2,000 Days of #DailyBleeps

The short-form delights of Todd Webb

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Todd Webb has, over the past roughly 2,000 days, posted roughly 2,000 #dailybleeps tracks online. They have populated his [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/toddbotdotcom) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/toddbotdotcom) accounts, but their primary home on the internet range has been [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/toddbotdotcom/). There, bite-size videos playfully themed around [squash](https://www.instagram.com/p/CGySBpehV05/) (the fruit, not the sport), and [going outside](https://www.instagram.com/p/CCw15EIh2k5/) (as determined by an Oblique Strategies card), and [frogs](https://www.instagram.com/p/CD-JzTYh3tC/), among numerous other topics, feature micro-compositions of what feel like the sonic equivalent of a zine aesthetic: either minor-key chipper, or up-tempo maudlin, and utterly delightful. And like all good things, they must come to an end. Webb will post his final daily bleep this coming Wednesday, October 28, two days from now.

Here’s a recent one, the theme of which is fog on the water. Gurgling beats provide the score for a view over the side of a road and into a deep bright miasma from which the track takes its title:

Some 40 of Todd’s daily bleeps fill out the the second of a two-CD [*Oahu*](https://oahu.bandcamp.com/album/slow-waves-simple-sounds) set released last year. A personal favorite of mine is track 15, “Not That I Mind (Simple Sounds 10),” which is like if Michael Nyman had been commissioned to record a lilting gamelan interstitial cue for a Nintendo video game. (The other half of *Oahu*, the first five tracks, collectively titled “Slow Waves,” are built from “mysterious sounds” from Deerhoof’s John Dieterich.)

The record is a great object, but arguably the best way to appreciate Webb’s daily bleeps is in situ, as tidy little audio-visual spectacles on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/toddbotdotcom/). And since Halloween is just a few days away, here, in closing, is one about “tree skeletons”:

More from Webb, a cartoonist and illustrator, at [toddbot.com](https://www.toddbot.com/). He lives in Virginia. (Full disclosure: I edited a comic of his in an early issue of the children’s magazine *Illustoria*.)

Current Listens: Halo Live + Aphex-ish Mansell

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. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)

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NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases

▰ Mike Weis translates grief into the beautiful, moving [*49 Days (Music for a Transition)*](https://grannyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/49-days-music-for-a-transition), two quarter-hour tracks of bell field recordings pushed nearly beyond recognition. This is a record I hope to get around to writing about more soon, but I wanted to get a mention in sooner still, because I’ve been returning to it daily.

▰ Lush and ambient all the way through, this [20-minute live](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swe_lXRZQXM) solo performance by Laurel Halo was recorded at the Monastery of São Martinho de Tibães near Braga, Portugal.

▰ Fahmi Mursyid, based in Bandung, Indonesia, ekes ripe atmospheres from a tape loop. The actual original tape is priced at $99. Four tracks derived from it comprise the album [*Satu*](https://ideologikal.bandcamp.com/album/satu), the digital version of which is set at whatever price the buyer wishes to pay.

▰ There’s a lot of beauty in Clint Mansell’s score to Ben Wheatley’s new film version of *Rebecca*, much of it devoted to expertly old-school thriller grandeur. One standout track, [“Côte d’Azur,”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfzxc6wSiUU) is to Aphex Twin’s solo piano “Avril 14” what Wheatley might have hoped his film would be to Hitchcock’s *Rebecca*: alternately hinting at and veering from the original, and offering its own pleasures entirely.

▰ Also, covered with a bit more depth: Fadi Tabbal’s fifth solo album, [*Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions*](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/23/tabbal-subject-to-potential-errors/), + the Yumi Iwaki / Ryan J Raffa split [*Living Distances*](https://disquiet.com/2020/10/20/iwaki-raffa-split/).

Wave Form

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

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The ocean provides a useful generative sample. The Instagram interface turns it into a loop. (Darn. That’s only the case within Instagram. The embedded version here doesn’t loop. Check it out at [instagram.com/dsqt](https://www.instagram.com/p/CGvr-5wBk0X/).)

Grace Notes: DeLillo’s Silence + RIP, Kondo

From the past week

/ 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’ll mention: I really enjoy Twitter. There’s a lot wrong with it, but if you mute assiduously, block when necessary, monitor your hours, and stick to a few topics, you can have some great back and forths with people. My refrain about social media: Twitter is where you learn how much you have in common with people you don’t know, and Facebook is where you learn how little you have in common with people you do know.

▰ RIP to the great Toshinori Kondo (December 15, 1948 – October 17, 2020). Sad sad day. The Japanese trumpeter was a master of space and sound, and an essential collaborator of DJ Krush and Bill Laswell, among others. His 1996 collaboration with Krush, *Ki-Oku*, is a great starting point, as is Nate Chinen’s obituary at [npr.org](https://www.npr.org/2020/10/20/925792333/toshinori-kondo-trailblazing-modern-trumpeter-dies-at-71).

▰ It was nice with physical library books, when returning them, to wonder when and by whom they’d next be picked up. With digital ones, it’s nice to return something early, see the waiting list, and know you’ve made someone’s evening somewhere across the city. Or perhaps next door.

▰ It was a foregone conclusion that reading the new Don DeLillo novel digitally would yield meta moments, including his awareness of the inevitability. Still, I was struck to find a wistful phrase about the discontents of over-connectedness evidently highlighted by fellow readers. (And yes, the book is titled *The Silence*. Yes.)

▰ Exactly how long is this Ninja Tune video?

▰ Yeah, it’s sorta creepy to send a (seemingly) personalized email follow-up saying you’d noticed I’d opened a recent email about your record and wondered if I’d want to cover it, especially because I’d already taken the time to tell your publicist I wasn’t interested.

Premiere: Lebanese Musician Fadi Tabbal’s 5th Solo Album

Co-released by Beacon Sound (Portland) and Ruptured Music (Beirut)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Today marks the release of Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions, the fifth solo album by Lebanese musician Fadi Tabbal. From the pointillist delays of “On the Escape Boat” to the lush, cavernous drone of “Triptych Photography,” it’s a beautiful collection of music that at once is emblematically peaceful and yet also vibrates with an undeniable substratal energy.

This post is a premiere, thanks to the invitation of the Portland-based label Beacon Sound, which has co-released the album with Ruptured Music, a label in Beirut, where Tabbal lives. Subject to Potential Errors and Distortions is structured around a trio of tracks, each titled “The New and Improved Guide to Birdwatching” (“Vol. 1,” “Vol. 2,” and “Vol. 3”). They take as their source material for transmuting not birdsong but a human voice. The voice belongs to Julia Sabra of the band Postcards. Instead of dreamy pop music, though, here her singing is pure dream: sweet, ethereal syllables that Tabbal each time through contorts with textural processing.

A deeper voiced, and more choral, approach energizes “Ceremony by the Sea,” which introduces a gorgeous melodic line: part French horn, part fog horn. If there is a palpable intensity to the music overall, that may be owed to a doubling of pressures. The record was created by Tabbal during the period of Covid-19 self-quarantine, and done so in a city that suffers from untold external and internal political and economic forces.

Album available at [beaconsound.bandcamp.com](https://beaconsound.bandcamp.com/album/subject-to-potential-errors-and-distortions). More from Tabbal at [faditabbal.com](http://www.faditabbal.com/).