More on Disquiet.com at HeroesCon

Interview with Craig Fischer and Ben Towle at Comics Reporter

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130606-pulse-200110-sikoryak

Major thanks to **Craig Fischer** and **Ben Towle** for spending some time this coming weekend during their Saturday, June 8, HeroesCon panel discussion on music and comics to talk about some of my work. I’m honored by the attention, especially because Fischer is drawing connections between my *Pulse!* comics editing and the current weekly Disquiet Junto projects. They were interviewed today by **Tom Spurgeon** of [comicsreporter.com](http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_newsmakers_interview_ben_towle_craig_fischer/).

>SPURGEON: Tell me a little about choosing Marc Weidenbaum as a subject, and what you feel is important people know about Marc. He was such a big figure for a while because of the high-profile PULSE! gig, but I’m not sure we’re not exactly at that point in history where that’s forgotten a bit but hasn’t been pulled out and re-examined yet.
>
>FISCHER: Yeah, Marc’s legacy as a PULSE! editor is formidable: he got people like Jessica Abel, Carol Swain, Jon Lewis, Jason Lutes, Peter Kuper, John Porcellino, Keith Knight, Dave Cooper, Tony Millionaire and so many others to do those great back-page “Flipside” comics on musical topics. Justin Green’s Musical Legends book (2004) is terrific, maybe my favorite Green work after Binky Brown.
>
>Marc also gave a lot of younger alt-cartoonists their first opportunity in a national venue; Marc commissioned PULSE! work from Adrian Tomine after seeing the earliest self-published issues of Optic Nerve.
>
>As much as I respect Marc’s PULSE! tenure, though, I’m going to spend as much if not more time in my presentation talking about Marc’s Disquiet website, and the ways his activities and commentaries on ambient, electronic and experimental music intersect with comics. One of Marc’s “Disquiet Junto” projects, for example, encouraged musicians to “do a sonic version” of the first strip (the template strip) in Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story. As part of our panel, we’ll stage a “performan

More on Fischer and Towle’s panel [here](https://disquiet.com/2013/06/03/disquiet-com-at-heroescon/): [“Disquiet.com at HeroesCon.”](https://disquiet.com/2013/06/03/disquiet-com-at-heroescon/) The above comic, by **R. Sikoryak**, appeared in *Pulse!* magazine, where I edited the comics from 1992 through 2002, in the October 2001 issue.

Orchestrated Ragas (MP3)

An Alarm Will Sound commission by Asha Srinivasan

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

**Alarm Will Sound** follows, as do So Percussion and Eighth Blackbird, among other economically proportioned ensembles, along the admirable path that Kronos Quartet helped pave, in that it actively engages with composers to produce new works. Alarm Will Sound frequently posts the resulting audio, such as a series of pieces that had their live debuts at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, part of the new music initiative at the University School of Music. Most recent among these is a 2012 performance of a piece by **Asha Srinivasan**. Composed for chamber orchestra, the work, titled “Svara-lila,” builds drama and portent out of Indian ragas.

The performance was recorded on July 28 of last year. Srinivasan is an Assistant Professor of Music at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She writes of “Svara-Lila”:

>The title, composed of two Sanskrit words, “svara”meaning musical note and “lila”loosely meaning play, refers to methods of manipulation of an 8-note pitch collection, which is derived from a conflation of two closely related Indian modes (ragas). More than just notes in a scale, a raga traditionally evokes strong emotions and moods. The exceedingly lovely and expressive ragas used to form my pitch collection are generally associated with sadness and longing. Thus, the piece begins with an expansive, slow progression of dissonant harmonic sonorities that explore various intervallic relationships within the pitch collection. Simultaneously, the top notes of the progression form the basis of a recurring modal theme that guides the entire structure of the piece. As the slow and dramatic growth unfolds, the modal nature of the pitch collection is gradually revealed through increasingly active melodic and rhythmic gestures. The piece remains harmonically driven to the very end when the previously unresolved main theme returns in full force only to have its final resolution undermined by achingly conflicting sonorities whose colliding dissonances linger in the air to the last moment, denying the much anticipated release.

That description comes from the website she shares with her composer husband, Andrew Seager Cole, [twocomposers.org](http://www.twocomposers.org/). Among the subjects Srinivasan teaches is electronic music, and if you look through the “works” section of the site you’ll be treated to samples of numerous works that employ a mix of standard orchestral instrumentation in addition to electronics, as well as an experiment with SuperCollider, among them a [kickstarter.com](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1565478038/a-celebration-of-women-composers) tuba project that surpassed its $5,500 goal thanks to an impressive 113 backers.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/alarm-will-sound](https://soundcloud.com/alarm-will-sound/svara-lila). More from Alarm Will Sound at [alarmwillsound.com](http://www.alarmwillsound.com/).

Ambient, Beats, or Both?

A pulsing work by Duns Scott

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The invocation of categories immediately brings those very same categories into question. To build a wall is to question, to test, its solidity. Just this morning I turned on three categorized sets — “carousels,” I called them; [fluid, iterative podcasts](https://disquiet.com/2013/06/04/introducing-disquiet-carousels/) is how I think of them. The general concept of these carousels is that as I come across material of interest on SoundCloud, I can easily add a given track to one of the three distinct sets, each with its own theme: ambient, beats, and “other,” the latter a space for more concentration-demanding listening.

