Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start

The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start
The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music.

This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

Step 1: Choose a favorite book, or simply choose one at random.

Step 2: Read — preferably aloud — the first sentence in the book’s text.

Step 3: Make music that somehow reflects the line you read in Step 2.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0705” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0705-book-start/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Is it a novel or a short story?

Deadline: Monday, July 7, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

Beaterator 2025

Studio in the palm of your hand — again

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Confirmed, per a suggestion by Peter Kirn, that you can, indeed, run Timbaland’s Beaterator game, originally developed for the PlayStation Portable, on a modern portable “retro” game console like the Anbernic SP, shown here. Shortly after its PSP debut, in 2009, the game also appeared on the iPhone.

Timbaland Portable

A flashback

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I was fiddling with my old Nintendo DS, and apparently I was so addicted to Timbaland’s production that I stored some instrumentals, including Xzibit’s “Hey Now (Mean Muggin),” on there at some point in the distant past.

And in case it’s not familiar, here is the track. It is fantastic:

And then Peter Kirn reminded me about Timbaland’s PSP (PlayStation Portable) release, Beaterator, which I now need to reacquaint myself with.

Novels Read — First Half of 2025

More to come

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ve finished reading 12 novels so far this year. Two a month seems like a good pace, leaving room for other reading. Below are the titles in the order I read them. The ones with the + signs I recommend in particular. I put Middlemarch on pause after I was about a quarter of the way in, and I’ve picked it back up, though I really need to read a good essay or two about what I’m due to appreciate about it (recommendations welcome), as it’s precisely the sort of compendium of courtship micro-interactions that I could never get engaged by. I’m also currently reading Blood Meridian, Moby Dick (which I’ve started several times in the past, and this is the first time when I’ve felt like I will actually not just finish it but enjoy it), and The Hummingbird.

1: C.S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

2: + Jakob Kerr: Dead Money

3: + Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon (reread)

4: Ford Madox Ford: The Good Soldier (reread)

5: + Cory Doctorow: Walkaway

6: + Ali Smith: Autumn

7: + Joan Didion: Play It as It Lays

8: + Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time

9: Michael Connelly: The Black Echo (Bosch Vol. 1)

10: Stephen King: The Long Walk

11: Patricia Highsmith: The Talented Mr. Ripley

12: Michael Connelly: The Black Ice (Bosch, Vol. 2)

On Repeat: Deupree, Pritcher, Orio

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ Gorgeous live solo performance by Taylor Deupree (apparently a promotion for Benson amps?).

▰ A solo guitar performance by Andy Pritcher from the same series as the above Deupree.

▰ An album, Santa Rosa, of Federico Orio’s music for church bells, recorded at Basílica Santa Rosa de Lima in Buenos Aires, Argentina. While the sound of the bells is familiar, their use here is distinct in the employment of repetition and an emphasis on percussive elements, all amid a range from quiet minimalism to the chaotic.

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