twitter.com/disquiet: Bookends, Shadow of the Colossus

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/), 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.

▰ Even as the world opens up, I suspect I’ll spend much of the end of 2021 in my living room:

John le Carré’s *Silverview* (Oct. 12, 2021)

Neal Stephenson’s *Termination Shock* (Nov. 16, 2021)

James S.A. Corey’s *Leviathan Falls* (Nov. 16, 2021)

Fonda Lee’s *Jade Legacy* (Nov. 30, 2021)

▰ I’d swear Dropbox search used to be useful.

▰ Yes, I’m enjoying Nick Suttner’s book on *Shadow of the Colossus*.

▰ 1. I love writing liner notes.

2. I really love writing liner notes for music I love.

3. I really truly love writing liner notes for music I’ve loved for a decade and that is now [being reissued in a glorious format](https://marcus-fischer.bandcamp.com/album/monocoastal-10th-anniversary-edition).

▰ This is the Disquiet Junto music community’s 492nd consecutive weekly project. We’re now 8 weeks from the 500th!

▰ There’s a Japanese ceramics tradition called kintsugi that involves mending broken pottery, and in the process embracing the fractures, using them as decoration. This week in the Disquiet Junto, musicians are exploring kintsugi as an inspiration to remixes/reworkings.

▰ Have a good weekend, folks. If you’ve got a favorite film score (*Michael Clayton* here), I recommend playing it on shuffle. Most scores have one major motif. Listening in a new order brings the music back to the foreground, refreshing how its melodies and tonalities develop.

Hummingbird

A mesostic

/ By Marc Weidenbaum 
              THis week I gained avian 
     wisdom: soUnds I think of as 
  birdsong are Made, in fact, not
            froM 
             voIce but from
     feathers' Nimble claps.
  The backyard Groove
               Box turns out 
even more complIcated than
            eveR I 
        imagineD.

Disquiet Junto Project 0492: Kintsugi Rework

The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing.

/ 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, June 7, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 3, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0492: Kintsugi Rework

The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing.

Step 1: This week’s project explores the ceramic method called “kintsugi.” If the term is unfamiliar, read up on it a bit. Here’s a description from an article in the Washington Post: “That means ‘golden joinery’ in Japanese, and it refers to the art of fixing broken ceramics with a lacquer resin made to look like solid gold. Chances are, a vessel fixed by kintsugi will look more gorgeous, and more precious, than before it was fractured.”

Step 2: Consider how kintsugi can be employed, through metaphor, as a means to rework/remix an existing piece of music.

Step 3: Take an existing track, perhaps one of your own, and by some means “break” it.

Step 4: Take the “broken” piece of music from step 3 and make it whole by employing a musical adoption of kintsugi.

Source for above quote, from art critic Blake Gopnik: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030202723.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/02/AR2009030202723.html)

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0492” (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 “disquiet0492” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0492-kintsugi-rework/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0492-kintsugi-rework/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, June 7, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 3, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0492” 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 492nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Kintsugi Rework (The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing) — at: https://disquiet.com/0492/

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-0492-kintsugi-rework/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0492-kintsugi-rework/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by Kate, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/jEFjbJ](https://flic.kr/p/jEFjbJ)

[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

Tayla Roberge’s Unhappening

Thrilling techno minimalism

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Tayla Roberge is TR. “Noctural Hum” is TR’s latest SoundCloud track. The track is a simple four-minute exercise in true techno minimalism. The beat hovers at under 80 bpm. On first glance, first listen, it can sound like a simple head nod, but there’s more to it, more within it. Between each nod there’s a flutter. The flutter is itself not just syncopated, not just pitched, but fitted perfectly between the nods. Throughout, there are slight variations. A shudder takes over, until it disappears. A buzz is pitched up or down, until it resolves. A whir cycles free, as if it might spin off like a broken spring — instead, it evaporates. No matter what happens, it unhappens. This is the thrilling certitude of “Nocturnal Hum.”

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/taylaroberge](https://soundcloud.com/taylaroberge/wednesday). Roberge is based in Providence, Rhode Island.