Loop These 45 New Seconds from DJ Krush

A brief/endless taste of the forthcoming Butterfly Effect

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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Now, 45 seconds isn’t much on which to judge a track, let alone a record. But it’s been over a decade since DJ Krush released an original full-length studio album, 2004’s 寂 -Jaku-, so we’ll take what we can get. A full three years since he last updated his SoundCloud page ([soundcloud.com/dj-krush-official](https://soundcloud.com/dj-krush-official)) comes a pair of samples from the forthcoming Butterfly Effect.

The lounge-friendly, self-forwardly romantic “Future Correction” is on the more populist end of Krush’s approach to hip-hop/soul production: steady beat, lilting piano, shimmery washes of sound. It’s very much W Hotel lobby music, but a dramatic fissure early on suggests some promise, as do stereoscopic effects and the way that piano at times pierces the background-music veil and risks irritating the ear at a high register.

The real treat is the far more muddy, dire, and percussively inventive “Probability.” I played this on loop for an hour shortly after Krush announced the upload [on his Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/DJKRUSHofficial/posts/1115827041764165). At first the track is marked primarily by the fundamental loping beat common to downtempo instrumental hip-hop. But on repeat listens, so much emerges from the darkness: deep glottal chanting, castanet-like finger snaps, backward-masked sweeps of nervous sound, deliciously peculiar sonic squiggles, and many more delectable little touches. After an 11-year lull, the sheer detail of “Probability” is proof that DJ Krush has, in fact, been very, very busy in the recording studio.

*Butterfly Effect* is due out September 26. “Probability” segment originally posted at [soundcloud.com/dj-krush-official](https://soundcloud.com/dj-krush-official/dj-krush-probability-45sec). More from Krush at his official page, [sus81.jp/djkrush](http://sus81.jp/djkrush/). Bonus: the album cover is by accomplished anime director Koji Morimoto, who cut his teeth on *Akira*.

Disquiet Junto Project 0190: Missed Connections

Set two out-of-sync loops atop each other, and then add sonic glue.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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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.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 20, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 24, 2015.

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 0190: Missed Connections

Set two disjointed loops atop each other, and then add sonic glue.

Last week’s project involved using loops to accrue layers. This week’s project involves layering loops. You needn’t have participated in last week’s project to participate in this week’s.

These are the steps:

Step 1: Choose two tracks from last week’s Disquiet Junto project. Be sure to use tracks that include a license that allows for non-commercial reworking. If you’re not sure, either choose a different track, or inquire with the musician. the project is here:

Step 2: From each of those two tracks, select one loop-able segment. Be sure the segments are of different lengths.

Step 3: Create a long string of each of the two loops from Step 2 by repeating them over and over. That is: make one long string of AAAAA… and make one long string of BBBBB…, where A and B are the two loops. (That is: Do not go ABABAB.)

Step 4: Layer the two tracks resulting from Step 3 for a single track of about one to two minutes in length.

Step 5: Add one element of your own to the result of Step 4 that serves to combine the two disparate loops into one composition.

Step 6: Record a document of these layered loops lasting approximately one to two minutes in length (longer is certainly fine).

Step 7: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 8: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 20, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 24, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be approximately one to two minutes in length (longer is certainly fine).

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, 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 include the term “disquiet0190-missedconnections”in the title of your track, and 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, and link to (and identify) the two SoundCloud pages for the source audio you selected:

More on this 190th Disquiet Junto project (“Set two out-of-sync loops atop each other, and then add sonic glue”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0190: Missed Connections

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

https://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project by Theilr, and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

Rubber bands

Listening from Wittgenstein’s Steps

A Dublin field recording from Susanna Caprara

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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Susanna Caprara works widely under the moniker La Cosa Preziosa, or “the precious thing.” Originally from Italy but living now in Dublin, Ireland, she posts experimental audio work and field recordings to her SoundCloud account. The latter are generally brief segments of daily life. Part of what distinguishes her field recordings is that they often are not pristine documents of specific sounds, but instead snatches of the broader array of sounds in which those sounds are heard. They are frequently messy (in a good way) and lively, more along the lines of diary entries than encyclopedia entries.

A recording of a bagpipes player, for example, entertaining a crowd in front of a department store has nearly as much crowd noise as it does the sound of that slurry, fuzzy bellows instrument, and it is a cause for her reflections (at her [soundreflections.org](http://www.soundreflections.org/the-lone-piper-of-harrods/) site): “there is a strange excitement in the air, and with all the surrounding shops still closed this man has the full & undivided, freezing-cold audience’s attention.”

