A Premix Quartet

Reworkings in advance of work by Chris Herbert

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131118-chrisherbert

If the rampant release schedule of contemporary electronic musicians leaves you overwhelmed and befuddled, buried in an embarrassment of riches, then add Chris Herbert to your favorites list. Because for better and worse, Herbert has a modest discography in his wake, dating back to the album *Mezzotint* on Kranky in 2006. He leaves you wanting, not overwhelmed. Still, a forthcoming album, titled *Constants*, due out in February 2014, is being led into by an unusal premix, a quartet of reworkings of source material that will be heard again when the full-length comes out. The premix set is titled *Wintex-Cimex ’83*, and it’s being made available for free download throughout December by Lawrence English’s fine Room 40 label. Here, below, is one of the four tracks, the rough tinsel of “Soft Quasars.” Herbert has been quoted as saying that the collective work takes as its theme “radar, dying stars, aeronautics, ailing short waves flickering in the troposphere, the ghost of JG Ballard.”

https://soundcloud.com/room40/chris-herbert-soft-quasars

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/room40](https://soundcloud.com/room40/chris-herbert-soft-quasars). Get the full set of four tracks at [room40.org](http://emporium.room40.org/products/521314-chris-herbert-wintex-cimex-83). More from Herbert at [chrisherbert.net](http://chrisherbert.net/) and [twitter.com/cjherbert](https://twitter.com/cjherbert).

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Junto member posted code in Supercollider, Processing, and Ruby to assist in this week's text->notes transformations: http://t.co/eHWDQChVaa ->
  • Detail of projection of one of today's Oulipo sound projects. #oumupo #sfai http://t.co/DP3EfwnKkT ->
  • Realizing the typography on slides I use in teaching looks exactly like the photocopied typography on concert posters I made in college. ->
  • Did 4 pieces in Oulipo sound workshop: listening, woven audiobiography, subtractive composition, song form (name/room tone as source audio). ->
  • Oulipian parents: my wife & I relay-read Little House to our 3-year-old, never experiencing it in full ourselves, mentally filling in gaps. ->
  • So good. MT @EdieBushwick: @disquiet Do you m an H ad d to Gr n Appl books shortly for th v ning's r ading of work by th lat G org s P r c? ->
  • Yow, already 37 tracks in the week's Disquiet Junto project: http://t.co/LTj2ivvc92. Proof that I'm a poor judge of what will/won't work. ->
  • When Dave Eggers, in The Circle, describes the weather as cloudless I briefly think it's a comment about the Internet being down. ->
  • "Email that enhances your tech lifestyle." Email taglines that encourage you to unsubscribe. ->

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

Disquiet Junto Disambiguation

What Junto participants might do if the projects don't "sound like their music"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The F.A.Q. (frequently asked questions) document for the Disquiet Junto has been updated to respond to a not uncommon inquiry. The full document is [here](https://disquiet.com/2013/04/25/disquiet-junto-faq/), but this is the text of the addition:

>**Q: I’m excited to participate, but I don’t want listeners to confuse my Disquiet Junto projects with my “real” music/sound work. Any suggestions?**
>
>A: Certainly. Variations on this question have been raised by many participants in the Disquiet Junto projects. Someone who makes minimal techno or singer-songwriter music or chamber music might not want listeners to their SoundCloud accounts have the listening experience broken up by remixed Thomas Edison cylinder or autobiographical spoken word recordings or any other number of incongruous project-derived tracks. The best option may be to create a separate SoundCloud account for your Junto projects.

Full F.A.Q. [here](https://disquiet.com/2013/04/25/disquiet-junto-faq/).

A Cloud Fitted with an Iron Scaffold

The first track off Westy Reflector's new album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131115-westy
If noise music is ambient music turned up loud, then shoegaze is ambient music with a beat. Not just any beat, mind you, but a beat that emerges from the ebb and flow of the underlying drone, a beat that recognizes the rhythmic content in the flow of the drone and that latches onto it, building a hard lattice that supports the seemingly ethereal initial audio. It traces that underlying form, a cloud fitted with an iron scaffold. This is what happens in “Prologue: In Recollection and Amazement,” the first track off the new album from Westy Reflector, titled *Transient Lines* and available at [bandcamp.com](http://thereflectors.bandcamp.com/releases). The initial glisten, with hints of Robert Fripp’s tape loops, hovers like a thick cloud, builds a pulse that then reveals itself as proper drums, playing along in stereophonic splendor. What makes this more than a matter of accrual, of layering, is that the glisten itself has a reveal — slowly, for if anything this track embraces its placid approximation of momentum, the hazy original sound acknowledges that it is produced on guitar, and more familiar chiming, ringing, strummed chords kick in.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/thereflectors](https://soundcloud.com/thereflectors/prologue-recollection-amazement). More from Westy Reflector at [westyreflector.net](http://westyreflector.net/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0098: Woven Audiobiography

The Project: Combine original three spoken texts into one track.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

***Note: The due date was incorrect when this was first posted. The due date is Monday, November 18, 2013, at 11:59pm (wherever you are).***

20131114-rq

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

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 14, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 18, 2013, 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 0098: Woven Audiobiography
>
>The steps for this week’s project are as follows:
>
>Step A: Choose a number from 1 through 6. You can roll a die or [use an online number generator](http://goo.gl/om4vqB), or come to a decision on your own.
>
>Step B: Write a 100-word text beginning with one of the following phrases, depending on the number you selected. Where there are brackets fill them in with the appropriate information.
>
>1. “I was born in [ ] and I like …”
>
>2. “My name is [ ] and I was thinking …”
>
>3. “This morning I had a sense that …”
>
>4. “Try as I might, the same thing …”
>
>5. “The last book I read was [] and …”
>
>6. “On a Sunday morning I usually …”
>
>Step C: Write a 90-word text beginning with the same phrase.
>
>Step D: Write an 80-word text beginning with the same phrase.
>
>Step E: Record yourself reading the three texts as three separate tracks. Record each at the same pace. Speak slowly and take an extended pause after any period.
>
>Step F: Layer the three tracks into one track. They should all begin at the same point and the first few words should, more or less, overlap to the point of being indistinguishable.
>
>Step G: Take a couple passed through audio, lightly balancing relative volume levels to emphasize key phrases or, for that matter, to enhance the low-key cacophony.
>
>Step H: If you desire to, weave in one tonal element, though not so loud as to overpower the speaking.
>
>Deadline: Monday, November 18, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your track’s length will be determined by the longest of your three recordings.
>
>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: Include the term “disquiet0098-wovenaudiobio”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free 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 98th Disquiet Junto project, in which three original spoken texts are combined into one track, at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/disquiet0098-wovenaudiobio/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Background: This week’s project originated as part of the Oulipo Sound Workshop that was included in the [Subtle Channels](http://subtlechannels.tumblr.com) series of events held in San Francisco earlier this month (November 2013). The three-hour workshop provided an opportunity to explore the role that Oulipo literary constraints play in the restricted rules of the weekly Disquiet Junto projects. There were four projects that day, including a listening exercise, a word-based one based similar to [last week’s Junto project](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/07/disquiet0097-page99remix/), and a subtractive one along the lines of [the 7th Disquiet Junto project from back in February 2012](https://disquiet.com/2012/02/25/disquiet0007/). The fourth was a simpler version of this week’s Junto.

Above image, from Raymond Queneau’s *Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes*, found via the stellar [goto80.com](http://goto80.com/chipflip/06/).