Disquiet Junto Project 0703: That’s How You Got Killed Before

The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn't get to work last time.

/ 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 0703: That’s How You Got Killed Before
The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time.

Step 1: Think of something difficult you were trying to accomplish, something music-related that you just couldn’t get to work. It may be a piece of software, or a playing technique, or a part of a musical work-in-progress.

Step 2: Block out time and dedicate that time solely to putting a lot of effort into doing what you previously couldn’t. Even if you don’t solve the problem this time around, you will likely make some form of progress.

Step 3: Record something that reflects, expresses, or otherwise involves the effort you expended in Step 2 above.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0703” (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-0703-thats-how-you-got-killed-before/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you.

Deadline: Monday, June 23, 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 703rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, That’s How You Got Killed Before — The Assignment: Revisit something that you just couldn’t get to work last time — at https://disquiet.com/0703/

Tube Layout

Found on the street

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the “tube layout” for an ancient stereo console that someone left out on the street. The sticker, undated, was on an inside wall of the piece of furniture. When I complain about how absurd dealing with metadata of audio files continues to be, I like to remind myself that the past had its own difficulties and complexities.

Samson Young at SFMOMA

Through June 2025

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A friend some time back shared a photo of an object in the current installation by artist Samson Young, Intentness and song, that is on view at SFMOMA (December 21, 2024 – June 22, 2025). I first encountered Young’s work when I reviewed Seeing Sound, an exhibit curated by Barbara London at the Kadist gallery here in San Francisco back in mid-2021. This new Young exhibit is a sizable space filled with ephemera, notably small gadgets that emit little bits of light and sound, much of it on tight loops, all of which resists easy mental collation. I was touched to find old familiar gadgets, like an Apple Newton and a Sony MiniDisc player, in the mix, as well as this book by the late sound artist Steve Roden, i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces. Young seemed to have excavated his own memory palace and created a vaguely Lego-like zone of contemplation.

Ruth Asawa at SFMOMA

Light, dark, space

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMOMA is a dozen shades of fantastic. I fear it’s becoming cliché to note it, but with the sculptures, the physical objects are only part of the story. The shadows carry a lot of the weight, so to speak. And it’s really the interplay where things happen. It’s like the sculptures are the guitar solo, and the shadows are the result of delay and reverb pedals.

On Repeat: Cimini, Tasselmyer, Frisell

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.

▰ Amy Cimini has been recording since the early 2000s, and yet See You When I Get There — its title suggesting a certain amount of belatedness — is her first solo album, and it’s a solo viola record, to boot, exploring a range of timbre, textures, and techniques, with an emphasis on noise and and electronic mediation. Cimini is also the author of Wild Sound: Maryanne Amacher and the Tenses of Audible Life.

[bandcamp width=640 height=307 album=1121892470 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

▰ I don’t focus enough on iPad music-making here, though I listen to a bunch, and many musicians I pay attention to include it prominently in their set-ups. This is Andrew Tasselmyer at work sampling and looping, as he puts it, in real time. Watch as it proceeds.

▰ This is a new-to-me (and newly uploaded) streaming bootleg of Bill Frisell playing solo at the Jazz Standard in Manhattan on November 21, 2019, just pre-pandemic: