Fine Populist Minimal Techno

From the Netherlands

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Dance music often arrives by accrual. Layers of rifflets, mostly derived from drum patterns as well as small tonal and melodic elements, join in as a track progresses. This is how “Spooky Version 1” by RobinGrownTear makes its way. House-music hi-hats, dubby synth approximations of bass drums, and Tangerine Dreamy arpeggios gather together, like a ragtag crew of disparate origins assembled for some greater purpose. Which is to say, fine populist minimal techno.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/robingrowntear](https://soundcloud.com/robingrowntear/spooky-version-1-made-by). RobinGrownTear is based in the Netherlands.

Disquiet: 15, 10 & 5 Years Ago This Week (2014.01)

Bush of Disquiet, Zorn Exhibit, Best-ofs

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This would be roughly the week of December 30 through January 5.

20131223-olitbod

***5 Years Ago (2008):*** My [top-of-2008 list](https://disquiet.com/2008/12/31/best-of-2008-10-albums-10-downloads-8-processes/) included commercial albums (among them *Unitxt* by Alva Noto and *The Elephant in the Room: 3 Commissions* by Mira Calix), free downloads (among them Wobbly’s massive birdsong megamix and computer-addled metal by Drumcorps), and “key processes” (among them the continued rise of netlabels, ambient movie scores, and fetishized sound objects). … At the start of January 2009, I’d checked in on the listens to the [*Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet*](https://disquiet.com/2006/09/04/our-lives-in-the-bush-of-disquiet/) project I had put together in September 2006, and noted that it had over [25,000 downloads](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/02/our-lives-in-the-bush-of-disquiet-over-25000-served/). The album collected reworkings of music from *My Life in the Bush of Ghosts* by Brian Eno and David Byrne, who had put up stems from the album for open-source remixing. Participants included Brian Biggs (aka Dance Robot Dance), Roddy Schrock, Stephane Leonard, John Kannenberg, My Fun, and Mark Rushton. As of this writing, a week or so before 2014, the release is making its way toward 60,000: it has had almost 41,000 downloads on [archive.org](https://archive.org/details/OurLivesInTheBushOfDisquiet) and an additional 15,000 or so at [freemusicarchive.org](http://freemusicarchive.org/music/disquietcom/Our_Lives_In_The_Bush_Of_Disquiet/). In many ways, that *Bush of Disquiet* endeavor started me down the course that led to the weekly [Disquiet Junto projects](https://disquiet.com/2012/01/27/the-disquiet-junto/). … The last two Downstream entries of the year were a piece made on a [Nintendo DS port of the Korg DS-10](https://disquiet.com/2008/12/31/emmanuel-witzthums-piano-tronic-mp3s/) and piano-based music by [Emmanuel Witzthum](https://disquiet.com/2008/12/31/emmanuel-witzthums-piano-tronic-mp3s/) released on the Stasisfield netlabel. … Among the first Downstream entries of the new year, 2009, were [historic Frippertronics pieces from 1978](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/01/historic-frippertronics-mp3-from-1978/), some [Austrian d’n’b](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/02/austrian-drumnbass-mp3/), and [Berlin sound art](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/05/berlin-sound-art-document-mp3-from-philip-marshall/). … The quote of the week was Nico Muhly on working with [tape](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/03/quote-of-the-week-muhlys-tape-sausage/). … The image of the week was a [taxi-based sound-art](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/04/image-of-the-week-staalplaats-connaught-project/) project by Staalplaat Soundsystem, from a New Delhi residency. … I posted brief [reviews](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/04/heavy-rotation-rob-swifts-dusty-vinyl-alex-wurmans-kill-you-score/) of a DJ Rob Swift album (*Dust to Dust*) and the score by Alex Wurman to the film *What Doesn’t Kill You*. … And I wrote about the [John Zorn”“curated sound installation](https://disquiet.com/2009/01/05/john-zorns-contemporary-jewish-museu/) at the then recently opened Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco:

200901-zorn4

***10 Years Ago (2003):*** My [best albums of 2003 list](https://disquiet.com/2003/12/30/best-cds-of-2003/) was posted this week. It included Matmos’ *The Civil War*, Rhythm and Sound’s *The Artists* and *The Versions*, and Brian Eno’s *January 07003: Bell Studies for the Clock of the Long Now*. … The first Downstream entry of the year was Human Isolated Bacteria’s [*Boleros Románticos de Ayer y Hoy*](https://disquiet.com/2004/01/05/three-track-mp3-set/) (“blippy background jazz, groovy syncopation and whiz bang party music, with occasional bridges of timeless suspense”).

***15 Years Ago (1998):*** My [best albums of 1998 list](https://disquiet.com/1998/12/30/best-of-1998/) was posted this week. It included Amon Tobin’s *Permutation*, Autechre’s *LP5*, and Praxis’ *Mold*.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FrVmKgO1Mx ->
  • "Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it." http://t.co/ebeTjqHF7E. The 1st @djunto of 2014, 105th overall. ->
  • OK, now that I've posted the first Disquiet Junto project of the new year, I go back into social-network slumber until Monday, January 6. ->

Disquiet Junto Project 0105: Ice for 2014

The project: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (re-redux).

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

0105-ice2014

*Each Thursday at [the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com](http://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](http://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 2, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, January 6, 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 0105: Ice for 2014
>
>Happy new year! This week’s project is as follows:
>
>Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.
>
>Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single sentence as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series on the first Thursday of 2012. Revisiting it a year later, on the first Thursday of 2013, provided a fitting way to begin the new year. Now, at the start of the third year of the Disquiet Junto, it is something of a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a weekly habit. It’s beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.
>
>Deadline: Monday, January 6, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your finished work should be between 2 and 4 minutes in length.
>
>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 “disquiet0105-ice2014”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 105th Disquiet Junto project (“Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it”) at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2014/01/02/disquiet0105-ice2014/
>
>More on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/?p=16588
>
>Join the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Photo associated with this project found via Creative Commons at:

A cuppa ice water

New Year Dub

Here's to 2014. Here's to works-in-progress.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

One of the beauties of SoundCloud.com is the casual nature of much of its content. Musicians upload not only finished recordings but works-in-progress, which serve as windows into their creative process, arguably providing a more intimate, fluid, and digitally natural listening experience that do sites whose structure is more clearly modeled on the brick’n’mortar system of a traditional record store. Often as not, these experimental, mid-process SoundCloud-housed tracks are brief, in the one-minute range, though in the realm of electronic music, they are only short on first listen — they are then adapted by fellow musicians (unfolding into myriad remixes), or simply set on loop.

A one-minute dub track, such as Kyle TM’s “New Year Dub,” easily turns into a half-hour of trance-worthy listening. In fact, while many short pieces on SoundCloud merely make for repeat listening, in this case it’s Kyle TM’s intent: “Meant to be looped,” he writes in a brief accompanying liner note. The piece has a familiar dub reggae rhythm, tweaked with a squeaky, delectably sour, further-off-the-beat percussive, like a screw is loose somewhere in the sound system.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/kyletm](https://soundcloud.com/kyletm/new-year-dub). More from Kyle TM, who’s based in Greer, South Carolina, at [thekyletm.tumblr.com](http://thekyletm.tumblr.com/) and [twitter.com/thekyletm](https://twitter.com/thekyletm).