Disquiet – Page 915 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquiet: 15, 10 & 5 Years Ago This Week (2014.04)

Steampunk instruments, remixed Battlestar Galactica, Howard Dean's scream

January 25, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This would be roughly the week of January 20 through January 26.

2009.01-mikeford

***5 Years Ago (2009):*** The image of the week was [a steampunk instrument by Mike Ford](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/25/image-of-the-week-mike-fords-steampunk/). … The quote of the week was the first two paragraphs of [an essay by Eula Biss on the telephone](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/24/quote-of-the-week-the-war-on-telephone-poles/) (“The idea on which the telephone depended—that every home in the country could be connected with a vast network of wires suspend ed from poles set an average of one hundred feet apart—seemed far less likely than the idea that the human voice could be transmitted through a wire”). … Downstream recommended listening included [*Battlestar Galactica* remixes](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/20/battlestar-galactica-a-disquiet-follows-my-soul-remix-mp3s/), some [proggy instrumental goodness from Marco Cervellin](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/21/proggy-instrumental-mp3s-from-marco-cervellin/), [mini film scores by O.S.T. (Chris Douglas)](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/22/ost-synken-score-excerpt-mp3s/), a [skateboard documentary soundtrack](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/23/music-for-skateboards-by-odd-nosdam-mp3/) by Odd Nosdam, and a [live Amon Tobin performance](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/26/live-amon-tobin-concert-mp3/).

***10 Years Ago (2004):*** The quote of the week was a comment on Slate.com about [the famous scream by Howard Dean](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/21/quote-of-the-week-deans-scream/) on the 19th. … Downstream entries included [Nanoloop tracks](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/20/game-boy-mp3/), music by [Deadbeat (aka Scott Monteith)](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/21/deadbeat-stream/), a mix by [Luke Vibert (aka Wagon Christ)](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/22/vibert-stream/), [fourth-world trip-hop from Eivind Aarset](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/23/norwegian-fusion-stream-mp3/), and material by [Pocka (aka Brad Mitchell)](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/26/pocka-mp3-set/).

***15 Years Ago (1999):*** A piece about Slow Gold II, an [$89.95 piece of software that let you slow down music](https://disquiet.com/1999/01/22/remix-at-home/). … A review I wrote for Amazon.com of [Michael Nyman’s score to *The Piano*](https://disquiet.com/1999/01/23/michael-nyman-the-piano/) (this is back when Amazon was hiring music journalists to write featured reviews — not consumer reviews, official Amazon reviews — of albums that it sold).

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

January 25, 2014January 25, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

RIP, Japanese voice actor SeizÅ KatÅ (b. 1927), Megatron and Galvatron in Transformers: http://t.co/Tz3TNOi1TW ->
Apparently two days in a row I wrote on Disquiet about artists from Virginia. Maybe tomorrow I'll make it a trifecta. ->
Helix has had an impact. Soft r&b tunes from the 1970s playing in public places now freak me out a little. ->
Yahoo! The @djunto weekly music project series is now well over 3,000 extant tracks and 420 contributors: http://t.co/Cjn2aOvZib ->
Man, it's hard these days to type "Yahoo!" and have people not think you're writing about, you know, Yahoo! ->
Thought my Nexus 7's screen paled next to my iPad (retina) but it was just that the iPad's wallpaper was more bright/colorful. #stupidme ->
#aeolian #metrics. The week's @djunto was inspired by "White Blur 1" off subject of my new book, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol II. ->
Just did my first interview with a podcast for my 33 1/3 Aphex Twin book. That was fun. Good questions. More on it as its broadcast date ne”¦ ->

Continue reading “Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet”

Is It Solo Piano When There Is Noise?

Melody and tension from Madeleine Cocolas

January 24, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The framing material is alternately sheer and grating, a haze of static, a thick brush through which the piano, slow and steady, occasionally makes itself heard — first some tentative notes, then a hint of a melody, then a sour note to emphasize that all is still not well. The development is not restricted to that solo piano. First of all, it’s odd to think of it as solo piano, since there is so much more going on in the track, but everything else is a noise so primal it seems to come from some other plane. Yet that noise also changes as time passes, the volume and the brittle metallic intensity rising and falling in waves. This is “Week Twenty Nine Project” of Madeleine Cocolas’ ongoing attempt to write an original piece of music each week, [last mentioned here in June 2013](https://disquiet.com/2013/06/28/madeleine-cocolas/).

This is [the note she wrote when she posted it:](http://madeleinecocolas.blogspot.com/2013/10/week-twenty-nine-project.html)

>Oh my goodness. Have you seen Gravity yet? If not you should go and see it now. Preferably in 3D. It was so tense that I had worn hot pink lipstick to go see it (nothing special there – I wear hot pink lipstick everywhere), but when I went to the bathroom afterwards I noticed I had smudged it all over my face from holding my hands against my face. And that stuff doesn’t really come off very easily.
>
>Anyhow, here’s my Week Twenty-Nine Project. I had fun with this one and spent hours manipulating some of Greg’s guitar noodling by slowing it down, reversing it, putting reverb and other effects on it, then I put a simple piano melody over the top. I like the relentless wall of noise that sits behind the piano melody. Maybe I’m still harboring a bit of the tension from Gravity?!

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/madeleine-cocolas](https://soundcloud.com/madeleine-cocolas/week-twenty-nine-project). She’s an Australian composer based in Seattle, Washington. More from her at [madeleinecocolas.blogspot.com](http://madeleinecocolas.blogspot.com/).

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 21 (“Lichen”)

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

January 24, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII20

I 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.*

“Lichen” has one of the most beautiful proper melodies on the record. It is characteristic of Aphex Twin at his sweetest — as in the oft-licensed “Avril 14” and this record’s “Blue Calx.” In my book, the person who signed Aphex Twin to Sire Records in the United States jokes about how she’d warn British musicians off signing with Sire in the U.K., as they’d just end up on a label with Enya. It is not to Aphex Twin’s discredit that this track might sound alright in a playlist alongside Enya. The lilting melody bears some similarity to a theme from James Horner’s music for James Cameron’s *Titanic*, which came out three years later, in 1997.

Speaking of 1997, here’s a version reportedly recorded live at the Glastonbury festival in 1997:

This is a remix by Wisp, who later signed to a small label co-run by Aphex, called Rephlex. There’s a bit more about him in the book:

Here’s a version slowed down significantly — the track is 17 minutes long, compared to its original length of around four minutes. It’s remarkable how the melody is still apparent:

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.

Aphex Twin SAW2 Countdown: Track 22 (“Spots”)

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

January 23, 2014January 24, 2014 / By Marc Weidenbaum

SAWII21

*It sure is exciting to see it pop up in feeds by people whom you’ve never met:*

This is another in the album’s pieces of dense sound design as song, a long passage of drones that nearly peak out, that challenge some stereos, and thus challenge the idea of this being quiet music. It has a vocal, as do other tracks on the album, but as is generally the case, that vocal is more choral and remote, one drone strain among many. This is music for dark corridors. Heck, this is the music of dark corridors.

Here it is reversed:

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