Pekler’s Background Music

Two tracks from an upcoming album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

[bandcamp width=640 height=472 album=4082595241 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

“Fabulation for K”, from a forthcoming album, New Environments & Rhythm Studies, by Andrew Pekler, delays the delivery, to the point where the delay turns out to be the point. Almost a full two minutes of teasing chords and glitchy wisps (or wispy glitches) into “Fabulation,” after what on any other such track would have been the mere five to ten seconds prior to a steady beat kicking in, there’s a hint of a white noise pause — and then all over again it holds back, until quite suddenly it’s over. The track is a study in avoiding the obvious. “Cumbia Para Los Grillos,” the other currently available pre-release track, has a somewhat similar vibe, that of being stems of a whole other song, more parts than whole, and as a result more rewarding than what it might have become. “Cumbia” feels somewhat more fleshed-out than “Fabulation” is, mixing water-drop xylophones and moody organ-like haze, but it leaves plenty of room for the imagination. “Los Grillos” is Spanish for crickets, so perhaps the piece’s title is an acknowledgement of the backgroundedness of what Pekler is up to.

The album is due out June 27, 2025, on the label Faitiche, founded by Jan Jelinek. I saw the two of them play in San Francisco earlier this month.

Bosch’s Pre-Echoes

More from the Michael Connelly novels

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This following bit is from The Black Ice, the second novel in the series by Michael Connelly about Los Angeles police detective Hieronymus Bosch:

I love that Connelly, back in 1993, foresaw Eric Eberhardt’s long-running youarelistening.to project, You Are Listening to Los Angeles, which pairs meditative music and police scanners. The original site suffers today from the inevitable situation in which embeds stop functioning dependably (something my own site’s older posts are rife with), but you can check out recordings in Eberhardt’s NTS.live show.

The author Warren Ellis, in his 2013 novel Gun Machine, quotes his own fictional detective, John Tallow of the NYPD, referencing Eberhardt’s work:

Eberhardt started You Are Listening to Los Angeles in 2011 and later expanded it to other cities. As he said to Roman Mars on the 99% Invisible podcast, “Some people think it’s peaceful. Some people think it’s creepy.”

On Repeat: archive.org, Shortwave, Glitch

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.

▰ The musician keinseier posted this gorgeous little ambient glitch recording on YouTube, and I had it running in the background for much of the week. He’s based in Hamburg, Germany. More of his music at keinseier.bandcamp.com.

▰ Tom Whitwell, the inventive London-based guy behind various music technological wonders — like the Turning Machine, the 8MU MIDI controller, and the Music Thing Modular Workshop System — posted nearly 60 short recordings of shortwave radio frequencies. Shortwave Scan May 2025, as the collection is titled, comes with a great licensing statement: “NO rights reserved, use these sounds how you like” (albeit with a qualifier: “Raw radio recordings include audio material that might be copyrighted by other people – no license to use that material is implied”).

[bandcamp width=640 height=472 album=1518972759 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 artwork=small]

▰ The Internet Archive (archive.org), about half an hour by foot from where I live in San Francisco, is now live-streaming its archival activities, and when it’s not business time, they put up archival footage. I vote for ASMR hours, during which they just put mics next to some of the equipment.

Scratch Pad: Obsidian, RSS, llllllll

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ The wind made it difficult to sort out from which direction the ice cream truck’s bell was coming.

▰ Happy 10th birthday to Lines, or llllllll.co, the online community I spend the most time on (it’s mostly about the making of electronic music, and especially about the making of the things that in turn are tools for making electronic music).

▰ Tired: AI, AI, AI

Wired: text-file databases in Obsidian

▰ As of Wednesday, May 21, at 11:20am, SoundCloud seems to be having technical issues. I hope this situation is cleared up soon and doesn’t mess up the Disquiet Junto project due to start in a little over half a day. (It cleared up.)

▰ From the trailer to the new Darren Aronofsky movie, Caught Stealing. How did this joke never occur to me before, and how was this not the natural successor to Google Reader?

▰ Anyone know if you can install the beta of Obsidian alongside the latest stable release? (Apparently the answer is no.)

▰ Read a bunch, finished reading nothing. Also wrote a bunch, which got in the way of reading, which certainly is ironic.

Three Stages

Of trio collaborations

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

We’re just a week from the milestone 700th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto, but right now all my attention is focused on the closing phase of the (semi)annual three-part “trios” sequence, in which, over the course of three consecutive weeks, musicians around the globe collaboratively, and asynchronously, create trios one third at a time. I have fun each year sorting out a new way to use a simple image to depict this process, and I’m happy wiht how 2025’s turned out.