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/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0460: Creative Destruction

The Assignment: Show how you got to a tortured sound.

/ 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, October 26, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 22, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0460: Creative Destruction

The Assignment: Show how you got to a tortured sound.

Step 1: Through some multi-step process, arrive at a complicated, tortured sound. Keep track of how you got there.

Step 2: Record a piece beginning with the end result: that complicated, tortured sound. Then transition to the start of the process and build back up to the end result, slowly repeating how you got you there.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0460” (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 “disquiet0460” (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-0460-creative-destruction/

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, October 26, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 22, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you. The sound should be torturous, not necessarily the experience of revisiting it.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0460” 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 460th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Creative Destruction (The Assignment: Show how you got to a tortured sound), at:

https://disquiet.com/0460/

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-0460-creative-destruction/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Chris Smart and used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

https://flic.kr/p/jDndy

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/