Disquiet

I have no idea what this means, “Free Atari.” There could be some actual activist urgency to this graffiti. Perhaps Atari is an incarcerated person and the sign is a sign that his community has his back. Or perhaps this is simply a willfully nonsensical plea, with “free” as a verb and Atari as, indeed, the classic gaming company (cum style, cum era, cum nostalgia play). Perhaps it’s a rallying cry to open source the code for Pac-Man and Pong. Perhaps it’s an ironic marquee meant to caption the graveyard of taxi cabs: “Here are some generic electronic husks. Have fun.” Perhaps it’s someone’s tag, and soon enough I’ll begin to see “Free Atari” everywhere. Whatever it means, I wandered past this scene while waiting for paint to be mixed at a nearby store across town from where I live. I had 15 minutes to spare, so rather than linger in the aisles, I walked the circumference of the block and saw this visual feast of dilapidated vehicles, 8bit propaganda, and ambivalent gray blue sky.

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](https://disquiet.com/2021/08/27/why-this-week-in-sound/) in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ East Bay takeout report: Vik’s Chaat is just as great even without your name being eviscerated and semi-reconstructed by a frazzled, echoing interior public address system.

▰ “Don’t make a grown man cry.” Ain’t that [the truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGyOaCXr8Lw).

▰ Getting an issue of the This Week in Sound newsletter out was the [release valve](https://disquiet.com/2021/08/27/why-this-week-in-sound/) I was looking for. It’s a pressure gauge for a buildup of thoughts, tabs, research, reading, listening, thinking. And when I send out an issue, cool things I didn’t know flow into my inbox.

▰ I hadn’t foreseen that a suggestion for people to start blogs would necessitate a suggestion that they consider including an RSS feed. I’m not clear on a useful alternative to RSS, aside from collating several hundred (occasionally updated) websites, sorting out a system to check them regularly (calendar + bookmarks?), and then trying to remember each time if I’ve read the most recent posts. Maybe email subscription? But why would I want more email? Anyhow, if you do have or start a blog, please do consider including RSS.

▰ Charlie Watts’ isolated (light bleed, plus Jimmy Miller’s percussion) drums for “Gimme Shelter.” RIP to the master.

▰ This is so great: Nate Trier did a livestream on Twitch (now [archived](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1126651856)) in which he spent a half hour doing the most recent Disquiet Junto project: “making mouth sounds,” as he puts it, “and turn it into a track.”

▰ PayPal takes more than 50¢ of each Tip Jar payment I get from the This Week in Sound newsletter. Since they’re often a buck, PayPal gets more than I do. Recommendations for alternates? I’m not looking to make a living; the pay just help support and to a degree justify the effort.

▰ Listening to all these Rolling Stones tracks with the drums isolated, in honor of Charlie Watts’ death, has made me wonder what Pussy Galore’s *Exile on Main St.* cover album would have sounded like had it been recorded these days instead of back in 1985.

▰ For the Californians in the house, an important message. Vote no and mail that thing in pronto.

▰ Late afternoon quartet for skateboard sidewalk rumble, recycling truck pneumatics, public bus braking, and scooter engine mutterings

▰ A lesser known annoying thing about Zoom is that half the time I see “Zoom” in a tweet I mistakenly think it says “Zorn” and then I’m disappointed there isn’t interesting new news about John Zorn.

▰ Ten years ago this December, 25 musicians collaborated on a compilation album I put together titled [*Instagr/am/bient*](https://disquiet.com/2011/12/28/instagrambient-25-sonic-postcards/). They traded photos and then each recorded a track as if the photo received was the cover art for a single. I’m pretty sure we’ll do a sequel this December. 📸 🎵

▰ The foghorn just now seemed really loud and long, covering a few miles, and piercing the walls, and my headphones, and the interview I did with a scientist that I’m listening back through.

▰ I’ve got a heap of sound studies bits collated, so there will be another issue of This Week in Sound next Monday. Subscribe (free): [tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet). Topics: feedback weapon, mushroom noise, stem hardware, gunshot data trouble, tank acoustics, deepfake rehab, and more.

▰ Kinda forgot they used some of *Satyagraha* in *Stranger Things*. It’s funny because Philip Glass wrote the score to the (original) *Candyman*, an actual horror flick. Was any of the *Candyman* score in *Stranger Things*? That would have been a *Homecoming*-style repurposing. (Oh yeah, *Candyman* was 1992, seven years after the time period of the third season of *Stranger Things*.)