Cassette Culture

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

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Cleaned out the office a bit this weekend, and was reminded that when I [interviewed](https://disquiet.com/2001/10/14/plastic-man/) Squarepusher back in 2001, I used an authentic, artisanal microcassette.

Being a cheapskate in the late 1990s when interviewing musicians meant not only using both sides of a cassette tape, but also unintentionally summoning up great hypothetical supergroups.

I’m apparently prepared for when the cassette tape revival levels up to the VHS revival, presuming these haven’t congealed in the interim.

Current Favorites: Organ/Synth + Instrumental Yo La Tengo

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.)

This week, some recent favorites to which I keep returning:

▰ Helena Ford’s [*Songs for Organ and Synth*](https://helenaford.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-organ-and-synth): an album of stately court music for our hybrid analog-digital present.

▰ [*The Sounds of the Sounds of Science*](https://yolatengo.bandcamp.com/album/the-sounds-of-the-sounds-of-science) is a full album of instrumentals from the acclaimed indie rock band Yo La Tengo. The pieces were composed to accompany aquatic documentary shorts by the filmmaker Jean Painlevé (1902-1989). The music is more rock-like but no less atmospheric than the experimental tracks the band released [earlier this year](https://disquiet.com/2020/07/14/yo-la-tengo-summon-the-now/).

▰ Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been entertaining pandemic-era listeners with solo performances, under the Songs of Comfort banner. The latest, [uploaded today](https://youtu.be/nXd9m8vup0g), is the theme composed by Ennio Morricone for the 1998 film *The Legend of 1900*.

twitter.com/disquiet: Record Retail + Headphone Reality

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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

▰ If any of you work at a record store with a substantial experimental/electronic section (or sections, better yet), could you get in touch? I’m doing a bit of research. Thanks. DM or email. (And thanks to the folks who’ve retweeted.)

▰ I wonder if I’ve truly listened to an album until I’ve listened on headphones. Or if listening on headphones is an unreal experience. Or if it was up until a certain point in recorded music. Or if it’s the case with some albums but not others. Then I start at the beginning again.

▰ Got myself some new work clothes, by which I mean pajama bottoms

▰ The photo in this week’s Disquiet Junto ([disquiet.com/0466](https://disquiet.com/0466)) is of the gated front door to the Luggage Store Gallery on Market Street in San Francisco.

▰ Yeah, I’ve had Hildur Guðnadóttir’s debut album, Mount A, on repeat all day.

▰ Uses for books at my desk, besides for reading:

1. Stands for each of my two speaker monitors

2. Stand for my keyboard (when I raise my screen in standing-desk mode)

3. Support for CD drive, which has a weird special cable that is too short to otherwise reach the USB port

▰ Munich. Buenos Aires. Nottingham. Members of the Disquiet Junto music community are taking up George Wallace’s suggestion that cities other than Miami need to get their sound machines in order. The (https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0466) will grow as track are added over the weekend.

▰ Tired: I can’t drive 55

Wired: I can’t drive 1.5

▰ Even on non-“Bandcamp Friday” days, my filters direct emails from “[email protected]” into a folder, bypassing my inbox. I search once a day for “http://bandcamp.com/yum” to find emails including free access for review consideration. I look at the folder every day or so.

▰ Been working steadily to Max Richter’s Sleep all day. False advertising! :)

▰ And on that note, have a good weekend. Avoid the crazies. Check your sources. If you work at a record store that has a strong experimental/electronic section, get in touch. I have questions (no, I’m not trying to sell stuff; it’s research). Thanks. See you Monday. Maybe Tuesday.

Emma Hendrix x Julie Gendron x W.A.C. Bennett

Hydroelectric minimal techno

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Julie Gendron and Emma Hendrix are Manufacturing Entertainment, a Canadian art duo with a decade and a half of collaboration (audio, video, installation, performance) to their credit. “When Once There Was” is a trance-inducing, ever-evolving, minimal-techno transition state, nearly a quarter of an hour during which rapid pulses gain hypnotic powers. What begins as mechanized pitter-patter escalates to something consuming and palpable, engrossing and enthralling. It might be difficult at any given moment to comprehend how what you recall from minutes, even moments, ago even became what you are currently hearing.

As it turns out, the transformation began before the track did. The audio is sourced from site recordings of the W.A.C Bennett Dam, a hydroelectric buttress against the Williston Reservoir in British Columbia, Canada. The 50th anniversary of the dam’s construction was celebrated two years ago, in 2018. The audio is a live performance, broacast on CiTR, the University of British Columbia’s radio station.

Track originally posted to [soundcloud.com/emmahendrix](https://soundcloud.com/emmahendrix/wotw-live-performance-on-cjsw). More on Manufacturing Entertainment at [manufacturingentertainment.com](https://manufacturingentertainment.com/) and [instagram.com/manufacturing_entertainment](https://www.instagram.com/manufacturing_entertainment/). Maps via Google.

Disquiet Junto Project 0466: [ ] Sound Machine

The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?

/ 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 7, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 3, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0466: [ ] Sound Machine

The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?

Step 1: The American comedian George Wallace made an astute observation this week on Twitter: “You never hear about sound machines from other cities. Miami really cornered the market on that shit.” Ponder this.

Step 2: Choose a city (perhaps your own, or one you’ve visited, or one you want to visit, or a fictional one) and share what its sound machine sounds like.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0466” (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 “disquiet0466” (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-0466-sound-machine/

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 7, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 3, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. Cities are both large and small.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0466” 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 466th weekly Disquiet Junto project, [ ] Sound Machine (The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?), at:

https://disquiet.com/0466/

Project inspired by a December 2, 2020, tweet from George Wallace:

https://twitter.com/MrGeorgeWallace/status/1334274395938832387

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-0466-sound-machine/

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