Disquiet – Page 654 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

What Sounds Looks Like

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

January 12, 2018January 13, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If the uniform makes the man, then what does a haphazard wall say about an organization? Nothing sure signals vigilant security like worn, off-kilter advisory signage, especially when it is accompanied by a pair of unlabeled doorbells. The former bears witness to one or more previous generations of slapdash paint jobs. The latter seem perfunctory, forgotten, vestigial. Perhaps the painting on the sign was intended as a makeshift right arrow, acknowledging after the fact that this isn’t a restricted area; the no-go zone is over there, somewhere. As for the doorbells, they offer even less in the manner of directions. Presumably you push the top one first, and if no one from the subterranean secret society answers, you push the bottom one.

*An ongoing series cross-posted from [instagram.com/dsqt](http://instagram.com/dsqt).*

Disquiet Junto Project 0315: First Chair

The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.

January 11, 2018January 13, 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-0315) 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 15, 2018. This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, January 11, 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 0315: First Chair**

Record the first third of a trio.

Step 1: This week’s Junto will be the first in a sequence that explores and encourages asynchronous collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive it as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly two to three minutes in length, as described in Step 2. When done, if possible, pan the audio so that your piece is solely in the left side of the audio.

Step 4: Also be sure, when complete, to make the track downloadable, because it will be used by someone else in a subsequent Junto project.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0315” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.

Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 3: Please consider posting your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0315-first-chair/

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, January 15, 2018. This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, January 11, 2018.

Length: Keep the track to between two and three minutes, preferably.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0315” 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 315th weekly Disquiet Junto project (First Chair: Record the first third of a trio) at:

https://disquiet.com/0315/

Literal and Figurative Peace

A field-recording mix from Zagreb-based Monk by the Sea

January 10, 2018January 11, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The track by the Monk by the Sea is lush and peaceful, in a manner both literal and figurative. The literal aspect is the birdsong, heard overhead, at times flying right across the stereo spectrum. What the unseen bird is flying through isn’t merely the listener’s headspace; it’s that figurative peace, a drifting, cloud-like sonic softness. The music has the sense of something stretched to achieve density and texture. “Song from the Forest” is a testament to the Monk by the Sea’s abilities that the explicitly natural element of the bird meshes so well with the more surreal element of the slowly unfurling, sumptuous ether. The title suggests several readings. The birdsong is itself a song from the forest, while the finished track — a mix of recording and impression, artfully conjoined — is also a song from the forest.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/themonkbythesea](https://soundcloud.com/themonkbythesea/song-from-the-forest2). The Monk by the Sea is Ivan Ujevic of Zagreb, Croatia. More at [twitter.com/UjevicIvan](https://twitter.com/UjevicIvan), [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/user/ujevicivan), and [themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com](https://themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com/).

The Broken Bell Tones of Morten Jeamland

A track titled "Watercamel"

January 9, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“Watercamel” is like a rarified collection of broken bell tones, their shards laid out with great care on a long narrow table in order for them to be cataloged, notated, attended to. The short composition, under three minutes in length, starts strong and suddenly, and then just as suddenly fades for a short, ear-cleaning spell, before entering into the full heft of the piece. It’s then that the round tones appear, sliced here and there, rendered as quivering moirés and bracing drone fragments, proceeding one after another: a shudder here, an insectoid whir there. A full, unsullied bell is never heard. Instead it’s all rough-edged slivers and mists of particulates. The result is deeply ceremonial.

The piece is by Morten Jeamland and was originally posted at [soundcloud.com/orteneamland](https://soundcloud.com/orteneamland/watercamel).

The Disintegration of Swoop and Cross

A preview of an album on the Time Released Sound label

January 8, 2018January 8, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

In one week’s time, the Time Released Sound record label will release *Disintegration*, an album by Swoop and Cross. Swoop and Cross is the name under which the London-based musician Ruben Vale records a mix of classical and ambient, or more to the point a music in which those two finds significant common ground. An advance listen to *Disintegration* is available on Time Released’s [soundcloud.com/time-released-sound](https://soundcloud.com/time-released-sound/swoop-and-cross-stories-of-disintegration-st-no) page. Throughout, solo piano is echoed in myriad ways. There are duplicated lines that suggest a hall of mirrors, and there are faint glimmers that presuppose the presence of an astral accomplice. That latter, ghostly aura lends the already somber, if at times quickly paced, music a nostalgic atmosphere. About two thirds of the way through the track, the piano temporarily disappears, and the glimmer takes over: a hushed, granular cloud through which a flock of birds is heard passing.

More from Time Released Sound at [timereleasedsound.com](http://timereleasedsound.com/). More from Swoop and Cross at [soundcloud.com/swoopandcross](https://soundcloud.com/swoopandcross).