Disquiet – Page 650 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Lindsay Duncanson’s Looped Vocalese

Down by the river, iPad in hand

January 29, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Much of Lindsay Duncanson’s work up on Soundcloud employs voice as its primary sound source. There are gurgles and drones, thick densities of tone and sudden, glottal explosions among the myriad examples Duncanson has posted. At one moment the voice is a calming presence, and at another it is a fierce, antagonist. In both such situations the lack of actual verbal language serves different purposes, either prelapsarian in its bliss, or suggesting a mental rupture that has short-circuited rational thought.

One standout track of Duncanson’s combines looped bits of mouth noise with that of a brook — accomplished, judging by the accompanying photo and tags, on the popular [Loopy app](https://loopyapp.com). This is the rare track amid this SoundCloud collection that has no harshness to it, no veering from calm to tension or splutter. Titled “StreamSound,” it combines a sweet melody, the sort of thing one might find oneself having been humming unconsciously, with the delicate, percussive noise of the waterway. The vocal tones build slowly, a held note, like a warm sine wave, underneath childlike snippets. The closest it gets to the harshness of many of the other tracks is when brook’s burbles, toward the end, are emphasized for their thump-like qualities, and then when the voice impersonates a flying insect, darting this way and that.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/productofboy](https://soundcloud.com/productofboy/streamsound). More from Duncanson, who is based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom, at [noizechoir.net](http://www.noizechoir.net/) (a partnership with Marek Gabrysch) and at [productofboy.net](http://www.productofboy.net/).

Adding Without Overwhelming

Modus Pony layers into Joseph Branciforte and my asynchronous duet.

January 28, 2018January 27, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

One interesting side effect of the current Disquiet Junto project is an enjoyment of the extreme panning involved. The current project is the third in a sequence. In the majority of the pieces, the initial track was panned hard left, meaning you pretty much only hear it in the left speaker or headphone. The second track, which was added to the first to form a duet, was panned hard right, and then the track that completed the trio — in the third project in the sequence — was placed center.

While not every piece in the projects — there have been about 50 each of the first two weeks — has necessarily followed those precise instructions, the majority have, including this great track by Modus Pony, who has done me the great honor of adding to the piece that [Joseph Branciforte did last week](https://disquiet.com/2018/01/19/building-on-fever-pitch/), a piece that was itself built upon a bit of [slow-poke guitar glitch](https://disquiet.com/2018/01/14/fever-pitch/) that I’d posted the first week of this project sequence.

To listen to Modus Pony’s entry is to not only hear a perfectly understated addition (he’s on bass, to my heavily processed electric guitar and Branciforte’s Fender Rhodes) that matches the tone of the first two pieces, both separately and in combination. He managed to add his own voice, and yet maintain what had preceded his arrival. As a result of the stereo separation, you really hear the parts as if the trio of players is right in front of you.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/moduspony](https://soundcloud.com/moduspony/january-fever-disquiet0317-disquiet-jbranciforte-modus-pony). More from Modus Pony, aka Matt Ackerman, who is based in Los Angeles, California, at [moduspony.bandcamp.com](https://moduspony.bandcamp.com/), [twitter.com/moduS_ponY](https://twitter.com/moduS_ponY), and [moduspony.com](http://moduspony.com/).

A Little Imaginary Proto-Techno

Tribal music before and after technology, from Certain Creatures

January 27, 2018January 27, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

<a href="http://certaincreatures.bandcamp.com/album/nasadiya-sukta">Nasadiya Sukta by Certain Creatures</a>

The recent Certain Creatures album takes its title, as did its predecessor, from a mystical term with Sanskrit origins. Back in 2015, it was *Vipassana* (on the Styles Upon Styles label). This time around it’s *Nasadiya Sukta* (Mysteries of the Deep), or the Hymn of Creation. Like a lot of origin myths, the new album, released the first week of January 2018, is at its most mysterious, at its most amorphous, at its most singular, when it first begins — before reality emerges, before reality sets in.

The opening track on *Nasadiya Sukta*, “Cross Star Woman,” starts with thuddy gongs that usher in a dark, wet sonic space, deep with echoes that, as the track proceeds, push at distant, unseen contours. A chanting vocal, a muffled bit of finger percussion, and slow, syncopated beats slowly consume that gong. A door opens and closes and opens again. Perhaps it’s one door, perhaps several down a long corridor. Maybe it’s a trick of mirrors, and it’s the same door over and over. (There’s also a plinky IDM nod to *Selected Ambient Works*-era Aphex twin as the track comes to a close.)

