Disquiet – Page 465 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquiet Junto Project 0475: Low End (4 of 3)

The Assignment: Remix a trio by doing forensics on its component parts.

February 4, 2021February 5, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

*Special Note: You can contribute more than one track this week. Usually Junto projects have a one-track-per-participant limit. This week you can do a second one. Please see additional details in Step 4 below.*

*Answer to Frequent Question: You don’t need to have participated in any of the recent solos, duets, or trios projects to participate in this one.*

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, February 8, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 4, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0475: Low End (4 of 3)

The Assignment: Remix a trio by doing forensics on its component parts.

Step 1: This week will involve remixing. The past three weeks, we’ve produced a large number of trios. These have been the result of a sequence of steps: first someone made a solo, then someone else turned it into a duet, and then someone else added a third element, making a completed work in the form of a trio. This week you will be remixing one of these trios, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project ([disquiet.com/0475](https://disquiet.com/0475)).

Step 2: First, you must select the piece of music you will remixing. There are over 65 tracks in all to choose from, 62 as part of this playlist:

[https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0474](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0474)

And these four others. Consider the first to be number 63, and then in sequence to number 66:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0474-police-action/41007/54](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0474-police-action/41007/54)

[https://sevenism.bandcamp.com/track/fog-in-the-chanel-continent-cut-off](https://sevenism.bandcamp.com/track/fog-in-the-chanel-continent-cut-off)

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0474-police-action/41007/38](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0474-police-action/41007/38)

[https://prrk-industries.bandcamp.com/track/follow-the-drummer](https://prrk-industries.bandcamp.com/track/follow-the-drummer)

To select a track, you can listen through all that (warning: it’s a lot) and choose one, or you can use a random number generator. (Note: it’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)

Step 3: The simply stated goal is to remix the trio resulting from your selection process in Step 2. However, it is strongly encouraged that you locate the duet and the solo on which the trio is founded, and that you then employ those three tracks in your work. (In past projects like this one, some musicians have essentially extracted the other half of the duet by “removing” the solo from it, and done the same with the trio versus the duet.)

Step 4: As with last week, you can contribute more than one track this week. You can do up to two total. If you choose to do a second, you should preferably try to use a duet track that no one else has used yet. The goal is for many as people as possible to benefit from the experience of being part of an asynchronous collaboration. After a lot of detailed instruction, that is the spirit of this project.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0475” (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 “disquiet0475” (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-0475-low-end/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0475-low-end/)

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, February 8, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 4, 2021.

Length: The length is up to you. Go long, or keep it tight, or somewhere in between.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0475” 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 475th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Low End (4 of 3) / The Assignment: Remix a trio by doing forensics on its component parts — at:

https://disquiet.com/0475/

Aphex Twin on Nylon

Simon Farintosh talks about arranging classic tracks like “Avril 14th” and “Alberto Balsalm” for classical guitar.

February 3, 2021February 5, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Almost three years ago, back in April 2018, Simon Farintosh posted a two-minute video of himself performing an Aphex Twin song in his own arrangement for classical guitar. The video was 10 days late. That is, it was posted on April 24, 10 days after April 14, the date from which the song in question, “Avril 14th,” takes its title.

Since then, Farintosh has more than made up for that slight delay. In a little more than half a year, he has posted to YouTube one by one a half dozen live video performances of Aphex Twin tracks, including an updated version of “Avril 14th” (see above), mixed in with what might be expected from a classical guitarist (Bach, Scriabin, Villa-Lobos), plus more modern works by Philip Glass, Thelonious Monk, and Nils Frahm, and even “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” from David Lynch’s *Eraserhead* (humorously, Farintosh opted to do this last one in black and white).

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The additional contemporary material gives some aesthetic context for what Farintosh is up to. I was intrigued by his Aphex Twin project and sent him an email. He had mentioned online that he was collecting the six pieces into an EP, and replied to my email with an advance copy. I spent time listening to the tracks and comparing them with the source material. I grew interested in the decision-making entailed in Farintosh’s effort, and we agreed to do the interview that appears below.

There is no shortage of Aphex Twin covers, from post-classical ensembles like Alarm Will Sound to adventurous jazz groups like the Bad Plus to countless amateur piano and guitar players who post videos of their homemade performances. I wrote about several of these in my book on the album *Selected Ambient Works Volume II*. Few have the sustained attention to detail that Farintosh’s exhibit. As he explained, “I think that in a sense, every transcription is a cover. … The reverse is not true, however.” (There’s quite a bit in the book about the correlation of the music of Aphex Twin, aka Richard D. James, and classical music, so I won’t go over it in this brief introduction.)

“Arranging electronic music for guitar is similar arranging orchestral music,” he told me our back and forth, “as there are so many moving parts and subtleties within the textures.”
Below is a lightly edited transcript of the interview, which took place over email. Farintosh, who is currently pursuing his doctorate in music at the University of Toronto, talks about learning difficult time signatures, what tracks didn’t make the cut, keeping in mind that pianos are a kind of percussion instrument, and branching out into his own electronic music.

*Update: The album is now on streaming services, as of February 5, 2020, including [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/album/0mhEjBVbHDLAhwGD9ZydfY) and [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nxqX6Rpgccjb7deQswfkOLDVWKc18wy7g).*

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Marc Weidenbaum: How did this project come to be?

Simon Farintosh: I arranged “Avril 14th” back in 2018 as an encore piece to use in concerts. Upon uploading a recording to YouTube, I quickly became inundated with requests for tabs and sheet music. This outpouring of interest encouraged me, so I invested in better recording equipment and began to work on “Kesson Daslef” and “Flim.” Before I knew it, I had the better part of a digital release arranged and recorded.

