Disquiet – Page 585 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Encountering the Console

A panel sequence from Ebony Flowers' Hot Comb

August 9, 2019August 11, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Discovering the pleasures of vinyl in Ebony Flowers’ recent book, *Hot Comb* (Drawn & Quarterly), which collects short, very personal comics. I love how oversized the stereo console is when initially compared with the young girl learning to use it. It’s bigger than her, bigger even than the bed, or so perspective makes it seem. It’s all about perspective, whether geometric or emotional. In Flowers’ depictions, the shapes of everyday objects are just as loose and ever-shifting as are the lines that give form to her all too human characters. There’s a palpable messiness, always tactile, sometimes joyful, often heartbreaking, to the stories she tells.

Disquiet Junto Project 0397: Numbers Racket

The Assignment: It's 808 Day. Do it up.

August 8, 2019August 9, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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 12, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted shortly in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 8, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0397) for the duration of the project.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0397: Numbers Racket**

The Assignment: It’s 808 Day. Do it up.

Step 1: It’s 808 Day today, August 8, the start of the latest Junto project. Let’s make it last through Monday.

Step 2: Make music with or about or somehow in the spirit of the Roland TR-808.

**Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:**

Step 1: Include “disquiet0397” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0397” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0397-numbers-racket/

Step 5: Annotate your track 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:**

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

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0397” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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: Consider setting 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 397th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Assignment: It’s 808 Day. Do it up — at:

https://disquiet.com/0397/

Malka Older / Junto Team-Up

A gronkytonk sequel with the author of Infomocracy

August 7, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I’m very excited to announce that the upcoming 400th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community will be a collaboration with Malka Older, author of the excellent science-fiction trilogy the Centenal Cycle, and who’s now working on *Orphan Black: The Next Chapter* at Serial Box, for whom she previously created *Ninth Step Station*. The Junto members will be doing something along the lines of what we did with another novelist, [Richard Kadrey](https://disquiet.com/2015/10/29/disquiet0200-kadreyscore/) (*Sandman Slim*, *The Grand Dark*), for the 200th Junto project, back in October 2015. It’s going to be great.

The Junto community did a project based on Older’s novel *Infomocracy*, the first book in the Centenal Cycle, back in [December 2017](https://disquiet.com/2017/10/12/disquiet-junto-project-0302-gronkytonk/), for the 302nd consecutive Junto. In that project, Junto members tried to imagine what a genre of music might sound like. The genre, “gronkytonk,” was mentioned in passing in *Infomocracy*. The author graciously thanked the Junto in the third and final Centenal book, *State Tectonics*, which came out in 2018.

The Disquiet Junto is a group in which musicians respond to weekly, fast-turnaround assignments to compose, record, and share new music. The idea is to use constraints as a springboard for creativity. It has run weekly since January 2012. Project announcements are emailed each Thursday via [tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).

Hilobrow Action Films

A piece to come on Michael Mann's Thief

August 7, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ll have a second hilobrow.com piece out later this year. My earlier piece was on a prized object, as part of the site’s Fetish series ([“Dummy Jack”](https://disquiet.com/2019/06/09/dummy-jack/)). My new one will be about Michael Mann’s first feature film, *Thief* (he’d previously directed a TV movie, *The Jericho Mile*), for a series of essays on “action movies of the Seventies (1974-1983).”

Yes, I took a parenthetical moment to note the *Tangerine Dream* score, but I focus more on the tension between action and inaction. Which is to say, the aesthetics of ambient music are core, even if the subject is broader (and visual, and story-based). Meanwhile, check out the amazing lineup of Hilobrow authors and topics in this series:

The first few are already up, and you can read editor Joshua Glenn’s introduction [now](http://www.hilobrow.com/2019/07/31/convoy-your-enthusiasm/).

Technology and Its Discontents

The whine of my hard drives

August 7, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

**SoundCloud:** Why isn’t there an [account]/stream page that can ignore all the reposts? Reposts are great, but some people repost so much it buries everyone’s original posts, including their own.

**Also SoundCloud:** The maximum number of accounts one can follow has been stuck at 2,000 for years. The number of SoundCloud accounts has gone up. The follow limit should follow suit.

**Windows:** My laptop often disconnects from my USB audio interface when it comes back from sleep. What’s up with that?

**Android:** These phones are powerful. I should be able to play music and listen to an audiobook at the same time. My phone can play an audiobook while I receive audio directions from a map app, so clearly simultaneous audio sources does work.

*This is lightly adapted from an edition first published in the August 4, 2019, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter [This Week in Sound](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*