Disquiet – Page 625 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Autechre NTS Sessions 1-4 Listening Diary

Charting a path through eight hours of music (updated August 30)

August 27, 2018August 30, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Even in our age of distracted listening and an overabundance of inbound music, [among so much](https://disquiet.com/2018/08/24/unknown-soundcloud-producer-dead/) other [readily available culture](https://disquiet.com/2018/08/27/listening-to-le-carre/), an eight-hour box set is a thing apart. You don’t listen, not in the traditional sense of listening, to something like Autechre’s recent *NTS Sessions 1-4* releases, comprising eight hours of music over four sets — not so much as you immerse yourself in them. The music may sound fully and purposefully artificial in its distraught scifi effluences, but the experience is no less environmental in its encompassing qualities. It may be proudly unnatural, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t vibrant and alive.

As it turns out, in our age of 360-degree, 24/7 culture, the most singular sonic object may be something that itself aspires to filling our senses past their periphery. This is why *NTS Sessions* is best appreciated alongside other recent cultural monoliths, like Stephan Mathieu’s *Radiance* (764 minutes over 12 CDs), Brian Eno’s *Music for Installations* (6 CDs), and such Important Records collections as the Harry Bertoia *Sonambient* omnibus (11 CDs), as well as performance corollaries like Max Richter’s night-long *Sleep* concerts (also available as a box set with 8 CDs and a bonus Blu-ray disc) and the “endless” generative music iOS apps of Peter Chilvers. Fight fire with fire, and overload with overload.

It’s worth noting that all these works, including the Autechre box, are abstract. They are slippery forms of sonic culture, lacking easily identifiable form. Even in brief excerpts, the music evades recollection. Extended over hours, they are in some ways only knowable while they are playing. Hit pause, or stop, and they tend to evaporate.

*NTS Sessions* isn’t even Autechre’s first monolith. The box is an hour longer than the *AE_LIVE* series that Autechre uploaded back in 2015, and twice the length of the 2016 *elseq* series. When *elseq* came out, I tried to wrestle with it. I started a [“listening diary,”](https://disquiet.com/2016/09/11/autechre-elseq-1-5-listening-diary/) but only managed two detailed reflections before getting hooked on a single track, “TBM2,” which I listened to for days and then weeks. I only recently stumbled on words I’d written about “TBM2” (it felt a bit like finding discarded field notes in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach novels). Today, while listening to *NTS Sessions*, I tidied up those scribbles and belatedly appended my “TBM2” thoughts to the *elseq* diary.

Now I’m giving the listening diary another run, this time focused on Autechre’s most recent monolith, which is likely not their last. The following document is a work-in-progress, charting my path through and around *NTS Sessions 1-4*. And while it slowly accumulates, if you’re interested here’s my 1997 interview with the duo: [“More Songs About Buildings.”](https://disquiet.com/1997/12/05/autechre-1997/)

**Track:1:1 “t1a1” (18:39)**

**[2018.08.27]** The album begins like there is a bombing raid in progress, a full minute of overhead onslaught, muffled a bit by thin walls before the rubbery percussion and droid chatter come to formulate a rhythm. The thing chugs along at barely 70bpm. That pace and the track’s length, nearly 19 minutes, signals we’re in, as listeners, for an extended haul. Reserve your energy. The track provides the long and the short: expansive by contemporary electronic music standards, a drop in the ocean by those of this four-session collection.

**[2018.08.28]** Something stalks the dance floor. Whatever is pummeling the world above at the track’s opening has a presence down below, too. The beat in this subterranean space is the slow heavy pacing of a massive machine on tactical duty. The more melodic elements here, wisps of signals, flutterings of data arrays, are information being shared, all heavily encoded but bearing a glimmer of intelligibility: the machines mock us weak human-types by chattering freely in our presence. It’s the singspiel of our robot overlords, all the more tragic because we find it beautiful. This is the score to a *Doom* movie bearing a *District 9* mod, under the direction of Alex Garland.

**Track:1:2 “bqbqbq” (11:15)**

**[2018.08.27]** There was a moment, somewhere around the album *Confield* (2001), maybe as early as *LP5* (1998), where for me Autechre went from swamp murk to dry, high land. Whatever boggy fumes had filled the voids in their earlier work gave way to a pristine, brittle present. That’s when my listening to them began to decline. This track, “bqbqbq,” captures that hyperdigital nature, and renders it as something almost light, a bit of melody repeated over and over, slowly adjusted. Where the opening track was an assault, this one is a respite, albeit an 11-minute respite. (When it comes to monolith music, all things are relative.) If the first track on *NTS Sessions* suggested the destination is way over the horizon, this one makes the journey seem doable.

