A Drone Primer

The Bell Mechanical’s “Dystorphia”

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The dense, fluid, constantly shifting tone of the Bell Mechanical’s “Dystorphia”is sort of a drone primer. It has the expected white noise frission of something that is defined as a drone, yet were you to drop the (proverbial) needle at any random points the wide variety of sounds comprising the track would become immediately evident. It feels singular, but on repeat listens reveals multiple layers of activity: clouds and pulses and momentary signals. And it presents itself as static, and yet it has, in fact, an internal combustion that is quite active, even rapid. The track highlights numerous ways in which seeming stasis is anything but still.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/the_bell_mechanical/dystorphia). More from the Bell Mechanical, based in Salem, Massachusetts, at [thebellmechanical.bandcamp.com](https://thebellmechanical.bandcamp.com/) and [twitter.com/the_mjl](https://twitter.com/the_mjl).

Nils Frahm Out of the Solo Spotlight

An excellent track from his new trio, Nonkeen

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Some things are best slightly out of context. I often prefer Cory Doctorow’s young adult novels, as if the (relative) absence of sex and the more compact scope serve to clip his more effusive tendencies. I generally prefer, with a few exceptions, Grant Morrison’s work-for-hire comics, sensing that the internal corporate-publishing politics of continuity management rein in an imagination that can veer toward the profligate. I think Lily Tomlin’s best performance in years was her role on *Damages*, a legal thriller where all her expert comic timing was forced into a claustrophobic, often bitter dramatic role.

And I think Nils Frahm responds particularly well to the challenge of working with others. He’s best known as an improvising, neo-classical, ambient-piano solo artist, but between last year’s *Loon*, a spectacularly refined EP of glitchy atmospherics he made with Ólafur Arnalds for the Erased Tapes label, and a new recording as part of the trio Nonkeen, he’s showing that he’s far more than a soloist. Nonkeen teems him with two longtime friends, Frederic Gmeiner and Sebastian Singwald, with support from percussionist Andrea Belfi. The album is titled *The Gamble*, and after an opening track of synthesized orchestral grandeur it lingers in a kind of offworld exotica, a mix of light electronic textures and high-tone lounge-ready jazz touches.

One highlight is the track “Saddest Continent on Earth,” which mixes taut, melancholic electric guitar with a droning haze of a sonic foundation, Frahm’s electric piano little more than a series of elegiac chords. The guitar is so compressed that it sounds at times like it’s cutting in and out, flickering like a neon sign. The guitar and the keyboard merge perfectly, meeting halfway with a sad, sharp, sour tone. Throughout is the thick whir of a field recording, grounding their ethereal practice in the everyday.

More from Nonkeen at [nonkeen.com](http://www.nonkeen.com/). The album was released by R&S Records ([randsrecords.com](http://www.randsrecords.com/artists/nonkeen)).

(Side note: I think this is the first time I’ve ever used a Spotify embed in post on Disquiet.com. If the embed doesn’t work for you, the track is also on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMwvpmn0V8w).)

This Week in Sound: Exposed Speakers + Paramusical Ensemble

+ AM-less e-cars + muting Istanbul

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A lightly annotated clipping service — and because I was prepping for the second week of class, this week’s This Week in Sound is a bit more rangy and a bit more cursory. Then again, maybe it should be more rangy and cursory in the first place:

**Brain Tunes:** The New York Times [reports](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/science/new-ways-into-the-brains-music-room.html?_r=2) on MIT research that seeks to codify the human experience of music: “By mathematically analyzing scans of the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells with similar activation patterns, the scientists have identified neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music.” As C. Reider [noted on Twitter](https://twitter.com/vuzhmusic/status/696938397114490881), the definition of music in the research is peculiarly limited. Reider points to this section of the piece: “When a musical passage is played, a distinct set of neurons tucked inside a furrow of a listener’s auditory cortex will fire in response. … Other sounds, by contrast — a dog barking, a car skidding, a toilet flushing — leave the musical circuits unmoved.” Alex Temple [put it well](https://twitter.com/alextemplemusic/status/697085482371543041): “If people are still saying this over 100 years after Russolo’s ‘The Art of Noise,’ they’re probably never going to stop.” And [Nick Sowers](https://twitter.com/soundscrapers/status/697106070305533954): “Sorry NY Times, my musical circuits are also moved by dog barks and car skids. Maybe not toilet flushes tho.”

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**Paramusic Union:** The feel-good music-tech story of the week must be that of Rosemary Johnson ([telegraph.co.uk](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12143243/Brain-damaged-%20violinist-plays-for-first-time-in-16-years-using-mind-reading-technology.html)), a violinist whose career was stopped short due to a car crash that left her severely disabled, unable to speak or even move. But after a decade of effort at Plymouth University and the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability in London, Johnson is now producing music through technology that lets her control computer equipment with her brain. The photo above shows Johnson and three other disabled individuals who, along with the Bergersen String Quartet, form what they call the Paramusical Ensemble.

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**Umbrella Stands:** The fact is every week I could feature one or another new work of sound art whose visual impact results from a preponderance of speakers — and I probably will. This week’s, above, is of an installation, Re-Rain, created by Kouichi Okamoto and on display at the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art in Shizuoka City, Japan. Each speaker emits the sound of rain, which is reflected off the inside of the umbrellas: [thecreatorsproject.vice.com](http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/rain-sound-installation-umbrellas).

