Disquiet Junto Project 0468: Mirror Rorrim

The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.

/ 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, December 21, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 17, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0468: Mirror Rorrim

The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.

Step 1: Make up a new musician, someone other than yourself. Give them a name, as well as creative traits different from how you perceive your own, perhaps even in stark contrast with your own.

Step 2: Record a duet together, you and the person you invented in Step 1.

Step 3: If you would like, when posting the track include some description of your collaborator, and about your working relationship.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0468” (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 “disquiet0468” (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-0468-mirror-rorrim/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0468-mirror-rorrim/)

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, December 21, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 17, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. Maybe you have learned something about time this year.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0468” 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 468th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Mirror Rorrim (The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together), at:

https://disquiet.com/0468/

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-0468-mirror-rorrim/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0468-mirror-rorrim/)

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 Timothy Takemoto, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/36f8r](https://flic.kr/p/36f8r)

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

Live Cassette Loop Jam

From the YouTube account of the British/Italian duo Sonars

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This rough-textured live ambient cassette loop jam noted the Sonars account on YouTube hitting the 1,000-follower milestone. It’s lush, with echoes of Gavin Bryars’ work, suggesting a sepia-toned version of a damaged old document, the aural equivalent of a photograph altered by time and the elements, changes both cultural and elemental. While listening, get lost in the nostalgia-tinged atmosphere. Also keep an eye (and ear) out the moment, just after the two-minute point, when the pitch, and attendant pace, are slowed markedly.

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 on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07pBVC_hhnU). Sonars is a self-described electro-psych duo from the United Kingdom and Italy. More from them at [sonars.bandcamp.com](https://sonars.bandcamp.com/releases) and [instagram.com/sonarsmusic](https://www.instagram.com/sonarsmusic/).

Chris Herbert’s Sketches

Compiled from the cloud

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The album *Nuvoloso* is named in Italian for the place where the sounds it contains were once housed. The word means cloudy. The place is SoundCloud. Or was. Chris Herbert, who released *Nuvoloso* late last month, has abandoned the platform, and here collects material he once hosted there, from the fully charged guitar explorations of “Charles Bullen” (seemingly named for the This Heat band member), to the steam-powered industrial music of “Neues Zodiak Free Arts Lab,” to the atmospheric fragments that charactertize the two opening tracks, “Macrolanguage” and “Live Architecture (Submerged/Factured),” as well as the elegant unease of “Untitled Tape Sketch.”

SoundCloud is often at its best for sketches, a way by which musicians can quickly check in with their listeners and collaborators. Herbert summarizes the scenario well in his accompanying note, explaining he used the site “as an audio diary for pieces that contained germinal ideas or material that was below the threshold for release but nevertheless indicated some kind of development: there’s a range and scope that is quite different in nature to my usual output.”

Album originally posted at [chrisherbert.bandcamp.com](https://chrisherbert.bandcamp.com/album/nuvoloso). More from Herbert, who is based in Birmingham, England, at [chrisherbert.net](http://chrisherbert.net/).

Current Favorites: Maraš, Buckley, Ristić, Hoedemaekers

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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. (This weekly feature was previously titled Current Listens. The name’s been updated for clarity’s sake.)

▰ Svetlana Maraš’ Ear I Am is an ever-shifting survey of antic sounds, industrial mechanics, and playful noises, all with a sense of rhythmic flow, even if that rhythm is, on occasion, purposefully quite subtle. The six-track album is a live recording, taped back in 2017 on the first of February at the Ear We Are Festival in Biel, Switzerland. She is based in Belgrade, Serbia.

▰ Linda Buckley’s “Loom” is a ferocious heave of mechanical trance state, until it isn’t, until the gear gnashing briefly disappears and all that’s left is the trance itself. And then the burners power up, and the machines go at it again. Thrilling. She is based in Dublin, Ireland.

▰ The 17th album in the great 20×20 series is another set of 20 tracks, each 20 seconds long. This latest, Do Not Go Gentle by Manja Ristić, alternates between degraded recordings of Dylan Thomas poems with snatches of string instruments, rattly percussion, and field recordings. She is based in Belgrade, Serbia.

▰ Rutger Hoedemaekers’ music for the TV series *No Man’s Land* is a beautiful expanse of tension-laden stillness. He’s probably best known for his work, with Hildur Guðnadóttir and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, on Trapped. I can’t find much of this excellent score in embeddable form on non-commercial streaming services, but it’s at music.youtube.com and spotify.com. (If those links fail, please let me know.) Also recommended is his The Last Berliner score, which I’ve had on repeat the past few months. Hoedemaekers, originally from the Netherlands, is based in Brussels, Belgium.