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Weidenbaum: I believe that you were born in 1995, the year “Alberto Balsalm,” one of the tracks you perform here, was released. How did you become exposed to Aphex Twin’s music?

Farintosh: I don’t remember exactly when I discovered Aphex Twin, but the music has been with me for a long time. The song “Rhubarb” was definitely my gateway to playing Aphex Twin. I’ve had bad insomnia for a while, and I used to listen to this track for up to an hour on repeat in an effort to fall asleep. I quickly became entranced by the more cacophonous side of Aphex Twin, as well, and listened to the album *Drukqs* in its entirety many times. As a classically trained musician, I was extremely impressed by the harmonic and rhythmic ingenuity of Aphex Twin’s music. His synthesis of the minimalist classical aesthetic with modern hip-hop elements bridged two seemingly disparate worlds, and helped me imagine the nylon string guitar in a non-classical setting.

Continue reading “Aphex Twin on Nylon”

That Concert Questionnaire

The one from Facebook

February 2, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Memories and impressions change. These are mine right now.

First concert — Depends how it’s defined, but I imagine it’d be Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park in Manhattan in 1982 when I was a sophomore in high school.

Last concert — I’m assuming this means live and in person (not streaming online), so it was Mit Darm (Suki O’Kane and Edward Shocker), sharing the bill with the duo of Steve Adams and John Hanes at the Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco on [January 30, 2020](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/04/the-last-concert-i-saw-live-in-person/).

Worst concert — Hard to say. I think of a particular Juliana Hatfield show at the Cattle Club in Sacramento as a turning point for me, where I just couldn’t take that much verse chorus verse ever again. But that’s me, not her.

Loudest concert — Yes at Madison Square Garden on the 90125 tour. (Fun fact: a young Steven Soderbergh directed the live film of that tour.) None of us could hear the next day, which messed up a concert our high school choir was due to perform. A decade or so later I wrote a comic about the experience that was drawn by Justin Green and published in Tower Records’ *Pulse!* magazine, where I was an editor at the time. (Amid the “loudest” category I’m not counting concerts that were so loud that [it was assumed](https://disquiet.com/2019/02/07/my-first-article-for-the-wire/) you had to put in noise blockers simply to attend.)

Seen the most — Probably John Zorn, even though it’s been decades. I saw him a lot in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.

Most surprising — Not sure, but finding myself sitting behind John Cage during a performance of his toy piano works during a Bang on a Can marathon was a surprise, even more so when he fell asleep.

Best concert — I’m having trouble answering this one. “Best” isn’t something I take naturally to. Derrick May and Juan Atkins at a rave in Oakland always comes to mind when this topic comes up. Maybe Charles Gayle at a squat in the East Village in 1988 or 1989? Hard to say. Maybe Billy Childish with Thee Headcoats in England in the early 1990s (I showed up just at the end and caught maybe a song or two of encores, but they were awe-some!) Probably Talking Heads at Forest Hills during high school on the tour that became the film *Stop Making Sense*.

Next concert — I don’t have any tickets pending, that’s for sure. I’m guessing it’ll be whatever is playing next at the Luggage Store Gallery or the Center for New Music here in San Francisco when the pandemic breaks.

Wish I could have seen — This is a big category. Not really sure where to begin. I do wish I’d seen Rage Against the Machine live.

Femi Fleming’s Ambient Noise

A live video performance

February 2, 2021February 14, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Settle in as Femi Fleming gets this live improv rolling. There’s time to don headphones, and you might as well follow the cue of the musician, seen doing so at the start. That’s before potting up some loops of pleasingly garbled voices, which soon enough are overlapped, one atop another, into a syrupy drone. Employing a mic admirably suited to CB radio activity, there’s some deep intoning, layering human hum amid the hum already accrued. From there on in, the pattern is set: a whir of whirling dervishes, a tornado of microsonics, a noise performance that involves repeated employment of gritty textures but ultimately bends toward atmosphere.

Video originally posted at Femi Fleming’s [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMJRLBFiG-8) channel. More from Fleming, a student at RISD who records as Sadnoise, at [instagram.com/femifleming](https://www.instagram.com/femifleming/).

Christian Carrière’s Sacred Space Exploration

Using a no-input console

February 1, 2021February 27, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If the sonorous spaciousness of this track by Christian Carrière has a heavenly resonance to it, there’s a specific reason for that impression. Not only was the audio recorded at a church, but the recording process entailed exploring the characteristics of that space itself. The location is in Montréal, Québec, at the Église Sacré Coeur, which is approaching its 150th anniversary. Carrière explained to me via email that his project originated in 2019 as a consideration of “the acoustics of sacred spaces,” the plan being to use, as he described it, “the pure tones generated by my polyphonic no-input console.”

A no-input console is one in which the sound emitted is nothing but the inherent noise fed back through the console itself, resulting in unique, often alien-seeming tonalities, such as the ones heard here. Carrière has been at this a long time. Here’s a (https://vimeo.com/30074885), dating back nearly a decade, of him performing some of “Fratres” by Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer, using a no-input mixer:

The tones heard in “Sacred Acoustics T004” are externalized in the heart of the Église Sacré Coeur on a system of speakers, and then the sound is recorded, capturing the echoing effect that the architecture gives shape to. Explains Carrière, “The idea was to tune the tones of the console to the resonant frequencies of a given space, thus emphasizing — and playing with — its inherent acoustical properties.” The sounds are glorious, pulsing and swelling and sinuous like an otherworldly choir.

Track originally posted to Carrière’s [SoundCloud](https://soundcloud.com/christiancarriere/sacred-acoustics-190313-t004) page. More from him at [christiancarriere.com](http://www.christiancarriere.com/).