If It Really Is User48736353001

Aphex Twin strikes again – that is, for at least the 156th time

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

That Aphex Twin SoundCloud account is going strong. A little more than two weeks since he’d seemingly topped it off at 155 tracks, a 156th track appeared earlier today. The newly arrived song’s name, “Lannerlog,” seems to come from Llannerlog, the name Richard D. James had given [his studio](http://www.discogs.com/label/267564-Llannerlog-Studios) in Cornwall toward the start of his public music-making. As the helpful WATMM message-board commenters noted almost a decade ago, [“Llannerlog” sounds like “analog.”](http://forum.watmm.com/topic/6725-caustic-window-phlaps-dat-on-ebay-espana/) Laner is a town in Cornwall.

The new (that is, likely new old) track has the mix of near-subliminal melodic synth and understated, routinized, mesmerizing beat that helped define the concept of “ambient techno” and was the foundation of his *Selected Ambient Works 85-92* and some of his early tracks under the alternate name Polygon Window, such as “If It Really Is Me” (off the 1993 album *Surfing on Sine Waves*), a song whose title seems more meaningful than ever.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/user48736353001](https://soundcloud.com/user48736353001/lannerlog).

Making Abstraction Engaging

When is a podcast not a podcast?

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’ve been thinking for a long time to make a Disquiet.com podcast, and I’m still intent on doing it, but not quite yet. I even have the theme music in the can, thanks to a regular participant of the Disquiet Junto project series, but I’m still fiddling with the format, and I want to make sure I have the time to do it regularly. I may wait until after this semester is over, since I’m already dedicating time each week to creating 2,000-word summaries of each lecture in my “role of sound in the media landscape” course, and sending those to my [tinyletter.com/disquiet](http://tinyletter.com/disquiet) email list.

What’s been on my mind lately has been how best to frame the abstract work I’m often up to in sound, so that it can have an audience beyond those already attracted to abstraction. The goal isn’t a larger audience unto itself; the goal is an audience that would quickly find the work of interest when given the proper context.

The [“Sonic Frames”](https://disquiet.com/2014/11/25/josh-azzarella-san-jose-museum-of-art-sonic-frame/) installation I developed for the San Jose Museum of Art was an attempt at this, and I think a fairly successful one. Using imagery, and elegant physical frames, and directional speakers, along with other tools, the piece can attract a potential listener from across the room, and keep them focused once they decide to interact with it.

For the Junto projects, I share the written instructions each week as part of the setlist I create for the given project, but that requires someone to take the time to read. Also, those instructions are intended for a different audience: the participants in the projects. So, three weeks ago I acted on the instinct to record myself describing the project. It’s very different to be told a story than to read one, and very different to have a (somewhat?) friendly voice explain something abstract than to have to decipher it on a page. So now each week’s setlist begins with me, for a minute or so, explaining what the project is about. Collectively the intro and the tracks that follow it comprise something akin to a podcast, though it’s not quite yet the podcast I have in mind.

Below are the first four such project-introduction narrations. The first week I did this, I actually made two separate playlists, for reasons explained in the audio below:

More on the Disquiet Junto at [disquiet.com/junto](https://disquiet.com/junto).

Interior Decorating – and Exterior

Drone expressionism from Leonardo Rosado

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Leonardo Rosado’s new track “Dreaming in Velvet” deserves its title, the nearly seven-minute drone composition a lush series of swells that is downright luxurious. Play it low as background music. Play it loud as sonic interior decorating — and exterior decorating, as well, the muted percussives seeming like storm noise heard at a distance. For a self-described drone, the music has a lot more going for it than just clusters of tattered sine waves. There’s field recordings and vocal incantations, paced in a manner that’s too unpredictable to ever be fully relaxing. Dense, rich material.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/leonrosado](https://soundcloud.com/leonrosado/dreaming-in-velvet). More from Rosado, who is based in Göteborg, Sweden, at [works-by-lr.tumblr.com](http://works-by-lr.tumblr.com/).