Disquiet – Page 794 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Guerrilla Audio = Two Fleeting Tracks Per Month

A new project from Simon Fisher Turner and Touch Editions

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

bandphoto

Simon Fisher Turner has started a new music series through the Touch Editions website, [touch33.net](http://www.touch33.net/simonfisherturner/). Titled Guerrilla Audio, it is an experiment in short lifespans for sonic objects. The tracks are to be posted twice per month, just about every 14 days or so. Once those 14 days are over, the audio will be removed. Of course the tracks will live on on people’s hard drives, and be shared in perpetuity. As an archive, however, the Guerrilla Audio subsite will exist solely as a list of what has been posted, not the expired audio itself.

The first entry in the series, “Guerrilla 1,” has been up since August 1, which means, as of this writing, only another four days or so until it comes down. The seven-minute track features Turner along with Klara Lewis and Rainier Lericolais. The first half of it is an unmediated, acoustic recording of a live performance on everyday objects, in this case metal poles. Then comes a variety of different settings, some more seemingly “electric” than others, most notably due to shimmering signals and a certain kind of digital resonance — though that could just be the sonics of the washing machines he mentions in this brief liner note that provides a cursory summary of what’s going on:

>Location: Mende, France, Summer 2015
>
>Iron Bannister

>3 iron poles, played by Klara Lewis, Rainier Lericolais & SFT
>Poles edits by SFT

>Washing machine in Laundrette (nightime)

>Restaurant atmosphere (before performance)

>3 more iron pole edits

The promise of a universal library and the prevalence of streaming services collude to give the impression that everything is out there, and always will be. It’s likewise arguable that the idea of a “limited edition” release is redundant, since all manufactured items are, in essence, limited. Turner’s Guerrilla Audio project wanders the space between those two concepts, initiating a willful temporary state, and then seeing where it leads.

Track originally posted for free download at [touch33.net](http://www.touch33.net/simonfisherturner/). More from Turner at [simonfisherturner.com](http://www.simonfisherturner.com/) and [twitter.com/ivft](https://twitter.com/ivft).

New Basinski + Chartier Collaboration

A 12-minute excerpt from the forthcoming Divertissement

August 7, 2015August 6, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The Important Records label has posted an excerpt from a new album-length collaboration between the accomplished minimal sound explorers William Basinski and Richard Chartier. The collection, *Divertissement*, follows the duo’s *Untitled 1-3* album from 2004 and single-track *Aurora Liminalis* from 2013, both of which were released on Line, which Chartier himself runs. The new record has two tracks, and this 12-minute excerpt ends suddenly, the cutoff quite a contrast to the evocative music that precedes it. The track mixes human voices and insectoid percusssive particulate amid a thick and quickly shifting drone, lending the work a considerable sense of depth, place, and motion.

The accompanying liner note gives some background: “The duo utilize electronics, piano, tape-loops and short wave radio to evoke a dense atmosphere suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral. Subtle, buried and intense murmurs of melody morph through this deeply consuming and slowly evolving composition in two parts.”

It’s been a busy year for Basinski, best known for his haunting *Disintegration Loops*. He released *The Deluge* in May and *Cascade* in April.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/importantrecords](https://soundcloud.com/importantrecords/william-basinski-richard-chartier-divertissement-lp-edit-aug-2015). More from Chartier at [3particles.com](http://www.3particles.com) and Basinski at
[mmlxii.com](http://www.mmlxii.com).

What Sound Looks Like

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

August 6, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A doorbell doesn’t always trigger a sound that the person hitting the button can hear. At a large apartment complex, it may trigger a tone many floors up, many walls past, many steps deep into the building. And those concerns don’t begin to factor in street noise and weather. How does the visitor know that the doorbell has done its job? How are we socialized to not hit it again and again when we don’t hear the bell ring? In this specific case, an additional sound element entirely is referenced: The visitors only know they have been welcomed into the building when a tiny click is provided by the lock mechanism. It’s like a mechanical intercom, an especially lofi and succinct Morse Code, a simple binary operation in which the silence of a null return means “Go away.”

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.

Disquiet Junto Project 0188: Complex Complex

Take a provided track and make it more complex.

August 6, 2015August 8, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

e187

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 setlist for the duration of the project:

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 6, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 10, 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 0188: Complex Complex

Take a provided track and make it more complex.

This project was proposed by Guy Birkin and Jay Bodley (aka Sun Hammer). It extends the thinking that went into their album *Complexification*, released by the record label Entr’acte. (There’s more background on album below the project description.)

These are the steps for this project:

Step 1: Pick one of the two tracks at the following URL: https://goo.gl/tN4Oit.

Step 2: Modify that one track in any way, using as much or little of it as you like, to make a new piece that sounds “more complex” than the original. You may add other sounds. (Note: You are free to use any definition or measure of “complexity.” You should be sure to describe your process and how it “increases” the complexity of the original track.)

Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 4: 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 6, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 10, 2015.

Background: The album *Complexification* by Guy Birkin and Sun Hammer “explores musical complexity through a collaborative process based on a set of rules.” Those rules involved the two musicians swapping successive copies of a track in order to make it progressively more “complex.” For their purposes, they defined “complexity” as follows: “In this project, complexity is understood in terms of the quantity and variety of musical elements or patterns. The result is two parallel threads of music, each representing a progression of increasing complexity.”

Length: The length of your finished work is up to you.

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 “disquiet0188-complexcomplex”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:

More on this 188th Disquiet Junto project (“Take a provided track and make it more complex”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0188: Complex Complex

King Britt Goes Way Out

Because that's where the fun is

August 5, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

When King Britt ditches 4/4 for the outer realms, he goes way out. Case in point, this nearly 15-minute live piece titled “Trigger,” which floats around in a spacious zone. The piece closes on an anxious note, but spends much of its passing in a sing-song haze. There’s a foundational little riff that sounds like old-school ambient Aphex Twin, a little rhythmic-melodic head-nodder that becomes part of the background as the track proceeds.

For the gearheads in the house, Britt lists the equipment with which he performed it in the [accompanying note](https://soundcloud.com/kingbritt/trigger-live-version-king-britt) (Korg Mono/Poly, Roland JX3P, Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano, Moogerfooger, and Ableton Live “triggering softsynths as the foundation for the piece”).

That said, the track’s title is not a reference to the short signal that is a part of audio synthesis. “Trigger,” he writes, “is a response to all the corrupt police killing unarmed citizens of the world. This is a warning.”

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/kingbritt](https://soundcloud.com/kingbritt/trigger-live-version-king-britt). More from Britt, who is based in Philadelphia, at [kingbritt.com](http://kingbritt.com/).