The Art of Drones

A document of three Takeyuki Hakozaki installations

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

*What Comes After* is the perfect title for a collection of tracks that are, themselves, the sonic byproduct of art installations. The installation was the thing; the audio is a memory. A set of those memories is what came after. Each of the three tracks is a recording of roughly seven minutes taken from one of three different set-ups that artist Takeyuki Hakozaki had at the HAKO Gallery in Chiba, Japan, earlier this year, back in mid-February. (I’ve been to Chiba several times to attend the annual Shonen Jump festival, but I’ve never been to an art gallery in the city, which is outside Tokyo.) One of Hakozaki’s pieces involves several electric guitars resonating thanks to electric fans. Another involves audio tape rubbing against guitar strings. The third use a synthesizer to process tape loops. Each recording takes the form of a drone. Each is marked by different elements, and throughout you can hear voices here and there (if you speak Japanese, which I can’t, you might be able to make out some of what is spoken). “Air” is symphonic in scope, the overtones so rich I’d swear I can hear a choir chanting amid the resonances. Magnetic” is rough and raucous, albeit in slow motion. “Complex” is like a shoegazer track, subtler than “Air,” less frictive than “Magnetic.”

If you scroll back through the gallery’s [instagram.com/hako_chiba](https://www.instagram.com/hako_chiba/) account, you can find documentation of the [first (circulator, “Air”)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLOvpTzjZLl/), shown above, [second (loops, “Magnetic”)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLTAirID-TI/), and [third (synthesizer, “Complex”)](https://www.instagram.com/p/CLWMI24jmP8/) projects.

More on HAKO at [h-a-k-o.com](https://www.h-a-k-o.com/). More from Takeyuki Hakozaki at [signflax.com](http://www.signflax.com/index.html) and [instagram.com/t.hakozaki](https://www.instagram.com/t.hakozaki/). The audio was mastered by Taylor Deupree (of 12k Records).

twitter.com/disquiet: Mailman, Ida, Phaedra

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet), which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ “If you’d prefer to wait in silence, press 4.”

▰ Waiting for the *What If…?* episode in which the Watcher recalls that he once, long ago, played Jean-Michel Basquiat, and that Basquiat had once, long ago, drawn superheroes.

▰ The first day of every month is when I’m reminded of how many Mailman-powered email lists I’m subscribed to.

▰ Ida WFH. Rob Walker [recorded](https://soundcloud.com/murketing/the-sound-of-ida-in-my-home-office-late-morning-august-29-2021) the sound of the hurricane from his New Orleans home office on August 29th:

▰ [Highlights](https://disquiet.com/2021/08/31/this-week-in-sound-the-12262-megaphone/) from latest [This Week in Sound](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet) issue: smart speaker surveillance, listening to gravitational waves, the $12,262 megaphone, AI crime-fighting failure, newfangled hold music, Val Kilmer’s new voice, and more.

▰ Set my Zoom background to a production still from *Devs*. Right now I’ll take a machine-learned dystopia over reality.

▰ Current status

(Fact check: I’m not actually watching *Billions* at this moment. Just mental/emotional status.)

▰ I recently bought a second 25″ screen. All I keep on it is a pair of browser windows, each a spreadsheet. It’s the best whiteboard for such things because when I want to I just turn it off (or pull up footage of someone wandering Tokyo), and I don’t have to look at the lists.

▰ Just gonna have “Phaedra” off the upcoming Amon Tobin album, *How Do You Live*, on repeat until the good news outdoes the bad news. So, for a while.

Technically I’m listening to Amon Tobin’s “Phaedra (People Scraping the Outside of the Building Prior to Painting Because I Need to Recharge My Noise Cancelling Headphones’ Battery Remix),” but I’m pretty sure the original is awesome, too.

▰ I can no longer hear the work being done on the building so maybe they’re taking a break but more likely I have simply, fully, willingly succumbed to this song.

▰ Perhaps you’d be astonished by how many press releases and announcements go out for singles and albums saying nothing about the music. Here’s the cover, here’s some merch (need another branded tote?), here’s a moody artist photo. Thanks for the inbox clutter. Unsubscribe. Delete.

▰ It’s a Bandcamp Friday, but rather than list a few records I recommend, or other people’s lists of recommended records, maybe I’ll recommend other people’s lists of other people’s lists of recommended records. Or, you know, suggest people read some reviews and buy some records.

Instagr/am/bient Vol. II Update

Anything but instant

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Life has been busy, and among the busy things has been the inbound expressions of interest in participating in the [*Instagr/am/bient*](https://disquiet.com/2011/12/28/instagrambient-25-sonic-postcards/) sequel project, celebrating the 10th anniversary of that compilation (last week of December 2021), just shy of the 10th anniversary of the Disquiet Junto (first week of January 2022). I’m experiencing minor flashbacks to the flurry of interest in a video project I mentioned at the outset of the pandemic last year, a response that was so substantial it ended up occluding the project, which has been on hold ever since. I hope to get back to the video project, but the logistics got unwieldy once hundreds of people got involved. The beauty of the Disquiet Junto is that I send out a project concept and people do the work independently. This is precisely why the projects are structured as they are, and why proposed projects that deviate from the now standard norm don’t happen (that would be: projects where some sort of collaboration, coordination, or syncing up during the project is necessary). Anyhow, I’m pretty sure we’re going to do the *Instagr/am/bient Volume II* project, but the response has been a lot to manage. Which is a long way of saying, if you expressed interest, thanks, and I’ll be back in touch shortly(ish). Which is also to say: It’s wonderful how many people want to engage. I’m quite excited about it. (For those reading about *Instagr/am/bient* for the first time, the concept back in 2011 was that people each sent me a photo, and I recirculated those photos, and when they received one from me it became the cover to a single they then recorded. It’s still [online](https://disquiet.com/2011/12/28/instagrambient-25-sonic-postcards/).)