Seefeel x Autechre

A 2021 reissue of a 2003 release of a 1994 remix of a 1994 track

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Update: When I first posted this, I misstated the release date of the remix (as 2003, when it was released, instead of 1994). I then received a clarification from none other than Autechre’s Sean Booth, who wrote as follows. Reprinted with his permission.

>that seefeel rmx is actually from 94, it was done in return for their remix of basscadet but for some unknown reason warp never put it out, then mark eventually put it out in 2003 (i think cos he felt guilty or something)

>some trivia: it was done on a rainy afternoon in april in the same room we made amber in (my bedroom at the time) just before we finished doing the tracks for amber, so it’s part of that era
>
>it was a live take hence the stupid runtime

To highlight a slate of reissues from the band Seefeel, Warp Records this week posted an Autechre remix of “Spangle,” the original from the classic 1994 *Artificial Intelligence II* compilation that featured Autechre as well, along with Scanner, Richard D. James (in Polygon Window guise), Richard H. Kirk (of Cabaret Voltaire), and many others. In the remix, an extended bout of genteel ambience, all quavery sine waves, eventually — far later and less organically than the original — gives way to a slowly emerging , deliciously gated beat and a heavenly bit of vocal from Seefeel’s Sarah Peacock. The other members are Mark Clifford, Daren Seymour, and Justin Fletcher.

The remix dates from 1994, but wasn’t released until 2003. Here’s the original for comparison:


Get the collection featuring both tracks, *Rupt and Flex (1994 – 96)*, at [seefeel.bandcamp.com](https://seefeel.bandcamp.com/album/rupt-and-flex-1994-96-1).

Disquiet Junto Project 0484: A Movable Heart

The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer's wind chimes to a new location.

/ 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, April 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 8, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0484: A Movable Heart

The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s wind chimes to a new location.

First, some background: Artist Chris Kallmyer’s “Two hearts are better than one” is a pair of wind chimes, one of which is depicted in this week’s cover image, crisscrossing Los Angeles at the height of the pandemic. Installed at homes for week-long listening sessions, the chimes formed a duet across a city and provided intimate experiences with sound for 16 families sheltering at home. (More at [chriskallmyer.com](http://www.chriskallmyer.com/portfolio-item/2-hearts/).)

Step 1: Chris has provided us with a recording of the wind chimes, a little over five minutes long. The audio was cleaned up by Alex Hawthorn to maximize the clarity of the chimes themselves, removing much of the background sound, thus situating the chimes in what might be thought of as a platonic space. Access the wav file at [dropbox.com](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9fwo845wf218cn/2hearts_v3_heavy.wav?dl=0).

Step 2: You’ll be continuing the journey of this wind chime. You’ll do this by playing the wav file recording out loud somewhere you choose, and recording the sound of the wind chime in that environment.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0484” (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 “disquiet0484” (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-0484-a-movable-heart/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0484-a-movable-heart/)

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, April 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 8, 2021.

Length: You’d likely keep your track to the original length, but vary as you see fit.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0484” 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 484th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Movable Heart (The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s wind chimes to a new location) — at:
https://disquiet.com/0484/

More on Chris Kallmyer at:
[chriskallmyer.com](http://chriskallmyer.com/).

Major thanks to Alex Hawthorn for support:
[alexhawthorn.com](https://alexhawthorn.com/)

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-0484-a-movable-heart/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0484-a-movable-heart/)

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

Image associated with this project is by Pieter Kaufman and used with the artist’s permission.

Hold Music

A mesostic

/ By Marc Weidenbaum 
Sometimes it seems tHat
                the Only breaks we
                   aLlow ourselves
    are the ones we’D rather
                 had never
          happened. My instinct
   is to listen throUgh the 
                    Sound on the 
  other end of the lIne for
               some Clue, some presence.

Rhodes + Synth

From Minneapolis-based Midera

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Beautiful, nearly 12-minute live performance by Minneapolis-based Midera, playing Rhodes piano along with another bit of old-school hardware, the Sequential Prophet 10. Not surprisingly, the latter provides the lush, sustained pads, while the Rhodes provides a simple solo that occasionally emerges when the waves of the Prophet ease. According to the accompanying note, this is a sideways view because the other camera failed to record. Arguably the placidity of a single vantage is to the production’s benefit, even if it was achieved by accident.

