Disquiet – Page 740 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

This Week in Sound: The Hum

+ ultrasound anxiety + civic sirens

April 14, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A lightly annotated clipping service (fairly brief edition this week):

**The Hum:** To say that Colin Dickey’s essay in [*The New Republic*](https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound) on the perception of persistent hums connects existential concern about industrialization with the ineffable trauma of tinnitus would be to understate the historical range of the study, which moves from the “aeolian sound” reported by an 1828 traveler in the Pyrenees to contemporary Facebook support groups. And it’s thick with interviews, including one with Glen MacPherson, a teacher who founded the World Hum Map and Database Project. Writes Dickey at one point, “As I listened to MacPherson’s story of a mysterious noise, I couldn’t help but notice a sign tacked to the wall behind him, written in the big, gentle hand of a kindergarten teacher: ‘Be kind, be safe, be listening.’”*(Via Drew Daniel and Dominic Pettman.)* For further reading, I suggest the work on aelectrosonics by Douglas Kahn, as well as field recordist Gordon Hempton’s depiction of electric-grid hums as “the American mantra.”

**Ne Plus Ultra:** And in tangential news, “New research from the University of Southampton indicates that the public are being exposed, without their knowledge, to airborne ultrasound” ([sonicstudies.org](http://sonicstudies.org/post/142624953072/are-people-suffering-from-ultrasounds)).

**Warning Warning:** Photo by itinerant (sound) artist [Jeff Kolar](https://twitter.com/jeffkolar/status/719363531846463488) near Stinson Beach, in Marin County, during a visit from Chicago. It’s a visual warning sign in advance of a sonic warning:

CfuxToIUsAAR2Pl

*This first appeared, in slightly different form, in the April 12, 2016 (it went out a day late), edition of the free Disquiet “This Week in Sound”email newsletter: [tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*

Disquiet Junto Project 0224: Cold Embrace

Make music with the sound of a refrigerator as its foundation.

April 14, 2016April 21, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

timothyallen

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 project 0224:

This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 14, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 18, 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 0224: Cold Embrace

Make music with the sound of a refrigerator as its foundation.

This week’s project was inspired, in part, by an April 13, 2016, talk that the artist Jeff Kolar gave to students in the class on sound that I teach.

Step 1: Record the sound of a refrigerator, preferably the one in your own kitchen.

Step 2: Listen to the recording to get a sense of the hum, the tonality, and the rhythm or rhythms inherent in that audio.

Step 3: Create an original piece of music augmenting that tonality and rhythm. It’s preferable you simple add material to the field recording, but you can also use the field recording as source material.

Step 4: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

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.

Deadline: This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 14, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 18, 2016.

Length: The length is up to you, though between one and three minutes feels 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 “disquiet0224-coldembrace.”Also use “disquiet0224-coldembrace”as a tag for your track.

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, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 224th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Make music with the sound of a refrigerator as its foundation.”) at:

https://disquiet.com/0224/

A Sweet Affectlessness

"Refound Theme" by Jonathan Brodsky of Seattle, Washington

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The word “ambient” means different things to different people in different contexts. Even though the elegant “Refound Theme” by Jonathan Brodsky is built around rhythmic material, in particular a semi-randomly plucked thumb piano, those cycles of percussion become almost fog-like as they proceed. There’s no certain beat to the beat, as it were. It’s a slender constellation that’s ever shifting, albeit slightly, gently, never drawing attention to itself — a quality that is at the essence of ambient.

The metal and wood produce sounds that suggest bell tones and bicycles, caged birds and archaic gears. There’s the thumb piano, and glockenspiel, and as it makes its way Brodsky adds a through line of tremulous, ever so remote clarinet. The piece has a sweet affectlessness that makes it loopable, that softens the percussion, that suggests it as background music.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/jonbro](https://soundcloud.com/jonbro/refound-theme). Brodsky is based in Seattle, Washington.

Guitarist Ben Greenberg Live from the Clocktower

Aka Hubble, recorded on March 24, 2016

April 12, 2016May 16, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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How this is the first mention I’ve made of Clocktower on Disquiet.com is beyond me, since I listen to the website — specifically its Clocktower Radio, founded in 2003 — a lot. I did [express concern](https://disquiet.com/2008/10/19/tangents-3-months-of-433-micing-marfa-three-martinez-scores/) back in [2008](https://disquiet.com/2008/10/19/tangents-3-months-of-433-micing-marfa-three-martinez-scores/) when its founder, Alanna Heiss, left the museum she founded, MoMA PS1 (previous PS1, originally Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc.), but far as I can tell that’s the only mention of it here. In any case, Clocktower Radio is a long-running Internet audio series based in New York City.

Recently posted on the site is a half-hour live performance by guitarist Hubble (aka Ben Greenberg), recorded live on March 24, 2016, as part of an evening of quadrophonic pieces. It moves comfortably from expansive atmospherics to dense, tribal minimalism, the layers of (presumably live-looped) material gathering like fierce shadows. The antic momentum brings to mind early Battles, while the orchestral timbre naturally connects to the work of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. (**Update 2016.05.16:** There is no live looping, per a [tweet](https://twitter.com/missionhubble/status/732215462784831488) from Greenberg.)

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Track originally posted for streaming at [clocktower.org](http://clocktower.org/show/tetraphonics-hubble-ben-greenberg#). More from Greenberg, who is based in New York City, at [missionhubble.blogspot.com](http://missionhubble.blogspot.com/), [soundcloud.com/hubbletrouble](https://soundcloud.com/hubbletrouble), [facebook.com/missionhubble](https://www.facebook.com/missionhubble), and [twitter.com/missionhubble](https://twitter.com/missionhubble). Images by Anice Jee from the post at [clocktower.org](http://clocktower.org/show/tetraphonics-hubble-ben-greenberg).

Aural Potpourri of Lingering Anxiety

A track by Martin Colborn of Durham, England

April 11, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Following a deep, shuddering, glottal opening — a few terse notes sawed in sequence — the remainder of “Gunners Pool” by Martin Colborn provides a brief sense of a sonic miasma, alternately haunting and enchanting. It’s a low-volume atmosphere of sour notes, playing in semi-unison. Colborn’s very brief liner note (five words: “Ebow and stark scratchy sounds”) singles out a device that lets the strings of an instrument vibrate endlessly (or at least until the EBow’s battery wears out). Play this in one room and then go read in another. It is the aural potpourri of lingering anxiety, of restrained fear.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/martin-colborn](https://soundcloud.com/martin-colborn/gunners-pool). Set it on repeat. I played it about 50 times in a row today. I previously wrote about a Colborn track late last month: [“All the More Beautiful for That Absence.”](https://disquiet.com/2016/03/26/martin-colborn/) He’s based in Durham, England.