Disquiet Junto Project 0109: Craghead Sketch

Insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20140117-wc2

Each Thursday at [the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com](soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-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](soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/).

Tracks by participants will be added to this playlist as the project proceeds:

This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, January 30, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 3, 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 0109: Craghead Sketch

For this week’s project, we’ll insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.

The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Download the field recording of a walk through New York City at this URL:

Step 2: Listen to the track and note moments when space allows for the insertion of a musical object. Try to locate at least one space every 30 or 45 seconds.

Step 3: In each of those spots, layer in a unique musical object (e.g., a tone, a riff, a beat, some combination thereof). Each musical object should be self-contained (i.e., not overlap with each other).

Background: The project is derived from the drawings of the very talented illustrator Warren Craghead, himself a Junto member and participant. Among Craghead’s artistic practice is the act of leaving Post-its and other small drawings in public places. This project is an attempt to find a musical equivalent of his art. Examples of Craghead’s work can be seen in this recent post:

Gestural Sound, Gestural Drawing

And on his own website:

http://craghead.com

Deadline: Monday, February 3, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be 3:36 in length — same as the source material.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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 “disquiet0109-cragheadsketch”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, be sure to include this information:

More on this 109th Disquiet Junto project (“Insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0109: Craghead Sketch

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

The Disquiet Junto Project List (0001 – 0639 …)

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Image from Warren Craghead’s website:

http://craghead.com

Rainy Day IDM

From Berkeley, which is, like much of California, experiencing a drought

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Yesterday’s [featured track](https://disquiet.com/2014/01/28/insects-as-role-models/) took the chitinous sound of insects as the inspiration for its beats. Today’s track likewise takes nature as its point of origin, but more along the lines of the Aphex Twin song mentioned earlier. In the [Aphex Twin piece, “Grey Stripe” off *Selected Ambient Works Volume II*](https://disquiet.com/2014/01/29/aphex-twin-saw2-countdown-track-16-grey-stripe/), the audio is more sound than music — that is, along a continuum of conventional understandings of those terms. “A Hard Rain” by Eric Kuehnl begins in similar territory, as the title suggests. The rapid rainfall is a flurry of pinprick static. Then, 20 seconds or so in, just as the rain has taken on the sense of white noise, a rubbery, fanciful beat, reminiscent of ancient IDM, kicks in. Its frenetic energy and burbling, brittle acoustics build on the natural rhythms of the rain, which seem to continue to linger in the background.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/erickuehnl](https://soundcloud.com/erickuehnl/a-hard-rain-wb04), where there is more from Kuehnl, who is based in Berkeley, California.

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 16 (“Grey Stripe”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII15

cover-from-Bloomsbury-siteI am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/). The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, [an early draft of the introduction is online](https://disquiet.com/2012/08/31/saw2for33third/), as is [the book’s seven-chapter table of contents](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/aphex-twin-chapter-titles/). The book’s publisher posted [an interview with me](http://333sound.com/2012/12/04/the-33-13-author-qa-marc-weidenbaum/) when I was midway through the writing process.

*There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/), but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.*

*As I’ve noted on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/427970434294751232), this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.*

*And it’s great to see it showing up in people’s homes:*

If there are some tracks on _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ that are true to received wisdom about the album, that lack a proper beat, that lack the serial impact of something one might characterize as percussion, then track 16 (aka “Grey Stripe”), all four minutes and three quarters of it, might best stand for them. It sounds less like something readily recognizable as music, less even like ambient music, and more like a thunderstorm, a hurricane perhaps, as experienced from deep inside a building on a high floor, where the impact of the muffle is mirrored between how it sounds and how the building sways. This could be foley material lifted from a filing cabinet in the archives at Warner Bros. pictures — or perhaps, better yet, Hammer or Universal, sounds not from a stormy voyage out in the ocean, but from something in the territory of pulpy horror. It is an open-maw whorl of fierce, slow-moving wind.

And here it is reversed:

More on my Aphex Twin _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ book at [amazon.com](www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/).

Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.

