Disquiet – Page 606 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

About the Proprietor

And some some updated FAQs

February 24, 2019February 25, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Disquiet.com is in its 23rd year online, and I think for the first time I’m adding a proper bio to the site. There is now a brief summary in the left-hand sidebar, and then the full text at [disquiet.com/about](https://disquiet.com/about). I’ve also updated the site’s two FAQs. This bio will change over time, but here’s how it reads as of today:

Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects that explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. Its activities have been covered by [The Wire](https://disquiet.com/2016/06/25/wire-brazier-disquiet-junto/), Buzzfeed, CDM, and Bloomberg Businessweek, as well as in books published by Knopf and by Oxford University Press.

A former editor of Tower Records’ music magazines (*Pulse!*, on which he was a senior editor; *Classical Pulse!*, which he co-founded; and epulse, the weekly email newsletter that he founded in 1994 and which ran for a decade), he is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* (Bloomsbury, 2014, later translated into Spanish and Japanese), and he has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, Downbeat, NewMusicBox, Art Practical, and The Atlantic online, among other periodicals.

Weidenbaum’s sonic consultancy has ranged from mobile GPS apps to coffee-shop sound design, comics editing for Red Bull Music Academy, and music supervision for two films (the documentary *The Children Next Door*, scored by Taylor Deupree, and the science fiction short *Youth*, scored by Marcus Fischer).

His sound art has been exhibited at galleries in Dubai, Los Angeles, and Manhattan, as well as at the San Jose Museum of Art. He teaches a course titled “Sounds of Brands,” on the role of sound in the media landscape, at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

Originally from New York, he’s a longtime resident of San Francisco, California.

There is a [Disquiet.com FAQ](disquiet.com/faq) and a [Disquiet Junto FAQ](https://disquiet.com/2013/04/25/disquiet-junto-faq/).

The Algorithms We Call Music Communities

Friday, March 22, in San Francisco at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts

February 22, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I’m continuing to work on the talk I’ll be giving at the upcoming Algorithmic Art Assembly in San Francisco. I’ll be speaking on Friday, March 22, in the afternoon. The two-day event (half afternoon speakers, half evening performances) will be held at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. My working title and description for the talk are as follows:

***The Woodshed Is a Black Box***

*How a rules-based system formed, shapes, and fuels the long-running online music community known as the Disquiet Junto.*

And that’s what it’s about. It’s a talk about the way rules shape online interactions in groups of collaborators, how those rules change over time, how some rules are more self-evident than others, and how seemingly small changes can have significant impact (positive and negative).

The Disquiet Junto, formed in 2012 and run weekly since, takes its name from the original Junto, an organization formed in 1727 by Benjamin Franklin with an emphasis on “mutual self-improvement.” The classic model of self-improvement in music is the woodshed, and it is historically a solitary pursuit. The woodshed is where you go to practice, and from which you emerge changed. It is as much a verb as it is a noun.

What, though, does focused practice mean in an always-on, always-connected culture? In a networked community, is there such a thing as a network of woodsheds? How does an online community structure and support this activity, and how do rules structure and support the online community?

More details at [aaassembly.org](http://aaassembly.org) — and here, as it comes together.

The Walls of Solomon’s Delicatessen

Memories of Tower Records

February 21, 2019February 23, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s now a Solomon’s Delicatessen in Davis, California, named in honor of Russ Solomon, the legendary founder of Tower Records. I was an editor on Tower’s magazines — *Pulse!*; *Classical Pulse!*, which I co-founded with the opera critic Robert Levine; and *epulse*, the email newsletter that I founded in the paleolithic days of 1994 and that ran for a decade — from 1989 to 1996, and then continued in a freelance capacity until 2004, when it all came to an end in the company’s bankruptcy. A friend texted me this afternoon from the deli with this photo (also on his [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/BuKWrcuBQtW/) account) of the wall, which is plastered with old *Pulse!* covers, many of which stories I wrote (White Zombie, among them), and many more of which I edited (that Ministry one, for example, written by the great science fiction novelist Richard Kadrey). I’m pretty sure the Aphex Twin story listed on the Pavement cover is the one I did that decades later led to my 33 1/3 book on *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2*, but I’ll have to look back, as I don’t recall which issue it was.

Disquiet Junto Project 0373: Copernican Music

The Assignment: Record a piece of music intended for an alien species.

February 21, 2019February 23, 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, February 25, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, February 21, 2019.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0373) 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 0373: Copernican Music**

The Assignment: Record a piece of music intended for an alien species.

This week’s project was made as a proposition by the artist Jonathon Keats:

Step 1: Compose a work of music for sentient beings elsewhere in the universe. Aside from sentience, assume nothing about your audience culturally or cognitively. Make a connection by modulating frequency and amplitude over time.

Step 2: Share your work with the cosmos.

