Disquiet – Page 506 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Light to Sound

An experiment from Suss Müsik

August 17, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The saying goes that it’s only experimental music if there’s a chance it won’t work. A corollary observation would be to point out: Sometimes what sounds like experimental music isn’t experimental music. It’s simply an experiment. And nonetheless, it can be musical. Case in point, this little DIY project by the musician who goes by Suss Müsik. He’s been experimenting with illumination-responsive circuitry, creating a theremin-like apparatus that creates and alters sound abased on the presence of a flashlight. As he notes in a brief accompanying text, “Somehow it created layers of harmonic dissonance in nearly perfectly phased, overlapping sequences.”

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDi3zfWVVX4&t=0s). More from Suss Müsik at [sussmusik.com](https://sussmusik.com/).

Current Listens: Japanese Ambient, Lubbock Classical

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

August 16, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is my 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

▰ Like many contemporary synthesizer musicians, Takeyuki Hakozaki has welcomed the old-school Nagra reel-to-reel player-recorder into his toolkit, hence the sense of buckling to the audio in this billowing ambient recording.

▰ “Lightway” is a soaring demo recording posted by Lubbock, Texas-based composer Jennifer Jolley. Mallets and woodwinds summon arpeggio birds and droning clouds.

▰ Last night on the walk back from the ocean, as clouds that later revealed themselves to be providing cover for heat lightning slowly gathered, I listened to “Into,” the slow, 20-minute track by Dzöon. Twice. Be prepared to hit pause early on to confirm that cottony under-drone is, indeed, part of the track and not some hum from elsewhere. Then listen as the piece ever so patiently reveals itself, one carefully placed sonic element at a time.

<a href="http://benthicexplorer.bandcamp.com/track/into">Into by Dzöon</a>

▰ And if you missed out on the thunderstorm, the musician r beny recorded it for you. He writes, “The thunder was so loud and so close, it shook my windows and clipped the audio recorder.”

Projecting Back

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

August 15, 2020August 16, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Dug this out of storage. Projected close on a wall, its images are so sharp as to challenge description. The high level of detail hovers somewhere between a printed image and a televised one, between page and screen. It has the proto-hyperreal quality of the latter, yet even given the sheer force of the slide projector’s light, it lacks the screen’s directive presence, how the screen shines its light at you, into you — how you are the thing onto which the image is, in a sense, projected. In contrast, light experienced from the projector is reflected, diminished, softened.

Still, the slide projector’s end result is brilliant and illuminated, in a way that a printed photo simply isn’t. One thing they have in common, though, the slide image and the printed photo, is texture. The wall’s surface becomes part of the image’s appearance, much as a photo owes some of its quality to the material on which it is presented.

And then, of course, there is the sound. The machine’s motor and fan vibrate with an industrial intensity, the density of this metal device so unlike commonplace 21st-century household gear. The click of each slide swapping in for the previous one announces with a multi-syllabic gesture, several clicks bundled into one. There are steps to the process: the wheel turning, the metal guide entering and retreating, not to mention the plastic impression of the button setting things in motion at the narrative juncture between each observation period.

None of these aspects were experienced as quiet way back when, but they’re especially loud now. Not just loud, they are part of the viewing experience, rather than detritus. Rather than byproduct, these are sonic part and visual parcel. In an art gallery, the slide projector today would have to get credit as “single channel audio,” or some such. But even that wouldn’t do it justice. Each sound comes from a different part of the machine. The sound of the slide projector is as three-dimensional as the resulting image is flat.

An Orchestra of Two

Straight out of Chicago

August 14, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://scriptsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cinchel-akosuen-2">Cinchel + Akosuen by Cinchel + Akosuen</a>

Cinchel and Akosuen, both based in Chicago, Illinois, have combined resources to for three tracks of majestic, tension-laden music. Two of the pieces are orchestral not just in aural scale — broad, spacious, enthralling — but in length, one at nearly 20 minutes, the other well over 16. The hallmark of this collection, titled simply *Cinchel + Akosuen*, is how strands at varying paces combine for simultaneous effect. “Sequest,” with which the set opens, has genteel piano against even more ethereal vocals, while guitar rages like some fiercely focused machine is rapidly scratching at electrified strings. At moments in “Tether,” the shortest piece here, six and a half minutes, it sounds as if a college radio DJ forgot to fade out a psychedelic folk record before potting up a metallic shoegaze hybrid. The result is brisk and commanding, and as long as the tracks are, you want to start them all over again when they’ve reached their natural close.

Cinchel is Jason Shanley (guitar, feedback, effects), Akosuen is Billie Howard (violin, piano, voice, synthesizers), and together (likely with more tools than listed here) they get blissfully lost in their airy frenzy, taking the listener aloft and along for the ride.

Album originally posted at [scriptsrecords.bandcamp.com](https://scriptsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cinchel-akosuen-2). More from the releasing label, Scripts Records, at [scriptsrecords.com](https://scriptsrecords.com/). More from the respective musicians at [cinchel.com](http://cinchel.com/) and [akosuen.bandcamp.com](https://akosuen.bandcamp.com/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0450: Texture Analysis

The Assignment: Create a piece of music from sounds related to working with rocks.

August 13, 2020August 14, 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 Monday, August 17, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 13, 2020.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0450) 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 0450: Texture Analysis
The Assignment: Create a piece of music from sounds related to working with rocks.

Welcome to the 450th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project. Thanks to everyone who has participated, supported, and pitched in along the way.

This project is the third of three that are being done over the course of as many months in collaboration with the 2020 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 2 through 6 under the motto “Tektonik” (“Tectonics”). For this reason, a German translation is provided below. We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the second year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern. Select recordings resulting from these three Disquiet Junto projects will be played on a listening booth at the Steinatelier on September 5, as well as being aired on Radio RaBe (rabe.ch), an independent local radio station partnering with the festival.

Step 1: Download the field recordings made at Carlo Bernasconi AG, a company that has been working in stone for over a century. The sounds range from machines to manual tools to spatial ambience.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e3xo7qpydat4x2r/AAAPAs5QJVWcNWTrrScEnejta?dl=0

Step 2: Listen for aspects of the recordings that attract your ears. Focus on textures in particular.

Step 3: Create a piece of music combining elements from as few or as many as you chose in Step 2.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0450” (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 “disquiet0450” (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-0450-texture-analysis/

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 and #musikfestivalbern 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 Monday, August 17, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 13, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0450” 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 450th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Texture Analysis — The Assignment: Create a piece of music from sounds related to working with rocks) at:

https://disquiet.com/0450/

This is the third of three projects in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern 2020 which will take place in Bern, Switzerland, from September 2 to 6. More on the festival at:

https://www.musikfestivalbern.ch/

https://www.facebook.com/musikfestivalbern/