**[2018.08.28]** It’s striking how cheerful “bqbqbq” sounds after one has endured nearly 20 minutes of “t1a1,” and not just because the title could be misread as “bbq.” It’s all droid babble, the robot beatboxing of cyborg data assistants with the algorithmic capacity of a quantum mainframe and the emotional intelligence of a three-year-old human. Ethan Hein has commented about how people who don’t get rap often don’t get that the nuances in the vocals are as demanding if not more demanding than are the stylings of singers who scurry up and down multiple octaves. The slight variations in the vocaloid scat here are of the same microtonal variety. (Full Hein quote, via [twitter.com/ethanhein](https://twitter.com/ethanhein/status/1020645224186597376): “Rap is always melodic. The pitches are usually unquantized but they’re still specific and meaningful. You could argue that rap melodies are more rich than sung melodies for that reason.”)

**Track:1:3 “debris_funk” (10:25)**

**[2018.08.29]**
A lot is made of Autechre’s algorithmic approach to rhythm and composition. The fact is that much of their compositional work is the equivalent of — and I say this as someone with, truly, great affection for Autechre and for the rumblings of clothes dryers — putting something in the dryer and letting it run for a set amount of time. It’s the same object — an old sneaker, say, for illustrative purposes — rotating in space and banging against the drum, and each time around that bounce is slightly different than it was before. Of course, Autechre accomplish this feat at a massive rate and at a nanoscale level of detail in terms of degrees of variation, and they’re pushing sound in myriad directions simultaneously. The dryer is just a metaphor for descriptive purposes. All of which said, “debris_funk” is next level. It has a sense of structure and development the first two tracks of *NTS Sessions 1-4* purposefully lack. The center of “debris_funk” is pure rhythmic variation (Autechre in dryer mode, as it were), but the piece also has a proper opening, not the mere scene-setting sound-design prelude of “t1a1” — instead, it’s something that hints at and morphs into the main rhythm. Then, a minute in, follows the core. And then there is a pause, a drop, as it were, seven minutes into “debris_funk” that is downright orchestral. By 7:10 or so, the drums have faded entirely (the slow fade of those drums is the first thing on this record that sounds like it was done entirely by human hand in real time — and that may not be a compliment); all that is left is this hulking equivalent of a string and horn section, torqued near the breaking point, filtered far beyond its carbon-based tonalities. It’s a neural network’s idea of the score to an excessively bloody and baroque horror film, like an AI got shafted by Thom Yorke for the Suspiria-remake gig, and uploaded its alternate soundtrack as an act of retribution. A full minute later, the drums remain on hiatus. The melody that is playing is the same that earlier wafted above and amid the beats; now its own contortions are fully present, unobscured by rhythm. Soon, two minutes of percussive-free existence have passed, a rarity in Autechreland, and it’s as if all that orchestral might has been slowly funneled into one impossibly dense, digitally manipulated violin. The drums, in fact, never return in “debris_funk.” The track doesn’t close so much as fade right into the next, “l3 ctrl.” This isn’t how the album starts off, with “t1a1” cutting quickly into “bqbqbq” and “bqbqbq” having a proper (if barely several milliseconds) pause before “debris_funk” kicks in. The three parts of “debris_funk” (salvo -> dryer mode -> beatless minutes) feel like segments of a single, coherent piece, but this new shift between tracks, this medley-like transition, has muddied the structural waters. Why is “l3 ctrl” considered separate from “debris_funk,” yet the three parts of “debris_funk” are considered a whole? It may relate to the presumed-live mode of NTS Sessions, how DJs segue between tracks.