Among her most recent uploads is an echoing track made inside the Botanic Gardens in Dublin, abundant with a chatty naturalism, a mix of constructed natural space and bystander conversations. The piece is itself a construction, made from three different spots: “outdoors, by the stream in the rockery, and at the Wittgenstein steps (inside The Palm House greenhouse).” It’s a great example of how field recordings can be as much about memory and experience as they can be about taxonomy and data.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/lacosapreziosa](https://soundcloud.com/lacosapreziosa/at-the-botanic-gardens). More from Susanna Caprara’s La Cosa Preziosa at [twitter.com/lacosapreziosa](https://twitter.com/lacosapreziosa) and [lacosapreziosa.net](http://www.lacosapreziosa.net/). The photo of the Wittgenstein plaque is from [her blog post](http://www.soundreflections.org/at-the-botanic-gardens/).

SoundCloud Is the Past of Music

And in a good way. Add Scanner to the list of eminent British electronic self-archivists.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Richard D. James (Aphex Twin) and, to a lesser degree, Mike Paradinas (µ-Ziq) are getting attention for uploading their early sound archives — but they aren’t alone. Aphex Twin has opened his cellar door the widest (at [soundcloud.com/user18081971](https://soundcloud.com/user18081971)), and gotten the most praise and plays, likely because of the significant, decade-plus quietude that preceded his sudden recent musical activity. His longtime colleague Paradinas has been posting a heap of tracks (at [soundcloud.com/mikep](https://soundcloud.com/mikep)), many with the hashtags #1993 and #1994 to note their place in his discography. But those two aren’t the only early, IDM-era British electronic musicians posting their archives to the Internet.

Be sure to add to their ranks Scanner, aka Robin Rimbaud, who thanks to a recent home relocation has been unpacking crates of old tapes and uploading them for general consumption. SoundCloud, with its free-flowing “feed” approach to user interface and its comfortable setting for half-finished material, is a natural place for such archival finds. Scanner’s most recent revelation is a great set of music originally recorded for the late filmmaker Derek Jarman (*Sebastiane*, *Caravaggio*, *Blue*). The three tracks are mixes of percussive elements, like trap drums and doorbell/elevator beeps, snatches of tensile violin, and field recordings. They have a rhythmic minimalism that brings to mind early Michael Nyman, David Lang, and Janice Giteck: avant elements and techniques in a populist arrangement. The tracks share similar elements, and emphasize them to varying degrees. The third track is the most pensive, and least overtly musical, lingering more on the birdsong that is sublimated on the other pieces.

Writes Scanner of the work:

>Three variations on a musical theme, written for a film by the late British filmmaker Derek Jarman in 1987, in collaboration with artist and filmmaker Richard Heslop.
>
>Richard and I played around in a London studio with the piano and percussion and produced these three unheard tracks that sadly were never finally used for Jarman’s film. I found them on a cassette in a mass of boxes as part of my digitising process of the Scanner Archive Tapes :-D Plenty more stuff to follow, one day soon.

Set originally posted at [soundcloud.com/scanner](https://soundcloud.com/scanner/sets/unheard-derek-jarman-score). More from Scanner, who is based in London, at [scannerdot.com](http://scannerdot.com/), [instagram.com/robinrimbaud](https://instagram.com/robinrimbaud/), [twitter.com/robinrimbaud](https://twitter.com/robinrimbaud), [scannerdot.com](http://www.scannerdot.com/), and [scanner.bandcamp.com](https://scanner.bandcamp.com/).

Six-String Rhythm

A remix of my "Six-String Buddha" by Austin-based Antenna Research

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Antenna Research is the Austin, Texas, duo of Karin Kross and Bruce Levenstein. They’ve done me the honor of reworking my “Six-String Buddha” track, a brief loop of layered electric guitar intended to emulate the background quality of the FM3 Buddha Machine. Like the earlier remix of the track [that Lee Rosevere committed](https://disquiet.com/2015/08/16/if-you-meet-six-string-buddha-on-the-internet/), the Antenna Research version, “Buddha On the Radio,” uses the original audio as the sonic foundation, and then creates an additional layer, a bit more foregrounded, that is based on select segments of the source track. The underlying track is given a buzzy, warbling quality thanks to dense analog reverb, and the percussive material lends it a slight pulse. The rhythmic fadeout is especially appealing.

Write Kross and Levenstein of what they’re up to, for those playing along in a home studio:

>We’ve taken Marc’s track and loaded it onto two Radio Music modules. One is looping the entire track, and run through an Intellijel Springy reverb module. The other is playing a short section of the track, with the reset being triggered rhythmically by a Korg SQ-1 sequencer. The bass drum is from a Peaks module, synced to the SQ-1 via a Pamela’s Workout clock divider.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/antenna_research](https://soundcloud.com/antenna_research/buddha-on-the-radio). More from Kross, aka Hanging Fire, at [soundcloud.com/hangingfire](https://soundcloud.com/hangingfire) and from Levenstein at [soundcloud.com/brucelev](https://soundcloud.com/brucelev).