Judging by the earbud packaging that comes with the iPod Touch, someone at Apple is an MF Doom fan.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
via instagram.com/dsqt
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
The Ecstatic Congruences of Grassy Knoll
New music coming from Bob Green: Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1
A new album, *Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1*, is due next month from Grassy Knoll, aka Bob Green. I was asked to say a few words about his music, which I’ve been listening to since his early-1990s recordings for Nettwerk, Antilles/Verve, and Emigre. The full text of his press materials reside at his newly updated [thegrassyknollmusic.com](http://www.thegrassyknollmusic.com/press) site.
Here’s what I wrote:
>”There’s a difference between someone having the same records as you and liking them for the same reasons. Back when those records by The Grassy Knoll first came out, it was like someone was hitting pause in the middle of some of the greatest moments in electric-era jazz and just reveling in them for the sheer sonic joy of it. So many musicians and listeners got hooked on the ego inherent in jazz fusion, but Bob Green has always been more focused on its meditative, introspective potential. He has little interest in bravado and showiness; he is more drawn to concentrated, mantra-like electronic explorations, sometimes venturing into ambient territory. At other times, he has formulated proto-mashups, combining familiar elements ”“ he called them ”˜adverse ideas’ when I interviewed him ”“ into unexpected, ecstatic congruences.”
Check out his music, past and present, at [thegrassyknollmusic.com](http://www.thegrassyknollmusic.com/hear/).
Disquiet Junto Project 0150: Sonic Perfume
The Assignment: Record a subtle personal mobile score.
Each Thursday in [the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) and [at Disquiet.com](https://disquiet.com/tag/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.
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 13, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 17, 2014, as the deadline.
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 #150: Sonic Perfume
Record a subtle personal mobile score.
The instructions for this week’s project are as follows. Special thanks to Jorge Colombo for inspiring the idea.
Step 1: Consider the time you heard quiet music and didn’t know where it came from, only to realize you’d left your MP3 player running in your pocket.
Step 2: Record a short piece of music with that as the intended purpose. That is, imagine a world not too far in the future when people regularly have a quiet music, a personal score, surrounding them, just as one might wear perfure or cologne.
Step 3: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Length: Your finished work should be about three minutes long.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 13, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 17, 2014, as the deadline.
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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0150-sonicperfume” 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 150th Disquiet Junto project — “Record a subtle personal mobile score” — at:
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/
Photo associated with this project by Ben Crowder and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
https://flic.kr/p/B5gLF
Tomita, the Manga
The fourth comic in my series for Red Bull Music Academy's Tokyo festival
Now online is the fourth and final comic in the series that I’ve been editing for Red Bull Music Academy’s 2014 Tokyo festival. Titled [“Switched On”](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/isao-tomita-comic) it is an overview of the life and career of synthesizer master Isao Tomita, with a story cowritten by Jordan Ferguson and Yuko Ichijo and drawn by Ichijo. As with the previous three comics in the series, there is light animation. I’m especially pleased with this one because it is as distinct from the others as they are from each other, and because Ichijo managed to use Japanese and English side by side, with the exception of the narration that appears at the bottom of each page.
As with the other manga in the four-comic series, the one about [DJ Krush](https://disquiet.com/2014/11/03/red-bull-music-academy-tokyo-2014-comics-manga/), I co-edited this with Hideki Egami, long the editor of Shogakukan’s *Ikki* magazine. The other previous two were [Can](https://disquiet.com/2014/11/07/when-damo-met-can/) and [MF Doom](https://disquiet.com/2014/11/03/red-bull-music-academy-tokyo-2014-comics-manga/).
Ferguson wrote the recent 33 1/3 book about J. Dilla’s album *Donuts*. And here is Ichijo’s biography:
>Yuko Ichijo is a cartoonist from Miyagi, Japan. After completing her study at Musashino Art University’s faculty of graphic design, she received honorable mention at the 159th Young Jump Best New Comer of the Month Awards in ’92 with Fujiyu Nikki (Inconvenient Diary), which led her to debut on the Young Jump magazine. Since then she has published numerous comics, and her latest series called Ahou Ressha is currently been published by Shogaku-kan Publishing up to the third volume.
The Tomita manga is in English at [redbullmusicacademy.com](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/isao-tomita-comic) and in Japanese at [redbullmusicacademy.jp](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.jp/features/isao-tomita-comic/).
Oh, in related news there’s [a great lecture by Tomita on the RBMA site](http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/isao-tomita-2014-lecture).
Noise or Texture?
A track and a question from Kyle TM
The issue of whether something is “sound” or “music” is in the ear of the beholder, so in posting a track of incipient low-grade constrained cacophony, Kyle TM asks a less qualitative question. He wonders aloud whether his two minutes of bracing, brittle, fierce static is “noise” or “texture.” The answer may, to some degree, be a matter of volume level. Set on quiet, this is noise in the sense of white noise, a constant flux of utter, remote abstraction. Louder, though, the textural element comes to the fore, something like an array of flannel spun from rusted wire. And from within that frame, screeches and train noises and snatches of what might be music from a melodrama sneak through, perhaps illusions, perhaps source material revealing itself. In either case, a rhythm is clear, two even, one a pace-setting rumble, the other a rapid internal combustion. Titled “Terminal,” the track was originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/kyletm](https://soundcloud.com/kyletm/terminal).
More from Kyle TM at [twitter.com/thekyletm](https://twitter.com/thekyletm).