**Interlude**

**[2018.08.30]** The great thing about YouTube isn’t simply how much music is on there, but also how many great live versions and covers and outtakes — and beyond that, user-generated variants, treatments, and reworkings. The more experimental the music, the more introspective and studious the variants can be, notably such now routine efforts as slowed versions and reversed versions. When I corresponded with Ethan Hein about his comments regarding nuance in rap vocals (related to the *NTS Sessions 1* track “bqbqbq”), he in turn sent me a link to a [YouTube video where someone had slowed the first of the four *NTS Sessions* sets down to half its original speed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG4JFofg9iw), yielding a sonic document over four hours and forty minutes long. It’s a little odd that someone takes the time to do this, since YouTube will do it for you: Click on the gear symbol at the bottom of a given video, and a little window pops up, offering options from quarter speed to double the original speed:

(If you watch modular-patching or guitar-fingering videos, this can be more effective than the pause button to see what’s actually happening.) If audio artifacts are your thing, you can play the half speed *NTS Sessions* video back at double speed, yielding the audio at its original speed, though arguably — combined with the fidelity inherent in streaming — also muffled, digitally masticated, along the way. One YouTube commenter replied to the video, “Slowing down ae is exploded view ae. so many details that seemingly went by me when listening in normal speed are presented here in broad daylight.” And that’s very much the case. I’d add one qualifier. Because the music is slowed down, the repetition of the core rhythms on each track becomes less apparent. You really do lose sight of the structure, and in the process the detailed micro-alterations that are the hallmark of these tracks become less, rather than more, self-evident, because you don’t hear them in context, you don’t hear them as the transitions occur. Still, if you have a favorite moment, find the time code, multiply it by two, and listen in “exploded view.”

**Note:** This document is a work in progress. To be updated regularly for the foreseeable future.

Listening to le Carré

Key moments of sonic telling in Our Kind of Traitor

August 27, 2018January 18, 2022 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Surveillance is both a phylum and an order of sound. It is both a context within which sound occurs, and a subset of the way sound functions. We listen intently, and we overhear; we overhear on purpose, and by chance. Our ears are focused by what we want to hear, and by what, as the pristine familiar phrase so succinctly summarizes, catches our ear.

There is very little overt, carefully detailed attention to sound in *Our Kind of Traitor*, the 2010 thriller by master spy novelist John le Carré — despite the fact that throughout the book, secrets are documented on little tape recorders, and phones are tapped, and everyone with the slightest bit of skin in the game is paying fierce attention at all moments, deciphering words and the tonality in which they are couched. With the exception of a few key moments, that action goes unexamined. However, when le Carré does choose to apply his scalpel of a pen to discerning the act of listening with the same consideration he applies to manners, posture, class, the intersection of international and personal politics, and all things sartorial, he of course excels. Here are five such instances from *Our Kind of Traitor*:

**1. In the Wind:**

>He could hear the three winds battling round Dima’s glistening bald head. He could see the treetops above him shaking. He could hear the crashes of leaves and a gurgle of water, and he knew it was the same tropical rain that had drenched him in the forests of Colombia. Had Dima made his recording in a single session or in several? Did he have to brace himself with shots of vodka between sessions in order to overcome his *vory* inhibitions?

The “he” here is a second-tier spy — nth tier in the circles of hellish bureaucracy that define the modern intelligence service, but second in the small crew that make up the book’s team. The spy’s name is Luke. Here he is listening to a tape recording by a would-be defector, a Russian money launderer by name of Dima. We witness Luke’s craft and shortcomings, his perceptive skills and his self-pity, working hand in hand as he listens to, and projects his own experience onto, a recording Dima has made. The recording is Dima’s entreaty to the British spy service. In a way that a written document might not, the sound both provides additional detail about Dima’s situation and transports Luke, momentarily, into his own troubled past. (“Vory” is the term for a Russian crime syndicate of fierce loyalty.)

**2. For Ears Only:**

>”Has Hector been listening to us?”
>
>”I expect so.”
>
>”Watching us?”
>
>”Sometimes it’s better just to listen. Like a radio play.”

The Hector mentioned here is the book’s spymaster. The interlocutors in the bit of dialog are an inquisitive source and the mid-level spy Luke, who is under Hector’s command. Luke reinforces the unique power of sound when taken on its own, devoid of other sensorial data. He also posits a connection between the story being told by le Carré and the concept of the characters experiencing their own lives as if in a scripted drama, touching on matters of fate, and of Luke’s emerging notion of having less control over his own than he would like. (Elsewhere in the book we learn that Luke fails to enjoy the Harry Potter books — an anhedonia that reinforces his separation from his young son. There’s enough fantasy, we’re told, already in his life. There’s something especially British about John le Carré describing a British spy’s inability to appreciate Harry Potter.)

