Disquiet – Page 485 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

“Night (There and Back)”

Sunday night loops

November 8, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Sunday night guitar loops. Unlike other recent guitar loop experiments I’ve tried out, this one has a live component. After the first minute or so (which I’d already layered in advance of hitting record), new material is added and then later deleted. This setup consists of electric guitar, reverb pedal, overdrive, and looper, plus an eBow on occasion for those extended notes. After recording (amp to phone, live in the room), I used Adobe Audition to implement a fade in and a fade out, and for a little additional reverb.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/disquiet](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/night-there-and-back).

Grace Notes: Jawn, Catharsis, Hopescrolling

From last week

November 8, 2020November 8, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Some tweet observations ([twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet)) I made over the course of the past week, lightly edited. I usually post this roundup on Saturdays, but yesterday was an unusual day.

I do this manually each week, just collating the tweets I made 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. Long ago, there was an automated way to collect a week’s tweets as a blog post, but that script stopped working at some point. I do have something set up that automatically collects all my tweets as a private Google document. That’s a useful tool to search through, though Twitter’s own [advanced search](https://twitter.com/search-advanced?lang=en) is there when I wonder, say, [how many times have I mentioned Ginger Baker’s album *Horses and Trees*?](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22horses%22%20(from%3Adisquiet)&src=typed_query) Or: [how often have I mentioned listening to Éliane Radigue on the bus](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22radigue%22%20%22bus%22%20(from%3Adisquiet)&src=typed_query&f=live)?

▰ Working on liner notes means having the same record on repeat for a long time in different contexts. I only write full-fledged liner notes about records I can do that with.

▰ Thank you, Small Professor, for having introduced me to the word “jawn” so I was prepared for this fine day. (And Carl Ritger for familiarizing me with it, too.)

▰ hopescrolling

▰ “You are using the computer audio.” A lot of computer interface language still, indeed, sounds like Kraftwerk lyrics.

▰ [cathartic scream]

▰ The longer this year gets, the more time we’re giving 2021 to up its game.

▰ After a buncha false starts, it’ll be Brian Eno’s *Thursday Afternoon* on repeat for the foreseeable future.

▰ Great (and, needless to say, well-timed for our anxious moment) interview with Brian Eno by Lindsay Zoladz about his music for/from films, with nods to Fellini and Lynch (*Dune* details!), and insight into ambient as constructed atmosphere: [nytimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/arts/music/brian-eno-film-music.html).

▰ Among the many things* I love about where I live, while it’s incredibly clear and beautiful out, the marine layer can still clog up the bay (a 15-minute walk away), meaning the fog horns (incongruously to a visitor) blow on (*including general local political/social comfort zone).

▰ Would love to know if the servers for Calm, InsightTimer, Headspace, and related apps are experiencing overload today.

▰ Hopeful for a near future in which the word “ignominious” is employed with great frequency.

▰ Catharsis go-to track:

▰ 조용한 / It’s always a good day to change your Twitter location to a country where you can’t read the language. I’m riding out the election with my “trends” all in Korean (with the exception of whatever single promoted tweet shows at the top of the list). Bonus points if it’s an alphabet you find aesthetically pleasing.

▰ I don’t need another Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie. I just need another Karen O / Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross cover of a Led Zeppelin song.

▰ “That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear, / But now the chorus I hear and am elated” –Walt Whitman

Friday Night Lights

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

November 7, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Electric guitar layers in single Ditto looper, via Fulltone overdrive and HardWire RV-7 reverb, with a few lines played on EBow

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Marc Weidenbaum (@dsqt) on Nov 6, 2020 at 6:51pm PST

The Voice of the Beat

Eight new tracks from Manchester-based Machine Woman

November 6, 2020November 6, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="https://machinewoman.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-basement-of-83-men">In the Basement of 83 Men by Machine Woman</a>

The new Machine Woman album half-tells stories with bits of spoken conversation, slivers of memoir, fragments of verbiage, sometimes as if overheard, often as if directed at the listener, and then as if the listener were, in fact, a close confidant — and sometimes that conversation is buried deep in the album’s sounds themselves. A warped tape of what seems like voice mail opens “Telephone Calls From Milan to New York (Featuring The Nativist).” A garbled anecdote partially explains the subject of a track titled “Man at the Bus Stop.” These voices that permeate *In the Basement of 83 Men* seep into our heads, so much so that even on the tracks where they’re not as prevalent, the sounds of Machine Woman’s rhythms seem made from voices. A beat on “The End of Last Year Always Be Beautiful” feels like it was shaped from a breathy vowel. A synth on “Frankfurt Glitch Machine” that moves like a broken Slinky toy blurts as if someone were struggling to say something. And quite clearly (at least to my ears), aspects of “Petrol Sounds I Hear Outside My Window” were certainly clipped from spoken language and reworked into another sort of communication, one built on the common language of techno. Percussive ingenuity and a storyteller’s imagination guide this excellent collection.

Album originally released at [machinewoman.bandcamp.com](https://machinewoman.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-basement-of-83-men). Machine Woman is Anastasia Vtorova, based in Manchester, U.K.

Disquiet Junto Project 0462: Vade in Pace

The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.

November 5, 2020November 6, 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, November 9, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 5, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0462: Vade in Pace

The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.

Step 1: Consider the way pace (tempo, speed) is experienced, represented, and accomplished in music.

Step 2: Consider the way stasis is experienced, represented, and accomplished in music.

Step 3: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds. If possible, have it end with a sense of outright stasis. Fading out is fine, too, certainly.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0462” (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 “disquiet0462” (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-0462-vade-in-pace/

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, November 9, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 5, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. Shorter is often better.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0462” 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 462nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Vade in Pace (The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds), at:

https://disquiet.com/0462/