pushes rhythms to the breaking point, and then celebrates when the rhythms don’t merely break but fracture, splinter, and leave detritus in their flowing, hypnotic wake.

The music tends toward the urban industrial. “Isopaska” is the sound of a central utility hub after its transformers blow and the building melts. Like “Isomulkku,” which follows shortly thereafter, it features a brief vocal element, suggesting an automated emergency alert shortly before succumbing to whatever entropy is at the heart of the given track. Entropy is at the heart of all this music, a tension that lends depth and drama to the often relentless mechanics. Each track is like a machine on the verge of collapse. Delay (the Finnish musician Sasu Ripatti) doesn’t pummel the listener half as much as he pummels his source material.

Each time I play this — and I’ve listened to it frequently since its mid-July 2022 release — I am entranced by the hints of dub that flavor the opening track, “Isovitutus,” before it gives way to head-banging extremes of stop’n’start noise. And Delay is no ungracious host. Amid the gnashing of gears, there is room for “iS,” tellingly the album’s shortest cut, at just over two minutes. It’s by no means a pure drone, as it has sandpaper textures and a fierce undercurrent, but it is a respite, nonetheless, and a welcome one.

Disquiet Junto Project 0558: Chore Progressions

The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 8, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the [llllllll.co discussion thread](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/).

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0558: Chore Progressions
The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition.

Step 1: Think of a routine chore that you do frequently.

Step 2: Think through the process of the chore, and break it down into a handful or so of phases.

Step 3: Reenact the chore, and record a representative bit of audio at each of the phases determined in Step 2.

Step 4: Produce a musical composition that occurs in a sequence of phases, following the sequence determined in Step 2. During each phase of the composition, employ sound recorded during the corresponding phase of the chore.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0558” (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 “disquiet0558” (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-0558-chore-progressions/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/)

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 8, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Using the length of the chore may or may not make sense when determining the length of your piece.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0558” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 558th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Chore Progressions (The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition) — at: https://disquiet.com/0558/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/)

Garden Variety

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A garden variety doorbell on a garden gate. Because it’s on the gate, the bell itself is quite far away, inside the adjacent house — heck, perhaps triggering a tone on a cellphone for that matter. And thus there is no aural feedback, no sonification in the user-interface sense of the word. You don’t know if anyone heard until they come to let you in.

Personal Aesthetic Forensics

The labor of Labor Day

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The physical and emotional labor of Labor Day. Typical Gen X housecleaning: replacing old long boxes with new ones, and neglecting to whittle whatsoever.

I was streaming videos of Mountain Man as I performed aesthetic forensics on my teens, 20s, and 30s. I generally listen to very little music with vocals, and yet I listen to Mountain Man all the time. Their harmonies kill me, and today’s activity, packed as it is with nostalgia, aligned with their music tonally.

I am a nut for anything by Tim Sale, Eddie Campbell, and Guy Davis. Challengers of the Unknown is one of my favorite formally playful superhero series. (And yes, “formally playful” is one of my favorite oxymorons.)

One more round, as I pack up the sixth of today’s long boxes: minis from Ellen Linder, Jason Shiga, and the late Dylan Williams.

I edited comics for a decade, and dipped into it a few more times in more recent years, and revisiting this material really brought me back to that work, which I always found [incredibly rewarding](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/13/mentors/).