Fine Drone Partita in a Minor Synth Setup

A video from Little Ambient Machines

This is a solid example of the sort of videos I’ve been collating in my YouTube playlist of fine live ambient recordings. The equipment is in full view, and the actions in the video correlate with the generally subtle though sometimes not inconsiderable alterations to the pulsing drone as it proceeds. This video isn’t a tutorial. There are no instructions, just two hands enacting manipulations, turning knobs, clicking buttons. In addition, as the music plays, the ear’s sense of interior activity can find consonance with the eye’s attention to the pace of the various lights, providing clues as to which parts of the assembled tools align with what aspects of the music. The track takes its title (“Eurorack ambient drone featuring Morphagene, C4RBN, Magneto, DLD and FX-aid”) from the form of the music and the equipment employed (a bit like old-school classical music, such as Bach’s Partita in A minor for solo flute).

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video by Little Ambient Machines, based in Amsterdam, and posted today at [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsX_wCJ5yQQ).

Herron x Bryars

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

There are some great, often telling, always culturally informative moments when music pops up in the spy and detective novels of Mick Herron. This quote is the kicker to an earlier set-up in the scene. It’s from Slough House, the seventh novel in Herron’s Slow Horses series.

Current Favorites: Samples, Horror, Perfume, Fusion

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.

▰ I’m a sucker for many things, among them low-key propulsive fusion featuring Rhodes piano and a muted, economical horn section, along with liner notes stating which drummer is in the right channel and which in the left. This is the new Dosh track, [“If U Strike Me Down,”](https://dosh.bandcamp.com/track/if-u-strike-me-down) off the forthcoming album *Tomorrow 1972*. Dosh is Martin Dosh, longtime drummer for Andrew Bird’s band.

▰ There’s an excellent new Kev Brown hip-hop instrumentals set out, [*The Music Underneath! The “GOOD​.​” Instrumentals*](https://kevbrown.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-underneath-the-good-instrumentals). I’d love to know what the opening track samples. Its stately procession reminds me of David Byrne’s Knee Plays.

Heymun has been summoning up her inner synesthete, channeling perfumes into music in an occasional series she calls “Scent to Sound.” This floaty, enjoyably askew ambience correlates with her sense that the particular fragrance suggests “Butterflies fluttering in my stomach.”

Clint Mansell has a new horror score out, *In the Earth*, for the Ben Wheatley film, and it is a dark, intense, highly recommended listen. One track, “Spirit of the Woods,” is up officially on YouTube, and all 16 tracks are on streaming services.

twitter.com/disquiet: Doppler Cycling, Avril Livecoding, Car Alarms

From the past week

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

▰ I ask myself, “What will I reward myself with if I don’t look at Twitter or Facebook all weekend?”

On Monday, I understand that the true reward is that I didn’t look at Twitter or Facebook all weekend.

▰ Doppler effect in full effect at the track in Golden Gate Park, various cyclists flying by with their individual soundtracks blaring, varying speeds allowing for occasional generative mashups as the after-work crew gains in number.

▰ Hyperlocal breaking news, but Sichuan Home on Geary in San Francisco now makes its own sausage. With respect to the vegans who may stumble on this tweet, the image is at [instagram.com/dsqt](https://www.instagram.com/p/CNghdG6B1rU/).

▰ Prepping for one of the best cultural holidays of the year, Eric Ducker notes the 20th anniversary of Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th”: [nytimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/arts/music/aphex-twin-avril-14th.html).

▰ Witness in all its monospace beauty as Lil Data brings Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14th” to life one typed character at a time: [twitter.com/lildata](https://twitter.com/lildata/status/1382320476287074308). The source code (in TidalCycles) is at [github.com/jarmitage](https://gist.github.com/jarmitage/1f9dfa38f776508e8b52634ecd70c66d).

▰ Phase 1: I was definitely not expecting an acoustic guitar Misfits campfire singalong on Mayans M.C. this week.

Phase 2: And even that didn’t prepare me for the GG Allin campfire singalong that came later in the episode.

▰ #protip You can mute (and even block) every account whose advertisements pop up in your Twitter feed. (I can’t imagine this option won’t go away at some point, so enjoy it while you’ve got it.)

▰ Car alarms never actually stop. They simply pause before starting again.

“If two analyses done in the 1990s still hold, 95 to 99 percent of all car-alarm triggerings are literally false alarms.”

If I can sort out which car it is, I’m going to print out this Ilana E. Strauss article and put it on the windshield: [theatlantic.com](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/05/car-alarms-dont-work-why-so-common/482769/).

I believe the end of this particular car alarm scenario will resemble the end (spoiler!) of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, when the entire neighborhood lines up to destroy the car in question.

Car alarms are, in effect, a weaponized rendition of John Cage’s 4’33”. Rather than frame silence with a mime-like depiction of the formal structure of a piano recital, one demarcates its temporal and qualitative boundaries with annoying, thoughtless, grating, high-volume bleats.

I’ll say, on the ninth or tenth round of the alarm going off since 5:57am today, I’ve come to admire the professionalism of whoever devised the horn. It cuts through walls, glass, bone, and the comfort of one’s own living space. Someone got a PhD in acoustics of crying babies.

At this point, much of this block must now be deep in some sort of shared hyperspeed PTSD, as we all await the inevitable return of the car alarm going off. Before, there was silence when the alarm stopped. Now there is just a premonition of noise.

9:42: I’m working from home, and I’ve got a ton to do, and some calls, but I guess I’ll just keep live-tweeting this car alarm from the comfort of my couch until someone sets the vehicle on fire.

11:32: Interesting. The car alarm has not sounded again since 9:42. Likely the car has been moved and is mundanely terrorizing another neighborhood.

1:31pm: The car alarm has returned. Someone finished their errands, apparently. They forgot to purchase earmuffs for the rest of us.

It’s 7:39am the next day and there’s been no alarm since my previous tweet in this thread, but I recognize that the dense electronic signal ecology of modern life in combination with the fragile ego circuitry of car alarms means simply tweeting this may set it off again.

▰ Having the cover of your current book as your Kindle’s lockscreen will be great. But since getting what you’ve wanted is rarely enough, now I’ll want a quick process to turn the Kindle lockscreen into a to-do list, calendar, or some other single-page document.

▰ Perhaps not all of my confusion is the result of pandemic brain:

The Last of Us
Among Us
Them
Us
This Is Us

Drones on a Budget

A live AE Modular set from the 5th Volt

There are numerous small-brew synthesizers in production currently, each with its own approach, in terms of how individual pieces of equipment operate, and what functions are explored, as well as the make-up of their own communities, who share their creations and provide feedback to the manufacturers, which in turn often yields new equipment. This is a short video displaying the drone capacities from the AE Modular line from Tangible Waves, which originated as a Kickstarter and has expanded into a wide range of small, affordable (the most expensive two are €74.00 and €87.00, while most are half that amount), mix-and-match modules. The source module heard here, the Drone38, contains 18 oscillators in a trio of sets containing a half dozen each. They’re modulated by hand, both the oscillator sets themselves, in terms of tuning, and the relative volume of the signals, plus various effects, in the DroneX mixer. This is a short demonstration from the 5th Volt channel on YouTube.

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGmMeqc9OTc).