Disquiet Junto Project 0529: Squared Off

The Assignment: Explore the number 23.

/ 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, February 21, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 17, 2022.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0529: Squared Off**
The Assignment: Explore the number 23.

Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:

Step 1: This is the 529th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project. The number 529 is what happens when you take the number 23 and multiply it by itself. Consider various interesting aspects of the number 23. For example: Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. It’s the number from the Birthday Paradox (read up!). Also, 529 is an “octagonal number” (read up some more!). The earth’s axis tilts at 23° (rounded down). Anyhow, have fun exploring.

Step 2: Make a piece of music that engages with the number 23.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0529” (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 “disquiet0529” (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-0529-squared-off/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0529-squared-off/)

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, February 21, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 17, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Some variation on the number 23 might be in order.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0529” 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:

Major thanks to Eanna Butler for helping come up with this project:

More on this 529th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Squared Off (The Assignment: Explore the number 23) — at: https://disquiet.com/0529/

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-0529-squared-off/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0529-squared-off/)

For F’s Sake

Deep in vinyl clean-up

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Been working through my LPs, alphabetizing the majority, culling a bit, as well. Been in the Fs, clearly.

This excellent Funki Porcini 12″, *Carwreck*, features remixes by both Wagon Christ and Squarepusher. It came out the year I left Tower Records’ *Pulse!* magazines, and in a way, that wasn’t a coincidence. I’d long thought I’d be a Tower lifer (I didn’t know at the time that less than a decade later the company would close in bankruptcy), but labels like Ninja Tune, which released this EP, along with Mo’ Wax and Warp, just to name a few, focused my imagination on technologically mediated sound. Something about that newly felt sense of concentrated interest was freeing to me.

I can’t believe that a full 10 years have passed since this Marcus Fischer and the OO-ray (aka Ted Laderas) collaboration, *Tesselations*, came out. Absolutely beautiful, halfway between naturalist ambient and post-classical:

The debut Force MDs album, *Love Letters*, was released on Tommy Boy Records the year I graduated from high school, 1984. The production team and backing musicians include Keith LeBlanc, Doug Wimbish, and Skip McDonald, which is to say I was in the mood for some Tackhead when this was done spinning, a trio that allows you to draw a straight line from Grandmaster Flash through Nine Inch Nails and the early industrial act Tackhead.

For the longest time, I thought the title of the first song on the second side of *Love Letters* was “Bitchin’ for a Scratch” until I realized the B was for B-side:

Sonic Verbs

What are your favorites?

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each issue of This Week in Sound ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet)), I close the introduction with a different sonic verb. Last night it was “bawl.” Here’s the list for the past 40 or so issues:

babble
bawl
bay
blow
bombinate
burble
buzz
cantillate
chirr
chirrup
clang
coo
crackle
croon
drone
echolocate
gasp
harmonize
hiss
howl
hum
intone
mumble
murmur
mutter
nasalize
oscillate
purr
resound
rumble
rustle
sibilate
sigh
squeal
susurrate
swish
thrum
thwack
trill
vibrate
whir
whisper

Do you have a favorite sonic verb that’s not on this list?

This Week in Sound: PKD, Zoom Privacy, Botany

A lightly annotated clipping service

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

These sound-studies highlights of the week are lightly adapted from the February 14, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)).

As always, if you find sonic news of interest, please share it with me, and (except with the most widespread of news items) I’ll credit you should I mention it here.

▰ Rick Prelinger has located what he thinks may be the inspiration for the character of Hawthorne Abendsen in *The Man in the High Castle*, the Philip K. Dick novel. It’s a Siegfried Wagener, “who lived on a mountaintop in Estes Park, Colo. and monitored Nazi radio broadcasts.”
[twitter.com](https://twitter.com/footage/status/1493094670695419904)

▰ Reportedly, since December Zoom could still access mics “even after ending a Zoom conference” on Apple computers. The privacy issue has been addressed in a new software update.
[9to5mac.com](https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/11/zoom-update-prevents-microphone-from-staying-active-after-calls-on-mac/)

▰ Litigation is being pursued in the Indian state of Gujarat “seeking a ban on using loudspeakers in mosques.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the pursuer of the legal matter may not be solely concerned with sonic matters: “Sources said the petitioner may also move an application asking for a ban on wearing hijabs in educational institutions.”
[ahmedabadmirror.com](https://ahmedabadmirror.com/pil-seeks-ban-on-loudspeakers-in-mosques/81821101.html)

▰ You don’t need ears to suffer from noise pollution, says botanist Ali Akbar Ghotbi-Ravandi.

[economist.com](https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/plants-are-adversely-affected-by-the-racket-of-urban-traffic/21807602)

▰ A judge on the Ontario Superior Court has ordered truckers to cease “the horn honking and air horn blowing that has echoed through downtown Ottawa since demonstrators arrived in the city on Jan. 28.”

[ottawacitizen.com](https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/judge-orders-truckers-horns-silenced)

▰ The Digital Humanities Lab at MIT has developed a “Sonification Toolkit” that helps people tranform data, images, and other sources into sound.

[mit.edu](https://news.mit.edu/2022/sound-sunset-sonification-toolkit-0209)

▰ AI Music is the name of a firm acquired by Apple: the firm’s “soundtracks are dynamic and can change based on user interaction in real time. As an example, a song can have a different tone during more intense parts of a workout.”
[9to5mac.com](https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/07/apple-acquires-startup-with-tool-that-creates-songs-with-ai/)

▰ A player of the Gran Turismo racing games the sounds over the course of the franchise’s nearly quarter century history.
[traxion.gg](https://traxion.gg/the-changing-sounds-of-gran-turismo/)

Sound Ledger¹ (Noise, Pedestrians, Tinnitus)

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

75: The percentage of complaints to the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources in Lagos that are noise-related.

578,000: The number of Tesla vehicles recalled due to issues regarding pedestrian warning sounds.

1/3: Percentage of surveyed British tinnitus suffers who “thought about their condition every hour, causing anxiety and sadness”

________
¹Footnotes: Lagos: [thenationonlineng.net](https://thenationonlineng.net/noise-pollution-lagos-bans-sound-amplifiers-in-motor-parks/). Tesla: [engadget.com](https://www.engadget.com/tesla-boombox-recall-model-3-s-x-y-142616539.html/). Tinnitus:
[uk.news.yahoo.com](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/calls-tinnitus-biobank-sufferers-tell-000100189.html/)

*Originally published in the February 14, 2022, edition of the This Week in Sound email newsletter [tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*