Insects as Role Models

Feral, chitinous beats

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Insectoid activity is a common source of raw material and inspiration for electronic music, notably in the form of cicada whirring. For Dave Keifer, who goes by Cagey House, it’s a particularly feral, anxious kind of pest motion that provides a role model. His “January Insects” sounds like a nature film in time-lapse, fast-forward mode, a cacophony on the order of Conlon Nancarrow’s most outlandish player-piano work, with the whiz-bang joy of a Carl Stalling invention.

Track posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/acts-of-silence](https://soundcloud.com/acts-of-silence/cagey-house-january-insects). Found via the always excellent [actsofsilence.com](http://www.actsofsilence.com/album-review/the-chaos-of-medley/). Get the full set for free download at [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/0kbps053). More from the releasing netlabel at [mavrecords.webs.com](http://mavrecords.webs.com/).

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 17 (“Z Twig”)

A track per day up through the February 13 release of my 33 1/3 book

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII16

cover-from-Bloomsbury-siteI am going to do this track-by-track countdown to the release, on February 13, 2014, the day prior to Valentine’s Day, of my book in the estimable 33 1/3 series. It is a love letter to Aphex Twin’s album Selected Ambient Works Volume II, which will mark its 20th anniversary this year, less than a month after my book’s publication. More on my Aphex Twin book at [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/). The plan is to do this countdown in the reverse order, from last track to first. For reference, [an early draft of the introduction is online](https://disquiet.com/2012/08/31/saw2for33third/), as is [the book’s seven-chapter table of contents](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/aphex-twin-chapter-titles/). The book’s publisher posted [an interview with me](http://333sound.com/2012/12/04/the-33-13-author-qa-marc-weidenbaum/) when I was midway through the writing process.

*There is some irony to doing this countdown since the book is already shipping to folks who pre-ordered it via an online retailer such as [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/), but the official date stands, and that’s the target — the end date — of this countdown, February 13. And for what it’s worth, while the physical copies are mailing now from retailers, the Kindle version won’t turn on until February 13. Still, the digital version costs less.*

*As I’ve noted on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/427970434294751232), this track-a-day approach is exactly the opposite of the book’s approach, which is a collection of interrelated, reporting-based essays.*

At just over two minutes in length, the track “Z Twig” is the shortest on the album. Its brevity is balanced by good cheer. It is arguably the album’s most upbeat, quite far from the nervous-making ambiguousness that haunts much of the record.

There are undercurrents of tension, though. To begin with, there’s the very start of it: a blood-in-the-ear throb that quick subsides as the blippy grid of beats kicks in. There’s another round of dark tones that appears around three quarters of a minute in, when the beats — this is a track conceived almost entirely as a series of overlaid beats — momentarily play in harmonic dissonance with all those around them. This beat in question, lower and darker than the others, which tend between blissfully alert and vibrantly eager, moves a partial step away from the others, and the result is that sonic moiré that occurs when near likes come in close proximity. It’s the audio equivalent of an out-of-register print job, like when the Sunday comics are poorly reproduced and one or more of the layers of color evidence a small but noticeable shift.

Ultimately, “Z Twig” is a series of beats that intersect in two ways: there is the rhythm of the initial beats themselves, and the echo effect, borrowed from dub music, which sends out waves of vapor-trail rhythmic sequences that then all in turn interact with each other, ripples in a ghost pool where none of the expanding patterns actually affect each other directly, just are heard in context of each other.

Here is a reworked version by Wisp, who uploaded a handful of these to the Internet and was later signed to Rephlex, Aphex Twin’s own record label. More on Wisp in the book:

This is an extended version, edited together by a listener for the original wasn’t sufficient (“This has long been one of my favorite RDJ songs, but I always found myself wanting more. This is my attempt at fixing this problem. I am by no means a professional editor and this version is not perfect or seamless.”):

And here it is reversed:

More on my Aphex Twin _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ book at [amazon.com](www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/) and [Bloomsbury.com](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/aphex-twins-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-9781623567637/).

Thanks to boondesign.com for the sequential grid treatment of the album cover.