Disquiet – Page 725 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

A Pixel Fire

Three frames capture the performance, and occasional "brutal digital audioclipping"

June 21, 2016June 21, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The musician working from the traumaduo/spacebox720 account on YouTube apologizes at the opening of this video for the “brutal digital audioclipping” — his exact words — that occurs in the track. The clipping is especially evident right after the nine-minute mark, when a harsh rupture, a pixel fire, briefly invades the previously placid, lightly padded space. That sonic fire quickly recedes, and the patient, soft music, gently percussive music proceeds. The clipping there is as much an echo as it is a rupture, bringing to mind a quieter fissure at the three-minute mark, and other punctuations that occur over the course of the piece. I note this video not only for its listening pleasure, but for the format of the performance presentation. It appears as three images: one large, two small, each showing a different perspective on the instrumentation, allowing him to move freely among the tools and almost always have his actions captured. (Such a format has been on my mind for a possible project, and then I stumbled on this employment while searching for music that uses devices by the musician-designer Meng Qi, who’s based in Beijing, China). In addition there are computer-generated images that lend some science-fiction drama to the undertaking.

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWpmoCtPC2c). It’s the latest piece I’ve added to my ongoing [YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine [“Ambient Performances.”](https://disquiet.com/2016/04/30/a-youtube-playlist-of-ambient-performances/)

RIP, Other Music

Aphex Twin makes its top-100 sales chart.

June 20, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

20160620-othermusic

This white board shows the top 100 albums sold at the excellent record retailer Other Music in its 20 years of existence in downtown Manhattan. The store shuts this week, on June 25, and the board was posted commemoratively at the website [brooklynvegan.com](http://www.brooklynvegan.com/other-musics-top-100-selling-lps-of-all-time/) yesterday with some light annotation. I first saw the picture when Amon Tobin [tweeted](https://twitter.com/AmonTobinHQ/status/744637851296481281) about it, saying, “Peace out Other Music. There will never be another store that can move over 1000 copies of an Amon Tobin record.” There’s only one Aphex Twin record on the board, and while the photo cuts off, it appears to be *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2*. All it says is “Ambient” with what looks like the “2” truncated mid-numeral (a reading confirmed by [that Brooklyn Vegan post](http://www.brooklynvegan.com/other-musics-top-100-selling-lps-of-all-time/)).

20160620-othermusic copy

When Bloomsbury published [my 33 1/3 book on *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2*](https://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Works/dp/1623568900) in 2014, one bit of feedback that confused me was from people who couldn’t understand why I hadn’t written instead about the earlier *Selected Ambient Works*, or the album titled *Richard D. James Album*, or another of his releases. My response was usually along the lines of “I wrote about this record because it’s the record that captured my imagination.” What interested me about the Other Music board is that no other Aphex Twin record made the list — not only did *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2* appear on the top 100, it was the only Aphex record to make that cutoff. As the discussion at Brooklyn Vegan makes clear, Other Music had its own take on culture (“OM was more DJ Shadow or … J. Dilla than the Beasties,” writes Bill Pearis). While consumers were free to buy what they wanted at the store, the store in various ways shaped the tastes of the people who shopped there.

The store was also, in turn, shaped by time. Other Music’s history closely parallels Disquiet.com’s. It [launched in 1995](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/arts/music/other-music-record-store-closing.html?_r=0), a year before Disquiet.com did, and it was right around the corner from Tower Records. I was still an editor at the *Pulse!* music magazines published by Tower in 1995 — I joined the company in 1989 and left in 1996, a decision that led me to start Disquiet.com, which turns 20 on December 13, 2016. Tower was based in West Sacramento, and I lived alternately in Davis and Sacramento during my tenure. I’d moved to California from Brooklyn in 1989 to take the job. *Selected Ambient Works Volume 2* was released in 1994, a year before Other Music opened.

The culture of a record store, the way you learn about music, is something that online retailers (including streaming services) have failed so far to emulate particularly well. Rdio probably came closest among the streaming companies, and it still went out of business. When you are in a physical record store, you learn from the room, watching what others buy, conversing with clerks, reading short reviews, listening to what’s playing and asking about it. Other Music was a valuable one-room schoolhouse, as record-learning goes. Up until Tower Records closed down, whenever I went back to New York to attend a Bang on a Can festival or interview a musician, or meet with record labels, Other Music was always a stop. It felt a bit like cheating to walk across the street from Tower, but the cheating was always in service of the magazines’ coverage.

What Sound Looks Like

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

June 20, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Image on a friend’s t-shirt at lunch.

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

Slacking About Remixing

A window on the new Disquiet Junto Slack discussion group

June 18, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This past week I opened up a discussion group on Slack (slack.com), the popular messaging and collaboration platform. I remain more wedded to forum-style discussion, but I am also aware that preference may simply be me, and that Slack’s success may indeed relate to a more contemporary, fluid, less structured format.