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**Lagos Sonics:** Speaking of exposed speakers, above is a shot from the [washingtonpost.com](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/museums/national-museum-of-african-art-brings-us-the-sounds-of-a-nigerian-market/2016/02/04/f701f410-c127-11e5-83d4-42e3bceea902_story.html) site on Emeka Ogboh’s “Market Symphony,” a new work displayed at the National Museum of African Art. The speakers, which play sounds from Balogun Market in Lagos, and elsewhere in Nigeria, are installed on “colorful enamelware trays” of the sort found in the market. It’s the museum’s first sound installation. (I may be in D.C. at some point in the next few weeks, and if I get there I hope to check out this exhibit.)

**Muting Istanbul:** Imagine being able to mute or amplify individual elements from what constitute a city’s soundscape. AteÅŸ Erkoç has produced such an installation in Istanbul as part of the exhibit *Everyday Sounds: Exploring Sound Through Daily Life*: [dailysabah.com](http://www.dailysabah.com/events/2016/02/06/everyday-sounds-exploring-istanbuls-sounds-through-daily-life).

**AM Unplugged:** Apparently the mechanics of electrical cars don’t go well with AM radio, reports music3point0.blogspot.com: “cars like the Tesla Model X or BMW i3 don’t install them since the AM reception is impossible due to the internal electrical noise of the car” — via [motherboard.vice.com](http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/why-electric-cars-are-ditching-am-radio), [twitter.com/jeffkolar](https://twitter.com/jeffkolar/status/696841307516309504).

*This first appeared, in slightly different form, in the February 9, 2016, edition of the free Disquiet “This Week in Sound”email newsletter: [tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*

Abstract Beats from a Master

Fives more tastes of Arckatron's forthcoming Subtle Busyness

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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The fine, Los Angeles”“based abstract beatmaker (until very recently of Philadelphia) Arckatron (aka Shawn Kelly) uploaded two tracks from his forthcoming, 21-song album, *Subtle Busyness*, at the start of the year: the blissfully steady-going “Lunar” and the wonderfully meter-defying “Aerofloat,” which warped this way and that as its rhythm ebbed and flowed. Those first popped up on the SoundCloud account of the label releasing *Subtle Busyness*, Twin Springs Tapes. (I wrote about them [at the time.](https://disquiet.com/2016/01/05/subtle-busyness-arcka-twin-springs/))

Now four more tracks, along with “Lunar” again, have been uploaded to the Twin Springs Bandcamp page: the surreal opening cut (“Cosmicrust”), a piano-against-percussion piece titled “Power (Handz Up…),” a funky video-game gambit titled “Toow,” and a track titled “VariaTRON” that plays pinball in your head with intense stereoscopic, microscopic beats.

And there’s a lovely video for “Lunar,” sort of an animated lava lamp with a subtle hint at Arckatron’s logo, on YouTube:

The album is up for pre-order for a mere $6, including the cassette (and including shipping in the U.S.) at [twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com](https://twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com/album/subtle-busyness). The official release date is February 23. The cassette edition is limited to 100.

More from Arcka at [arckatron.us](http://arckatron.us/). More from the Twin Springs label at [twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com](https://twinspringstapes.bandcamp.com/) and [facebook.com/twinspringstapes](https://www.facebook.com/twinspringstapes). And here’s an interview I did with Arcka/Kelly back in 2009: [“Young Communicator.”](https://disquiet.com/2009/05/17/yarcka-young-architect-shawn-kelly/)

Harding’s Hearing

On Cortney Harding's book, How We Listen Now: Essays and Conversations About Music and Technology

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

201602-chardingI just finished reading Cortney Harding’s book, [*How We Listen Now: Essays and Conversations About Music and Technology*](http://www.amazon.com/How-Listen-Now-Conversations-Technology-ebook/dp/B019WUNMXK). Harding is, I think, one of the most actively curious observers of where popular music is headed. I first read her on [Medium](https://medium.com/@cortneyharding_72342), where she was writing in detail about aspects of the music industry that befuddle me — like me, she wonders [why “discovery” is presumed to be a thing](https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-fundamental-why-of-music-discovery-4ab9a1b33665#.v92b25b87) for which there is any significant economic value or cultural demand — and, better yet, things that never occurred to me, like [the role of messaging apps in music consumption](https://medium.com/cuepoint/could-messaging-apps-kill-music-streaming-services-afea751ee19#.xyewzn9pk) or [why musicians aren’t making more regular use of Twitch](https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-aren-t-more-musicians-using-twitch-566aae99e550#.hc90hfl90), the video-game streaming service.

Too much online writing is people trying to be first or loudest on a popular topic. Harding, to the contrary, spends at least half her time on things few people are even aware of, and what roots her work is that she connects her extrapolations back to popular music. Her book is a collection of such posts (the “essays” part of the title) and transcriptions of interviews and podcasts (the “conversations” part). This means a lot of it is out of date, but that’s not a knock, because the work was quite timely when it was first posted. Its timeliness is its strength. It’s also not a knock because Harding is entirely up front about predictions that don’t pan out and about her own interests, both cultural (she acknowledges that she can’t admonish a streaming service for not having music she discovered on a South African awards ceremony) and professional (she has worked and consulted for various tech companies, in addition to having worked at *Billboard*). It’s also worth noting that Harding self-published the book (through [createspace.com](https://www.createspace.com/)), which ties in nicely with her occasional consideration of a “post-label” world in which musicians do what they need to get their music out there. More from Harding at [twitter.com/cortneyharding](https://twitter.com/cortneyharding).

*This first appeared in the February 9, 2016, edition of the free Disquiet “This Week in Sound”email newsletter: [tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet).*