**3. For Whom the Bell Tolls:**

>Perry pressed the bell and at first they heard nothing. The stillness struck Gail as unnatural so she pressed it herself. Perhaps it didn’t work. She gave one long ring then several short ones to hurry everyone up. And it worked after all, because impatient young feet were approaching, bolts were being shot and a lock was turned, and one of Dima’s flaxen-haired sons appeared.

The person who does the listening in this moment is also the one with the least agency of the assembled protagonists. Gail is the girlfriend to Perry. Perry is the book’s initial hero, except in the moments when it lets Luke, Hector, and Gail be the heroes of their own threads of the narrative. Perry and Gail are caught up in Dima’s negotiations with British intelligence. Here, they have gone to collect the family of Dima. Gail’s legal experience often comes into play when she pitches her voice one way or listens to someone else’s. Here her listening skills are brought to bear on her not uninformed paranoia.

**4. Go to the Tape:**

>Then quite suddenly — it was in the evening of the same day — the weather changed, and Hector’s voice rose a notch. Luke’s illicit recorded played the moment back to him.

Luke again here, now in seclusion with Perry, Gail, and Dima’s brood. He has been taping audio late in the book, both his own notes about goings-on, and phone calls with his boss, Hector, who is calling in with updates regarding how he is navigating the halls of power in Dima’s interest. Here, for the first time, Luke revisits a tape, to confirm a suspicion he noticed in the conversation he just had only moments prior. The instance ratchets up Luke’s anxiety, and projects the isolation they all are experiencing.

**5. Left in the Cold:**

>And either there was someone inside to close the door on them or Luke did it for himself: an abrupt sigh of hinges, a double clunk of metal as the door was made fast from inside, and the black hole in the plane’s fuselage disappeared.

That fifth and final sonic moment occurs pages before the book ends. It’s a fateful moment. The book has returned to the point of view with which it originated, the novitiate Perry — Perry, who has learned much as the book has unfolded, including how to listen, and what to listen for. And then it’s a full stop. What happens next is simply, to use one of le Carré’s favored terms, a void. It’s a void for the reader to fill in. The answer may be left to how well the reader has been listening.

Stasis Report: Ellen Arkbro ✚ Olafur Arnalds ✚ More

Five new and recent tracks added to the ambient playlist on Spotify and Google Play Music as of August 26, 2018

August 26, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest update to my Stasis Report ambient-music playlist. It started out just on on [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg). As of last week, it’s also on [Google Play Music](https://play.google.com/music/playlist/AMaBXylvMU-QFhCR1_vMgMgwndCq6WD-bq1MPNrUfZ9zXbCPE5IGbMj8aWwsLhjdTtH0QbKDa5dZkKizJ2pUmTHJ4Ib9Ws1_5A%3D%3D). The following five tracks were added on Sunday, August 26.

✚ “Mountain of Air” from *For Organ and Brass* by **Ellen Arkbro**, of Stockholm, Sweden. It was released on the Subtext label back in April of this year: [ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com](https://ellenarkbro.bandcamp.com).

✚ “Memory Block” from *Music for DOS* by **Simon Stålenhag**, of Sweden. Per album title, the music was recorded using an old-school Pentium 266 Mhz (which was state of the art roughly 20 years ago), running the music software Impulse Tracker. [Boing Boing](https://boingboing.net/2018/08/23/music-for-dos-lo-fi-album-by.html) featured the album this past week. The album was self-released two weeks ago: [simonstalenhag.bandcamp.com](https://simonstalenhag.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-dos).

✚ “Momentary” from *re:memeber* by **Olafur Arnalds**, based in Reykjavik, Iceland. It was released last week on the Mercury KX label: [mercurykx.com](https://www.mercurykx.com/release/remember/).

✚ “Aerosols for Pluviculture” from *The Biode* by **Robert Rich**, based in Mountain View, California. It was released back in February of this year on Rich’s own Soundscape label: [robertrich.bandcamp.com](https://robertrich.bandcamp.com/album/the-biode).

✚ “On the Day You Saw the Dead Whale” from Hundreds of Days by **Mary Lattimore**, based in Los Angeles, California. Dave Depper of Death Cab for Cutie singled it out recently in [an interview](https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2018/08/16/playlist-whats-death-cab-cutie-listening/1001737002/). It was released on Ghostly in May of this year: [marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com](https://marylattimoreharpist.bandcamp.com/album/hundreds-of-days). “Never Saw Him Again” from the same album previously appeared in Stasis Report from June 4 through June 24 of this year.