Here’s some additional background from Keats on his general premise: “Science is Copernican, but society remains Ptolemaic. Our behavior is self-centered. Our culture is bigoted, our politics tribal. Society needs a Copernican revolution. If we are to survive, we need to recognize that we are not special. If we are to have a peaceful relationship with one another and our planet, we must become humble. A Copernican revolution is achievable, but will not be accomplished through scientific education alone. Only culture has the potential to put us in touch with our cosmic insignificance, and to bring about a cultural paradigm shift. The Copernican revolution in culture will be realized with Copernican music.”

And here’s some additional background from Keats on his Copernican music: “Copernican music affords the opportunity to encounter something that we cannot directly experience, but that could potentially be experienced by beings other than us. It provides a means of getting outside of ourselves. We recognize that we are not special, that our position is not privileged. We perceive ourselves as average. Simultaneously we find ourselves to be part of a continuum, and therefore part of something greater than ourselves. This adjustment to our ego can change our behavior by making us less self-centered, more aware of others, and more aware of our larger selves.”

The image associated with this project is from one of Keats’ own instruments related to his Copernican artwork, a gravitational radio. Photo credit: Dora Tsui.

More information on Keats at this space.com interview:

https://space.com/41258-communicating-with-aliens-music-art-project.html

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

Step 1: Include “disquiet0373” (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 “disquiet0373” (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-0373-copernican-music/

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. Short is good.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0373” 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: Please for this project be sure 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 373rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Copernican Music / The Assignment: Record a piece of music intended for an alien species — at:

https://disquiet.com/0373/

This week’s project was made as a proposition by the artist Jonathon Keats.

Grouper Subdivides

Thirteen segments across a new work credited to Nivhek

February 20, 2019February 20, 2019 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://grouper.bandcamp.com/album/after-its-own-death-walking-in-a-spiral-towards-the-house">After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house by Nivhek</a>

The music is credited to one Nivhek, which reverts on the Bandcamp website to the account of Grouper, which is the name employed by Liz Harris when pursuing all manner of murmured and strummed folkloric musics. The Nivhek album, *After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house*, released earlier this month, is two extended suites. On the vinyl version, which has sold out, these suites are divided in half, one on each side of two LPs. On Bandcamp, the suites’ elements are divvied up to the third decimal point of their time codes, the first piece into nine subsets, the second into four:

*After its own death*

*0 – 7:48:544 Cloudmouth*

*7:48:544 – 8:19:489 blue room*

*8:17:503 – 11:27:011 Night-walking*

*11:27:011 -16:41:254 Funeral song*

*16:41:254 – 26:00:991 Thirteen (version)*

*26:00:991 – 28:39:125 Crying jar*

*28:39:125 – 29:29:394 Entry*

*29:29:394 – 37:33:056 Walking in a spiral towards the house*

*37:30:846 – end Weightless*

*Walking in a spiral towards the house*

*0 – 3:14:509 Night-walking*

*3:14:509 – 8:37:153 Funeral song*

*8:37:153 – 12:59:510 Thirteen*

*12:59:510 – end Walking in a spiral towards the house*

It’s helpful to listen to the second work first, as it’s more approachable. “Walking in a spiral towards the house” is tonal, even melodic, built from bell- or gong-like sounds, each tuned to a musical purpose but retaining a functional, call-to-assembly quality. They are heard individually and in rudimentary chords, sometimes triggered in near unison, but more often gathering parallel ripples of tone as they slowly fade. Often those fades are left to occur until their natural end: digital silence. At other times, the fades are curtailed, truncated, the bells re-rung before they are rung out. Toward the end of the penultimate subset, labeled “Thirteen,” which is the minute that occurs shortly after the segment ends (and also the total number of subsections between the two suites, and also the name of one of the subsets of the first piece, “After its own death”), those bells pile up in a way that bears little resemblance to what has preceded the incident. It’s an ecstatic moment in an otherwise genteel setting. It challenges the order of things, but doesn’t break the order’s spell.

“After its own death” is likewise built — at first — from a singular source, in this case choral vocals, all apparently Harris’ own, layered to dark-ecclesiastical effect. But the voice is not all that is there. Like the score to a film by Nicolas Winding Refn or Ridley Scott — or perhaps the two teamed up — the music gathers a deep, raspy bass line that is full of narrative portent. It’s the sound of a vengeful figure stalking the plains. As the first half of “After its own death” begins to close, it introduces some of the bells explored with more focus on “Walking in a spiral towards the house.” The second half opens with the familiar sound of Grouper’s trademark super slow guitar work, simple lines let to sketch something at once personal and symphonic — the intonation is singular, but the reverberations suggest a vast endeavor. And she’s just getting started. There is far more ahead: bells, coughing, what might be footsteps, and that thunderous bass, distorted as only a broken amplifier and intense feedback could accomplish. There is whispering and sudden silence. It’s a challenging piece, a collection of fragments, in brutal contrast to the linear “Walking in a spiral towards the house.”

These are two opposed parts, “Walking in a spiral towards the house” and “After its own death”: one offering welcome solace to those broken after a complex challenge, one offering a welcome challenge to those pulling themselves from solace’s anesthetized embrace.

Album available at [grouper.bandcamp.com](https://grouper.bandcamp.com/album/after-its-own-death-walking-in-a-spiral-towards-the-house).