Disquiet – Page 799 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquiet Junto Project 0183: Stereo Midnight

Insert something that plays across the stereo spectrum in an after-dark field recording.

July 2, 2015July 3, 2015 / 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 early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, July 2, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 6, 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 0183: Stereo Midnight

Insert something that plays across the stereo spectrum in an after-dark field recording.

This project is the fifth in an ongoing occasional series that focuses on late-night ambience. Collectively these nocturnal endeavors are being called “One Minute Past Midnight.”No one’s work will be repurposed without their permission, and it’s appreciated if you post your track with a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial reuse, reworking, and sharing.

The steps for this project are as follows:

Step 1: The primary goal of this project is to explore techniques to insinuate sound in a pre-existing field recording. First, select a track from one of the initial three projects in this series: #0160 from January 22, 2015, #0163 from February 12, 2015, and #0170 from April 2, 2015. All three of these previous projects involve field recordings made of the sound one minute past midnight:

https://disquiet.com/0160/

https://disquiet.com/0163/

https://disquiet.com/0170/

Step 2: When choosing, per Step 1, a pre-existing track, confirm that the track is available for creative reuse. Many should have a Creative Commons license stating such, and if you’re not sure just check with the responsible Junto participant.

Step 3: The goal is to insert a sound — whether realistic, like a plane or an animal, or fantastic, like a UFO — into the existing track so that it sounds like it is moving around in the stereo spectrum. Despite the inserted audio, the completed track should retain its inherent late-night ambience.

Step 4: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, July 2, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 6, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished piece should be one minute.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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 “disquiet0183-stereomidnight”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 183rd Disquiet Junto project (“Insert something that plays across the stereo spectrum in an after-dark field recording”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0183: Stereo Midnight

Dub from Porto

Via Dave Wesley's Arctic Dub (Sursumcorda) label

July 1, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Dave Wesley runs the record label Arctic Dub (Sursumcorda) out of Porto, Portugal, and also records his own music. The spectacular “Laranja Swadhisthana 67_5 Session v1” is, in his words, “Constructed with the principles of sacred geometry and tuning… using parts of the north and the south… and with the fury.” The result is a slow driving pulse, around which harsh ghostly wisps come in and out of focus. Over its ten-plus-minute duration it builds to a filmic, almost orchestral expansiveness, yet it maintains a static core that marks it truly as dub. It is an example of that rare blend of meditative music to which head bobbing is as natural a response as is introspection.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/davewesley](https://soundcloud.com/davewesley/dave-wesley-laranja-swadhisthana-67_5-session-v1). More from Wesley’s label at [sursumcorda.ning.com](http://sursumcorda.ning.com/).

Pitchfork on My Aphex Twin Book

One of "the 33 best 33 1/3 titles" (out of 106)

June 30, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This sure was a nice way to start the week. [Pitchfork yesterday published a list](http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9676-the-33-best-33-13-books/) of “the 33 best” books in the 33 1/3 series. About 106 or so books have been published by 33 1/3, including mine on the 1994 Aphex Twin album *Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2*. Here’s what the “33 best” article has to say about it:

>Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 was a puzzle when Aphex Twin released it 21 years ago: an anti-album that eschewed track names and introduced a spare sound that was in the process of either dissolving for forming. It was, in other words, an ideal release for the new forums of this thing called the Internet, whose members not only picked apart the music but helped define the album for subsequent generations. Marc Weidenbaum packs a lot into these 130 pages: a mini-biography of a ground-breaking artist, a capsule history of ambient music, and an example of how digital technology determines how we hear and interpret music.

The full article is at [pitchfork.com](http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9676-the-33-best-33-13-books/). It was written by Stephen M. Deusner. (I think it’s supposed to read “dissolving or forming.”)

There are a lot of great subjects ahead in the 33 1/3 series. I’m especially looking forward to Andrew Schartmann on Koji Kondo’s music for the *Super Mario Bros* video game and to George Grella on Miles Davis’ *Bitches Brew*. There’s a full list of the books in the series at [333sound.com](http://333sound.com/33-13-series/).

Retro-Futuristic Exotica

From Japan-based Corruption

June 28, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Another piece from Corruption, the prolific Japanese musician whose SoundCloud account generally veers between broken beats and industrial field recordings, and occasionally makes pauses for equally remarkable swaths of lounge-ready background tones, in this case pulsing, seductive, beading fragments of retro-futuristic exotica.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/corrption](https://soundcloud.com/corrption/lovestyledrug). More related to Corruption at the Damade label’s [SoundCloud account](https://soundcloud.com/damade) and web page, [damade-web.com](http://www.damade-web.com/), and at Corruption’s [scrapbook of a Tumblr account](http://corruption-scrapbook.tumblr.com/).

When Les Paul Met Ukulele Ike

In 2002 the multitrack master remembered the four-string king.

June 27, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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Back in 2002, the first issue of the short-lived magazine The Ukulele Occasional was published, and in it I had a short piece on Les Paul, widely associated with the development of multi-track recording and of the solid-body electric guitar. At the time, I was living in New Orleans, and he was playing weekly at a club in Manhattan, even though he was nearing age 90. I’d interviewed Les Paul once before, and was hankering for a reason to speak with him again when I stumbled on a bit of history I wanted to flesh out. The magazine was founded by Jason Verlinde, an old colleague from my Tower Records Pulse! magazine days, who went on to found The Fretboard Journal.

The two times I interviewed Les Paul, I was hunting for something that likely never existed. I dreamed that in his multi-track experimentation he had recorded things that were closer to noise music than the accomplished, jazz-tinged pop for which he is best known. Maybe such tapes are buried deep in his archives. But no matter. Speaking with him was always a pleasure. He passed away in 2009.

I’ve been slowly adding old material to this site. The post was uploaded to Disquiet.com on June 27, 2015, but backdated to mid-2002 to match the original publication date. Read the full piece in the archives.