Some previous [Stasis Report](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/1YhR54cjP640J92AOxaoel?si=kDLQAGomSnKEqaMTBllKvg) tracks were removed to make room for these, keeping the playlist length to roughly an hour and a half. Those retired tracks (by **Daniel Aged**, **Ethan Gold**, **Kano**, **Simon McCorry**, **Orquestra de las Nubes**, and **Marta SmiLga**) are now in the [Stasis Archives](https://open.spotify.com/user/dsqt/playlist/7wQclXEfiEJ20KNIONJXGw?si=5RmtEbbSQcKNbK1ho2Vyog) playlist (currently only on Spotify).

“Unknown SoundCloud Producer Dead”

The rich ambiguity of music on Insecure

August 24, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If you watch *Insecure*, Issa Rae’s excellent HBO series, you know the music of Raphael Saadiq, who has scored it since it debuted two seasons back. Part of the impact of Saadiq’s work on *Insecure* is how the back beat of the show works seamlessly with whatever the characters might themselves be listening to. The latter is the craft of music supervisor Kier Lehman. Sometimes the distinction is entirely unclear, much to both Saadiq and Lehman’s credit. And this season of *Insecure*, its third, music production is becoming a narrative tool of interpersonal ambiguity.

Part of what makes the character Daniel — whose role has expanded significantly of late — so important to *Insecure* is that while music was already important to the show from the start, now there’s this nuanced secondary figure we see making music, and stressing about making music, and building a career in music — and, this past Sunday night, fearing his own eventual obituary’s headline if he doesn’t get his act together: “Unknown SoundCloud producer dead.”

Just moments earlier, Daniel had beatboxed into the ear of Issa’s character at a nightclub. His stated intent was to layer his sense of what would enrich the music of the performer they were witnessing at that moment, were they to every collaborate. However, in order to be heard over the club, Daniel had to lean extra close to Issa to do his beatbox impression. It’s a rare feat for beatboxing to signify subconscious intimacy and compositional refinement, even more so for those to occur simultaneously.

An especially artful moment came at the close of the episode (“Familiar-Like,” the new season’s second). Daniel is at his production desk. Issa walks to him from the living room while music plays. It’s the music Daniel’s making, but it’s also the moment’s music: relaxed, sophisticated. The ambiguity is rich. Is he doing work or sending a message? Is she helping or replying? The show doesn’t tell us directly, because the characters don’t know either, and that’s the point. Music in filmed entertainment all too often tells the audience precisely what to feel. Here it’s accomplishing something much more complicated.

Disquiet Junto Project 0347: Remix Remodel

The Assignment: Update a track by one Junto participant by adding beats from another Junto participant's imaginary drum machine.

August 23, 2018September 1, 2018 / 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 27, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 23, 2018.

Tracks are added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0347) 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 0347: Remix Remodel**

The Assignment: Update a track by one Junto participant by adding beats from another Junto participant’s imaginary drum machine.

Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this project.

Step 1: Two weeks ago in the Disquiet Junto, people made beats for their own imaginary drum machines. Last week in the Junto, people used other people’s beats from the prior project to make their own tracks. This week, the third week of this multi-part project, you’ll remix a track from the second week using beats from the first week.

Step 2: Listen through the tracks from last week, and choose the one you want to remix:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0346

In addition, there may be some other tracks from the project in the Lines discussions, here:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0346-drum-machinations/

Step 3: Listen through the tracks from the first week’s project, and choose the one whose beats you want to use in your remix of the track you selected in Step 2. The beats appear at the start of each of the participating tracks in the week’s SoundCloud playlist, here:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0345

In addition, there may be some other tracks from the project in the Lines discussions, here:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0345-sample-time/

Step 4: Having chosen tracks in Steps 2 and 3 above, confirm the tracks are downloadable. If one isn’t, either get in touch with the musician who made it, or choose another track.

Step 5: Remix/rework/remodel the track you selected in Step 2 with beats you selected in Step 3.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0347” (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 “disquiet0347” (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-0347-remix-remodel/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0347” 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: It’s important for this project that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information — as well as the name of the individual whose beats you’re using, and a link to that source track:

More on this 347th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Remix Remodel / The Assignment: Update a track by one Junto participant by adding beats from another Junto participant’s imaginary drum machine) at:

https://disquiet.com/0347/

Major thanks to Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jason Wehmhoener for having helped put together this and the preceding two projects.