Current Listens: Philadelphia Beat Tape, Spacious Score

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Minimalist patterning. Atmospheric score. Philadelphia beat tape. Fripp’s quietude. 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

▰ Gorgeous little pre-release taste of *Memory Loops*, an album due out July 31 from Arms and Sleepers (aka Mark McGlinchey and Mirza Ramic). The soft repetitive patterns and descending melodic riff sound like the start of something, which makes sense since the track is the first of the album’s projected 14.

▰ Cello, violin, voice — spare elements are the building blocks for the roomy music Martha Skye Murphy composed for a film titled *The Late Departure*, by Ivan Krzeszowiec. Listen for the entrancing electronic touches, like the glitchy delay midway through “Connecting Flight.” (Felix Stephens on cello, Murphy on the remainder.)

▰ David Evan McDowell, aka Philadelphia-based musician æon, started 2020 with *Rebirth,* a dozen downtempo hip-hop (mostly) instrumentals full of jazz samples, surface noise, rhythmic play, and a remarkable sense of space.

▰ Robert Fripp continues to make good on his promise of 50 straight weeks of “Music for Quiet Moments” instrumentals. The latest, “Skyscape (Chicago 12 Oct 2005),” number 11 in the series, is more synth-driven than some of the others, though his guitar certainly makes itself heard.

Listening from Afar

Via social media

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Some of my earliest regular Twitter activities involved simply posting descriptions of what I heard: the whir of cars driving by, the droning inside a train, the birdsong outside a window. I consider such posts a form of field recording, just using words instead of a microphone (a perspective I wrote about at more length a few years ago at [nmbx.newmusicusa.org](https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/audio-or-it-didnt-happen/)). This activity happened back during a more civilized age, before social media became the conflicted zone it is today. These days it takes some solid muting and circumscribed attention to keep Twitter to something approximating useful and enjoyable. Once in a while I’ll go back to that old habit, and post what the world sounds like at a given moment. And sometimes the world answers back, not with an echo, but with reports from elsewhere, and not just on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet), but via [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/dsqt/) and Facebook, where I’ll post as well. This is what I [posted](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/1281458093302276096) this past week:

Evening sounds: dishwasher and low-level electric hum. A single car passes, producing a light rumble, felt as much as heard\*, neither all that much. Time passes. No foot traffic. No animal sound. No voices.**
*Yeah, hearing is a physical sensation.
**Yeah, humans are animals.

And these are responses I received:

1: the loud cyclical white noise pulse of the AC fan and it’s low frequency throb felt through my desktop. Rain splatter on the steel AC case, rain splatter on the window glass, rain splatter on the plastic over the hole in the plastic AC side panel, all three distinct filters
(from [twitter.com/cranksatori](https://twitter.com/cranksatori/status/1281462920329789440
))

2: An indistinct, muffled thump from who knows where, a cat meowing repeatedly somewhere outside, the crunch of tires on gravel fades out into the distance, wind blows through the trees.
(from [twitter.com/PhilBerdecio](https://twitter.com/PhilBerdecio/status/1281468533814308864))

3: There is a heat wave going on where I am. Lucky to have air con, which has been running constantly. Reminds me of the sound inside the cabin on a long haul flight.
(from [instagram.com/sodajonze](https://www.instagram.com/p/CCc2zquAj-Z/c/18150819253005796/))

Sofie Birch Explores the Fourth World

Sonic postcards between Colombia and Copenhagen

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Sofie Birch’s album *Hidden Terraces* describes itself in various ways. It is an “audible postcard produced in Colombia,” and it serves up “Remedial Sounds for a Forlorn Nation,” and it is part (volume two) of a series titled “Themes for a Better Tomorrow.” What it is is splendid, sometimes downtempo, often rhythm-less music that takes a very long time to arrive, and much of its pleasure is in the experience of that arrival: not where it starts or where it ends up so much as how it traverses the space, the continuum, in between. Those grooves, slowly and only in retrospect, appear out of an opening collage of field recordings, bits of spoken — mumbled, really — language, and tonal material that the ear might recognize as musical subconsciously before becoming aware. That’s “Morgenånder” (“Morning Spirits”), the first of the album’s two tracks (one is available for free-streaming, the other after purchase, at [vaagner.bandcamp.com](https://vaagner.bandcamp.com/album/themes-for-a-better-tomorrow-vol-ii-hidden-terraces)). The second is “Vidsyn” (“Broad Views”), which is more expressively amorphous, beginning with the rattle of a wooden instrument before delving into birdsong, drones, and chanting, often at the same time. The album should have strong appeal to listeners to Fourth World music. The material was collected during a trip that Birch, who is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, recorded in Colombia. Now that she has returned, it’s the listener’s turn to travel.

More from Sofie Birch at [birchis.com](https://www.birchis.com/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0445: Aare Tribute

The Assignment: Read maps of a river as a graphic score.

/ 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, July 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 9, 2020.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0445: Aare Tribute
The Assignment: Read maps of a river as a graphic score.

This project is the second 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: Look at the three maps below, all of the river Aare, a tributary that circumnavigates the city of Bern. One is from the late 18th century. The other two are modern renditions from Google Maps.

Step 2: Use one or more of those images by interpreting them as graphic scores and composing a resulting piece of music.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0445” (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 “disquiet0445” (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-0445-aare-tribute/

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 Monday, July 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 9, 2020.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0445” 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 445th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0445: Aare Tribute — The Assignment: Read maps of a river as a graphic score — at:

https://disquiet.com/0445/

This is the second 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/

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-0445-aare-tribute/

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

Continue reading “Disquiet Junto Project 0445: Aare Tribute”

Cortini Plays with a PlayStation Score

Remixing Ghost of Tsushima

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The forthcoming PlayStation game *Ghost of Tsushima* has an original score by Ilan Eshkeri (veteran of such movies as *Still Alice* and *Dr. Thorne*) and Shigeru Umebayashi (whose lengthy career includes *House of Flying Daggers* and *2046*, the latter by Wong Kar-wai). The releasing game studio, Sucker Punch, has enlisted some big names in popular electronic music to rework cues. These include Alessandro Cortini (best known as a member of Nine Inch Nails), the Glitch Mob, Tokimonsta, and Tycho. The resulting EP is due out Friday on the record label Milan. Cortini posted his remix to his YouTube channel. It’s a thrilling, cinematic piece, at once densely atmospheric and yet also pulse-rising. Absolutely gorgeous. It’s as much an alternate cue as it is a remix.

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ent0MYKwGw4). More on the game, due out July 17, at [playstation.com](https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/ghost-of-tsushima-ps4/).