A Texan’s Memory of Paris in the Rain

Denton-based Old Clone revisits a rainy day

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The muffled chords and elongated melody, the recording of rails and the hushed drone like a thick cloud cover, the almost intelligible conversation, the laughs of people who aren’t you — all this combines in Old Clone’s “Concorde” for a majestic, nostalgia-rich reverie. Old Clone describes it in a brief liner note as being “based on my memory of paris and europe, and in particular, a rainy day when i went to the concorde stop.” The rain in the end is what truly distinguishes the track, how it reveals itself in the closing seconds, having lingered there all along amid the fragmented source material.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/oldclone](https://soundcloud.com/oldclone/concorde). More from Old Clone, who is based in Denton, Texas, at [oldclone.bandcamp.com](http://oldclone.bandcamp.com/).

The Radio as Divining Rod

Video of a live performance by Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Even had the Downstream section of this site not expanded recently to include non-downloadable music, it should long ago have paid more attention to video, if for no reason other than the fact that videos are often, such as [this live performance by Steve Roden and Stephen Vitiello taped back in February](https://vimeo.com/90310038), intended for offline use. (That said, since this site was online for over a decade before running images, the lack sense of urgency was in the DNA.) The Roden-Vitiello set is an alternately tandem and tag-team project recorded at Eclats in Bourdeaux. They both have at portable sets of modular synesizer tools — plus radio, which Roden wields like a divining rod, and laptop, and a few other devices — in this nearly 40-minute piece. Small vocal snippets are heard amid characteristically slow-moving figments, more textural than melodic, the reluctant pace providing sly cover for just how much sonic material is being heard at any given moment.

More from Roden at [inbetweennoise.com](http://inbetweennoise.com) and from Vitiello at [stephenvitiello.com](http://stephenvitiello.com). The video was shot by Etienne Coussirat. More from Eclats at [eclats.net](http://www.eclats.net/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0141: Graphic Steinberg

The Assignment: Interpret a New Yorker cover as a graphically notated score.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

CV1_TNY_09_15_14Steinberg.indd

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.

Tracks will be added to this setlist as the project proceeds:

This assignment was made in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, September 11, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, September 15, 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 0141: Graphic Steinberg

Interpret a New Yorker cover as a graphically notated score.

The cover to The New Yorker issue dated September 15, 2014, features an illustration credited to Saul Steinberg, the late artist who was a frequent contributor to the magazine before his death in 1999 — and apparently after his death as well. We’ll make music from the cover as if it were a composition in the mode of graphic notation.

These are the steps:

Step 1: You will treat the provided image as if it were a musical score. The image can be found at this link:

http://goo.gl/NA6vSU

Step 2: You can use any instrumentation you choose. The goal is for you to “read”the image as if it were presented as a piece of notated music. You might do this by assigning note values across the page horizontally, or by interpreting it holistically, or by running the image through a piece of software — or by any other systematic approach.

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

Step 4: Listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow participants.

Deadline: Monday, September 15, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be between one and five minutes in length.

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 “disquiet0141-graphicsteinberg” 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 141st Disquiet Junto project — “Interpret a New Yorker cover as a graphically notated score” — at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0141: Graphic Steinberg

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/