In any case, as I’d hoped, discussion about specific projects while the projects are still happening has been solid. This [week’s Junto project](https://disquiet.com/0233) involves a remix of [three unrelated tracks](https://disquiet.com/0233). I share a brief bit of that conversation below. (And if you’re part of the Junto Slack discussion, you can view the full thread [here](https://disquietjunto.slack.com/messages/junto0233-due0620/team/slackbot/).)

mtnviewmark [7:36 AM]
I might suggest that we ”‹*don’t*”‹ post our tracks here. I think this channel would be better for discussion than as another rolling list of submissions, which can be found on SoundCloud as is.
So…
In the past Disquiet submissions I did the assignments in the void: I didn’t even load up the SC list until after I finished my submission. I didn’t want to hear others’ work and be influenced by them. That seems silly in the face of the premise of this week’s assignment: remix! Also, want to see if having a live discussion ”‹_during_”‹ the assignment helps.
So…
I’m looking at first two tracks – rhythmic / arrythmic – and rather than remix them directly, I’m working on swapping the rhythms between them…. so far, this is slow going.
Also, if it helps anyone, the first track is at 128.41bpm by my measure….

marc.weidenbaum [9:21 AM]
It does feel a bit redundant. On occasion may be good for reference during conversation. Look forward to what you make of it.

joemcmahon [9:45 AM]
@mtnviewmark: Yeah, I prefer it that way too; if I let myself hear what others have done, sometimes I just say, “well, that’s better than I could do it” and skip it. :slightly\_smiling\_face:

audio_obscura [3:57 AM]
Its true what others say in that I often here junto submissions and think I could never better that, in fact I think I have 4 tracks I did and never submitted as they just weren’t any good. But this weeks challenge is a good one as the variety of posts from the same sources is really different. Just my opinion but I like to hear the elements from the source material in the remixes – some people twist the sources so much you can’t really hear any of the original. I think with mine you can still distinctly hear the three referenced works

marc.weidenbaum [5:41 AM]
@audio_obscura: That hearing the originals in the remix gives me great pleasure. Have you ever checked out the Stonesthrow Beat Battles? I love listening in each week and checking out how everyone’s redone the shared sample.

audio_obscura [6:34 AM]
@marc.weidenbaum: I think next’s weeks Junto should be to take 3 of this weeks remixes, download them and take the 1st 30 seconds of the tracks and remix them – basically repeating this weeks challenge but taking it another step down the road!

audiodays [6:55 AM]
Really enjoyed the challenge again this week. some weeks I know straight away what I’m going to do, but this week.s took a bit of thinking time and some experiments. I agree with that has been said about hearing the source material and I think I’ve ”˜just’ about go away with it this week. But as I said in my notes on SC, I struggled finding a a way of bringing HNY and Pepper Jelly together without it sounding too much like a car crash.
I rarely, if ever, listen to other contributions until I’ve uploaded my own, and settling down to hear how other have interpreted the brief is just as joyous as the Disquiet Junto email dropping on a Thursday evening (UK time).

Disquiet Junto Project 0233: Netlabel (NND Remix)

The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

June 16, 2016February 12, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

jetlee

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on [SoundCloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) and at [disquiet.com/junto](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. 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 late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 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 0233: Netlabel (NND Remix)

The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.

Seeing the “ND” tag on a netlabel release is a major buzzkill. The “ND” tag denotes a Creative Commons license that rules out creating derivative work. Fortunately lots of netlabels do allow for creative reuse, and this occasional series of collaborative remixes seeks to celebrate that activity, and encourage other netlabels to switch off the ND tag. Take “NND” to mean “not no derivatives.”

Step 1: Download the three tracks that will provide source audio for this remix:

Use the first 30 seconds of “HNY” off the album Wormbole by ÊžÄ±k (Karl & Karlik) on the Bump Foot netlabel:

http://www.bumpfoot.net/bump207.html

Use the first 30 seconds of “Pepper Jelly” off the album Recombinations by Andre Darius and Riley Theodore on the Haze netlabel:

https://hazenetlabel.bandcamp.com/album/recombinations

Use the first 30 seconds of “Autista 3” off the album Autista by Pablo Reche on the Impulsive Habitat netlabel:

http://www.impulsivehabitat.com/releases/ihab113.htm

Step 2: Create an original piece of work including that source material.

Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

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 late morning, California time, on Thursday, June 16, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 20, 2016.

Length: Length is up to you, though between two and three minutes seems about right.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0233.”Also use “disquiet0233″as a tag for your track.

Download: It is necessary that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing and attribution, per the Creative Commons license of the source audio.

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 233rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license”– at:

https://disquiet.com/0233/