Disquiet – Page 702 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

A Beat Amid Voices

A new track from Oakland-based Marilyn McNeal

October 4, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

screen-shot-2016-10-04-at-7-59-12-pm

Marilyn McNeal’s new album, *Spacetime*, ranges from off-kilter techno (“Frere”) to folktronic blues (“Nice Home”) to downtempo beatcraft (“String Theory”), and in numerous other directions as well, often simultaneously. There are six tracks total, and each puts a unique spin on whatever realm of music it might feel closest to approximating. Perhaps the most significant treat is the track that, naturally, is most difficult to even begin to classify:

That track would be “Tower,” which loops several vocal lines — one deep and slow, one high-pitched and rapid, one ethereal and modulating this way and that — all of them echoing in and out of sync with each other. Through the post-verbal quilt runs this fascinating little beat, not much more than a terse click track, so innocuous it might not even be evident on initial listens. How that beat holds its own needle-drop composure amid the psychedelic syllabic cascades is just one of the piece’s many pleasures.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/marilynmcneal](https://soundcloud.com/marilynmcneal/tower?in=marilynmcneal/sets/spacetime). More from McNeal, who is based in Oakland, California, at [marilynm.org](http://marilynm.org/) and [twitter.com/popularmagicsf](https://twitter.com/popularmagicsf).

If Rube Goldberg Composed Music

The machines of Louise Rossiter

October 3, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There’s no note accompanying Louise Rossiter’s “Opening,” which was posted a little less than three weeks ago to the composer’s SoundCloud account. It’s a bracing piece of rhythmic sound, all the material seemingly drawn from gears, engines, and other motoric devices. It sounds like looms and telegraphs, typewriters and pistons, all sewn together into a perfectly flowing structure, one metric element giving way to the next, like if Rube Goldberg composed music.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/mad_lou](https://soundcloud.com/mad_lou/opening). More from Rossiter, who’s from Scotland and is based in Leicester, at [louiserossiter.com](http://louiserossiter.com/) and [twitter.com/electro_lou](https://twitter.com/electro_lou).

Sonic Freeze Frame

From Massachusetts—based PrettyRobots+HungryGhosts

September 30, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“Cascade V.1” by the (apparently?) anonymous Northampton, Massachusetts”“based musician who goes by PrettyRobots+HungryGhosts, is a slow, tinkling drone that gains layers of quietly anxious activity as it proceeds until, true to its name, it explodes in a vibrantly refracting hall of mirrors stutter. Her piece is room tone and glass clicks, mood setting and light glitch, until it goes all sonic freeze frame. It’s grand.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/prettyrobotshungryghosts](https://soundcloud.com/prettyrobotshungryghosts). More at [prettyrobots–hungryghosts.tumblr.com](https://prettyrobots–hungryghosts.tumblr.com/).

What Sound Looks Like

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

September 30, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I flew a kite for the first time in decades if not ages, for the first time perhaps since before my own age hit double digits. The kite was a gift my child, still early on in single digits, had received, and we took it down to the ocean —Â a straight shot by bus from our home —Â to see how well it took to the wind. There is a dragon on the kite, a not particularly friendly looking dragon. The higher the kite flew, the more the dragon’s eyes seemed to shine with the sun. If you can hear your kite, that’s not a particularly good sign. When the kite lingers a couple dozen feet above the beach, the tails flutter perceptibly, much like a flag fighting to stay erect in a storm. If you hear your kite, it is proximate to ground, perhaps heading rapidly in that direction. The goal is to not hear your kite. The higher the kite goes, the quieter the flutter, until at some point the kite makes no sound at all. It ascends into silence. I had it in the air for almost 45 minutes straight, learning to tug this way and that to keep it afloat when the elements challenged its flight plan. At some point I recognized that I could pluck the string and watch the waveform travel up to the heavens, up to the kite, which would jiggle a bit in response. The slender tether made me think of Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument, which places the performer, generally Fullman herself, in a field of resonant strings, like a Lilliputian caught in a luthier’s workshop. I wondered how my long string might come to make sound, rather than recede from sound. As it hung in the air, I took mental notes about attaching something, maybe a bell, maybe a wind chime. Those experiments are for the next trip to the beach.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0248: Galactic Tick

Celebrate the new celestial holiday in music.

September 29, 2016September 30, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

galactictickdotcom

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 this playlist for the duration of the project:

This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, September 29, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 3, 2016.

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 0248: Galactic Tick

Celebrate the new celestial holiday in music.

Project Steps:

Step 1: Read up on the Galactic Tick, a new proposed holiday exploring, as described by Popular Mechanics, “how people’s perceptions would change if they really realized the one fixed point in their celestial understanding, the mighty sun, was also in flux.”

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/news/a22492/galactic-tick-day-september-29/

http://galactictick.com/

Step 2: Devise a short piece of music in celebration of the Galactic Tick. Perhaps you’ll explore the distance of 225 million years, which is how often the Earth fully circles the center of the Milky Way. Perhaps you’ll find cosmic meaning in 1/129,600,000, which is the “centi-arcsecond” employed by the Galactic Tick planners to make the period of time more human-comprehensible. Perhaps you’ll find meaning in 633.7, which is the number of days between celebrations of the Galactic Tick here on Earth, or 1.74, which is the number of years.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0248”(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: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)

http://llllllll.co/t/music-for-the-galactic-tick-disquiet-junto-project-0248/4744

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 was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, September 29, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, October 3, 2016.

Length: The length is up to you. One minute and 44 seconds seems like a good length (that’s roughly 1.74 minutes).

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0248”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 preferable 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 248th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Celebrate the new celestial holiday in music”— at:

https://disquiet.com/0248/