More from Midera at [mideraartist.wordpress.com](https://mideraartist.wordpress.com/)

Soundbites: Deaf Bell, Social Sound, Venue-less Gigs

Recent reads (etc.) on sound

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A lightly annotated sound-studies clipping service, collected in advance of the next issue of my This Week in Sound email newsletter ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)):

▰ The mother of the father of the telephone was deaf. Alexander Graham Bell’s own father developed a system called Visible Speech to facilitate communication. Bell eventually himself married a woman who had lost her hearing in childhood. And now, Katie Booth, in her new book, *The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness*, traces this throughline in Bell’s life and work: “his creative genius and his misguided efforts to eradicate Deaf culture,” as Valerie Thompson puts it in a review. Here’s a particularly damning statement from Bell’s wife: “You are tender and gentle to deaf children, but their interest to you lies in their being deaf, not in their humanity.”
[https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2021/04/06/the-invention-of-miracles/](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2021/04/06/the-invention-of-miracles/)

▰ LinkedIn is reportedly looking to add an audio chatroom feature, which makes sense, given how much of Clubhouse, the “audio social network,” has been professional conversations. This feature expansion would be part of a broader range of changes LinkedIn is making to flesh out its social capabilities.
[https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/linkedin-confirms-that-it-is-working-on-a-clubhouse-like-audio-chatroom-feature-9483741.html](https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/linkedin-confirms-that-it-is-working-on-a-clubhouse-like-audio-chatroom-feature-9483741.html)

▰ Miss live music? Then I recommend this Gabriele de Seta essay on Hong Kong’s “no-venue underground” (a term credited to Rob Hayler), drawing from personal experience (2012-2016) playing in a city with few places to perform experimental music in the first place: “It is somehow ironically appropriate that, in this city without ground, experimental musicians find themselves relegated to a precarious underground actively carved out of fleeting spaces strewn across the upper floors of post-industrial peripheries. These precarious venues appear and disappear following the inexorable inflation of property prices and the investment decisions of landlords, leaving local show organizers to work in the present tense with whatever space is available at the moment.” It’s a timely, applicable piece during our moment of place-less livestreams. The essay is from the new book *Fractured Scenes: Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia*, edited by Damien Charrieras and François Mouillot, both professors at universities in Hong Kong.
[https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_7](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-5913-6_7)

▰ Erik Davis, author of *Techgnosis* and a friend of mine since college, writes about taking guitar lessons for the first time since high school. I myself started taking weekly lessons a few years ago, and can relate to this distinction he draws: “Rather than *playing* guitar, I am *practicing* with it. I don’t mean rote exercises — though I do some of those — but something more like meditation practice: a daily commitment to disciplined method and unpredictable encounter, to emotional exploration and deconstruction, to attention and listening as much as to performance or ‘doing.’” Likewise, he talks about trying to reconsider the role of recording in his efforts: “I want the recording device to become part of practice rather than ambition, no longer a staff sergeant of the Productivity Regime but a challenging feedback friend, breaking the spell to deepen it.”

[https://www.burningshore.com/p/open-tunings](https://www.burningshore.com/p/open-tunings)

▰ News of Google’s Project Wolverine goes back a month, but I don’t want to lose track of it. It’s reportedly a supercharged earbud. According to a summary by Ashley Carman, “[T]hey’re currently trying to figure out how to isolate people’s voices in a crowded room or make it easier to focus on one person when overlapping conversations are happening around you.” Carman compares this with Whisper ([whisper.ai](https://whisper.ai/)), and others to the lamented, defunct Doppler Labs. As David Pierce put it in his [overview of Doppler’s fall](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-downfall-of-doppler-labs) back in 2017, it “had the bad luck of being a hardware company at a time when the biggest players in tech — Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook — are all pouring billions into developing their own gadgets.” Now Google appears to be pursuing the endeavor.

[https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313421/alphabet-project-x-wolverine-hearing-aid-project](https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/4/22313421/alphabet-project-x-wolverine-hearing-aid-project)
[https://www.businessinsider.com/google-x-alphabet-hearing-project-wolverine-codename-augmented-reality-2021-3](https://www.businessinsider.com/google-x-alphabet-hearing-project-wolverine-codename-augmented-reality-2021-3)