Disquiet – Page 479 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

twitter.com/disquiet: Caption Culture

From the past week

December 26, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each week, collating the tweets I made at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet/) that I want to keep track of. For the most part, this means ones I initiated, not ones in which I directly responded to someone. I sometimes tweak them a bit here.

▰ Backing up a track 10 seconds to see if that siren was part of it or if an emergency services vehicle had just passed by.

▰ The TV caption reads “[melancholy music plays]” but it’s clearly a main character playing Satie, which is clearly a cultural signal of the education, bearing, and mindset of the individual. Seems like “[melancholy music plays]” doesn’t quite cut it. Of course, if this tweet were itself a movie, the correct caption would, indeed, be “[melancholy music plays]”

▰ WW84 sure doesn’t have much going for it, but at least someone on the production crew thought to hang a Minor Threat concert poster on an exterior wall in Washington, D.C.

▰ [overly heartbreaking farewell music]
[everything is a bit buzzy right now]
[distant screaming]
[angry ant noises]
[holiday music]

Those are some of the hypothetical captions being explored for their sonic content in this week’s Disquiet Junto music community project.

A Gnostic Winter Solstice

And a new album by Brian Crabtree

December 25, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="https://tehn.bandcamp.com/album/gnostics">gnostics by tehn</a>

Tehn, aka Brian Crabtree, released a new album just as the year was coming to an end, right on the Winter Solstice. Titled *Gnostics*, it’s a collection of varied electronically mediated pieces, ranging from syrupy drones (“Sleep”) to introspective beats (“The Second Circle”) to a dense, and seemingly unmolested, field recording (“Silence as Antimatter,” the album’s closing track).

There’s a looseness to the set, in part due to the different approaches all heard in one setting, and also within them, like how the slow chords of “Wide Awake” are interspersed with joyous shouts, as if people were playing frisbee right outside Crabtree’s recording studio and he’d left the window open. Similarly, “The Second Circle” breaks midway through for an unexpected burst of unexpected white noise.

In a brief liner note, Crabtree explains that *Gnostics*, the title taken from a book by French writer Jacques Lacarrière, is drawn from “a body of unfinished recordings.” Fortunately, there’s additional information in a dedicated discussion thread at the [llllllll.co](https://llllllll.co/t/tehn-gnostics/) boards, maintained in coordination with [monome.org](https://monome.org/), the musical technology company he founded with Kelli Cain.

Album originally posted at [tehn.bandcamp.com](https://tehn.bandcamp.com/album/gnostics). Crabtree lives in Delhi, New York. More at [nnnnnnnn.co](https://nnnnnnnn.co/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0469: [Missing in Caption]

The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.

December 24, 2020December 25, 2020 / 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 28, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 24, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0469) for the duration of the project.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0469: [Missing in Caption]

The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.

Step 1: You’ve likely watched TV with the captions on and seen how the music is described: “[eerie synth music]” or “[romantic classical music]” or “[melancholy piano].” Reflect on that experience, in particular what the captions accomplish, as well as what, in their brevity, they fail to describe.

Step 2: Choose a caption of your own creation, or borrow from a show or film you’ve recently watched.

Step 3: Record music that is true to the caption selected in Step 2, and in the process also push past that caption to make sound that the caption falls short of encapsulating.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0469” (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 “disquiet0469” (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-0469-missing-in-caption/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0469-missing-in-caption/)

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. Is it a scene, an episode, or a feature film?

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0469” 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 469th weekly Disquiet Junto project, [Missing in Caption] (The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions), at:

https://disquiet.com/0469/

Pure Sonic Foam

From the London-based musician who goes by Ambalek

December 23, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The pure sonic foam of this Ambalek video, “The Hidden Path,” can, like much great quiet music, appear unassuming at first. Dispense, please, with the sense as a listener that something this quiet must be played quiet, as if there is some cultural balance to be maintained, to be adhered to. Turn it up. Turn it up, and immerse yourself in the shifting strata of sound, the cloud formations and serene textures that play atop, alongside, and against each other. And if you’re interested in the process, be sure to scroll down on the video’s page, where Ambalek goes into detail on the tools and techniques employed.

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 the [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTtq5VVM9IE) channel of Ambalek. More from Ambalek, who is based in London, at [soundcloud.com/ambalek](https://soundcloud.com/ambalek/) and [instagram.com/_ambalek](https://instagram.com/_ambalek/).

2020 HindSight

An instrumental hip-hop set from Philadelphia's Nex Millen

December 22, 2020December 22, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="https://nexmillen.bandcamp.com/album/2020-hindsight-millennium-beat-ep">2020 HindSight Millennium Beat EP by Nex Millen</a>

February, July, September, and December were my favorite months this year. Not this year meaning this year, but this year as memorialized in a dozen tracks, one for each month, on Philadelphia producer Nex Millen’s *2020 HindSight Millennium Beat EP*. From tightly clasped hi-hats to loungey keys, jittery atmospheres to nearly subaural bass line melodies, refracted guitar samples to vocal playfulness, stereo hijinks to ratatatat percussion, those four tracks are among the album’s moodiest. Each, presumably, map’s Millen’s state of mind over the course of 2020’s countless horrors. Now his instrumental hip-hop is something to relax to, to recuperate to. There’s much more to *2020 HindSight* than just those four tracks, but they’re the ones helping me make it through the last few weeks of the year.

Album originally posted at [nexmillen.bandcamp.com](https://nexmillen.bandcamp.com/album/2020-hindsight-millennium-beat-ep). More from Nex Millen at [twitter.com/nexmillen](https://twitter.com/nexmillen).