Only in retrospect, over the course of the full album, does the techno-primitivism of that first track become evident. In subsequent pieces, the analog sounds of doors, percussion, and voice give way to more industrialized alternatives. “Nyau Dust” has a similar ghostly-noise backdrop to “Cross Star Woman,” but introduce far more synthesized effects, all throbby synths and digital snares. “Golden Circle” layers in a modulating keyboard part and the carefully plotted drama-via-layers of club music. All the subsequent tracks, from the thriller-cinema pacing of “We Live Inside a Dream” to the squelchy dub of “Tachyon,” trace a not dissimilar pattern to “Cross Star Woman” but do so with a more evidently synthesized vocabulary, often as much techno, at times with synth-pop flavoring. To go back and listen to “Cross Star Woman” after taking in the album in full is to hear that opening track as a kind of pre-historical techno, an imagined tribal ceremony before the fall.

Certain Creatures is Brooklyn-based musician Oliver Chapoy, formerly of Warm Ghost and Saxon Shore. He’s also played with the metal band Shai Hulud. Album available at [certaincreatures.bandcamp.com](https://certaincreatures.bandcamp.com/). More at [certaincreatures.com](http://certaincreatures.com/) and [mysteriesofthedeep.mx](http://mysteriesofthedeep.mx/).

Tension in the Mist

A device-duet in layers by Joseph Branciforte

January 26, 2018January 25, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This short test run by a composer based in Brooklyn by the name of Joseph Branciforte combines two devices toward layered, fragile effect. One is a synthesizer that provides for patching by cables to produce various sounds, patterns, and textures. The other, into which the synthesizer’s signals flow, is a delay pedal, which lends a sense of spaciousness that is in direct contrast to the tiny footprint of the actual boxes.

The pedal isn’t the sole source of the airy quality inherent in the track’s tonal material. Branciforte explained to me in an email that while this piece — which bears no title aside from what is little more than a list of the equipment with which it was made (“makenoise 0-coast / ambient loops with earthquaker space spiral”) — is a layering of eight elements. The first seven had already been completed when he hit record on his camera. What we’re witnessing here, in the video, is the eighth and final layer being added to the whole.

The overall effect is cloudy and drowsy, but there is tension in the mist, like the way the stereo play introduces a singsong quality, and how occasional tiny percussive blips suggest a signal beeping in an unattended NASA mission control center. At a minute and a half in length, the piece is best played on loop, which is especially appropriate since it is itself an accumulation of loops.

This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally published to Branciforte’s [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA1XAVWSt8E). More from Branciforte at [josephbranciforte.com](http://www.josephbranciforte.com/home.html), [instagram.com/josephbranciforte](https://www.instagram.com/josephbranciforte/), and [twitter.com/josbranciforte](https://twitter.com/josbranciforte). Branciforte did me the honor recently of [adding to a track I’d recorded as part of a Disquiet Junto project](https://disquiet.com/2018/01/19/building-on-fever-pitch/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0317: Triadic Awareness

The Assignment: Record the third part of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track of two parts.

January 25, 2018January 25, 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.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0317) for the duration of the project.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, January 29, 2018. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, January 25, 2018.

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 0317: Triadic Awareness**

The Assignment: Record the third part of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track of two parts.

Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the third in a sequence that explores and encourages asynchronous collaboration. This week you will be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project ([disquiet.com/0316](http://disquiet.com/0316)). Note that you are finishing a trio — you’re creating the third part of what two previous musicians created. Keep this in mind.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to a pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are 56 tracks in all to choose from, 54 as part of this playlist:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0316-el

And then the 55th is a video by Bassling (aka Jason Richardson), in asynchronous collaboration with Benn DeMole:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnFXRlCCKL4

And the 56th is Samarobryn (interestingly based in Australia, as is Richardson), in asynchronous collaboration with jwhiles:

https://samarobryn.bandcamp.com/track/the-mutable-truth-disquiet0316

To select a track, you can listen through all that and choose one, or you can use a random number generator to select a number from 1 to 56, the first 54 being numbered in the above SoundCloud playlist, and 55 being the Bassling/DeMole track, and 56 being the Samarobryn/jwhiles. (Note: it’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2. It should fit both sonically and compositionally between the two parts that constitute the pre-existing track. When composing and recording your part, do not alter the original piece of music at all. In your finished audio track, your part should be panned center. To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours. It will be a trio.

Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because that is the nature of share-alike licenses in the Creative Commons, and also because there may yet be more projects in this sequence.

Background: The title of this project, “Triadic Awareness,” comes from an idea I learned about when I was reading a book by Frans de Waal, the primate scientist. The concept correlates nicely with such ideas as “ambient awareness” and “parallel productivity” that have long been underlying concepts in the Disquiet Junto projects.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0317” (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 “disquiet0317” (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: Please consider posting your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0317-triadic-awareness/11271/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process. Be sure to name the track to which you’ve added music and the name of the two musicians who recorded it, and include a link to it.

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

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, January 29, 2018. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, January 25, 2018.

Length: The length of your track will be roughly the length of the track to which you are adding something.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0317” 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 is essential for this specific 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 information:

More on this 317th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Triadic Awareness: Record the third part of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track of two parts) at:

https://disquiet.com/0317/