And then, just hours later, I stumbled upon a track, “The Digged Up Loop,” by a musician I’ve never heard work from before, **Duns Scott**. By Scott’s own self-definition, “The Digged Up Loop” goes into the ambient bucket; “ambient” is one of the tags he’s associated with the file. But as lush and hazy as the track is, it is rife with rhythmic material, rounds of pulsing tones that come and go in a series of gentle swells. On first listen, this was going into the ambient carousel, but then, on repeat listens, the beats came more and more into the foreground. In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter where the track goes. The filter for the carousels is less a matter of rigorous genre taxonomy than of context-through-collation: where does the droning Duns Scott track make natural, aesthetic sense? The beats may, with their light counterpoint, bring to mind the rhythmic experiments of Steve Reich, but in the end their collective effect simply adds texture and momentum to the overall droning sensibility. And so, I added it to the [ambient carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/ambient-carousel) — thought quite likely down the road I will come upon tracks that make sense in two if not all three of these [carousels](https://disquiet.com/2013/06/04/introducing-disquiet-carousels/).

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/kanada-3](https://soundcloud.com/kanada-3/the-digged-up-loop). More from Duns Scott, who’s based in France, at [dunsscott.tumblr.com](http://dunsscott.tumblr.com/).

Toward the 200th Anniversary of the Metronome

A July 2013 art project by Paolo Salvagione

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Note: The special metronome music-making project mentioned below is now live. It began late in the day on July 11 and will end at 11:59pm on Monday, July 15 (that’s 11:59pm wherever you are). The instructions are here: “Disquiet Junto Project 0080: Interior Metronome.”

201306-malzellogo

More on this as the date nears, but on July 6, 2013, in and near Regensburg, Germany, a series of works will be debuted by artist, and frequent Disquiet.com collaborator, **Paolo Salvagione**. (Boon Design is handling the graphics aspect of the effort.) Three Salvagione projects will take place, and I’ve written an essay for each of them — the essays will appear here on Disquiet.com in the near future:

(1) There will be the start of a campaign to have Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who perfected the metronome in 1815, inducted into the Walhalla, the Parthenon-like memorial to Germanic accomplishment.

(2) There will be a performance of György Ligeti’s 1965 “Poème Symphonique”for 100 metronomes.

(3) There will be an installation in the Walhalla that acknowledges the wives, husbands, and other significant others of the tinkerers, warriors, artists, and royalty who posthumously populate the building. (List of Walhalla residents at [wikipedia.org](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walhalla_memorial)).

Details, in German, at [theater-regensburg.de](http://www.theater-regensburg.de/neuigkeiten/details/das-theater-regensburg-auf-der-walhalla-und-ueber-uns-der-himmel-6-juli-2013.html). More on Salvagione and Boon Design at [salvagione.com](http://salvagione.com/works/malzel/) and [boondesign.com](http://boondesign.com).

There will also be a metronome-themed Disquiet Junto project the Thursday following the Regensburg event. Here is the teaser for the Junto project that appears in the newspaper that will be distributed at the July 6 event:

>METRONOM-MUSIK
>
>Machen Sie Musik?
>
>Würden Sie gerne das akustische Innenleben eines Metronoms erkunden?
>
>Diesen Donnerstag, 11. Juli 2013 startet ein viertägiges, kommunales Musizier-Experiment.
>
>Um mitmachen zu können, benötigen Sie nur ein Metronom und ein Kontaktmikrofon.
>
>Schließen Sie sich hunderten von Musikern aus der ganzen Welt an.
>
>Dieses Projekt ist Teil der ”žsubversiven Clique“-Serie von Musikerforschungen, die selbst gewählte Einschränkungen als Quelle für Kreativität nutzen.
>
>Mehr Infos unter: disquiet.com/salvagione1815.

It translates as follows:

>MUSIC FROM A METRONOME
>
>Do you make music?
>
>Would you like to explore the interior sonic life of the metronome?
>
>This Thursday, July 11, will begin a four-day communal music-making experiment.
>
>All you need is a metronome and a contact microphone to participate.
>
>Join hundreds of musicians from around the world.
>
>The project is part of the Disquiet Junto series of music explorations that employ restraints as a springboard for creativity.
>
>Learn more at disquiet.com/salvagione1815.

Introducing Disquiet Carousels

A funny thing happened on the way to the podcast.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

disquiet_soundcloud_setx1120

I have set up three sets of tracks on my [SoundCloud.com](http://soundcloud.com/disquiet) account. These are places for me to bookmark for public consumption, for shared listening, tracks of other people’s music that I come upon in my regular SoundCloud listening. The experiment is sort of a cross between the “social bookmarking” of [delicio.us](http://delicio.us) and the “music discovery” of [last.fm](http://last.fm).

Each of these three sets is focused on a different listening experience. There is one that is broadly defined as [“ambient,”](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/ambient-carousel) there is one that features music comprised of [“beats”](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/beats-carousel) (think instrumental hip-hop and minimal techno), and there is an [“other”](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/other-carousel) category, which is a mix of outward-bound contemporary classical, sound installations, and various experiments that don’t fit into the other two categories. The first two are intended to serve as background listening, while the third is anything but. I’ve labeled them all as “carousels.” There is the [Ambient Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/ambient-carousel), the [Beats Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/beats-carousel), and the [Other Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/other-carousel). They’ve each launched with about an hour of music, and I will, as time passes, remove some tracks from them and add other tracks.

I tried for some time to think of a playful term for these collections: stream, channel, zone, station, feed. Eventually I did what many sane people might, which is I posed the question to Twitter, Facebook, and app.net: “What’s a good term for a collection of rotating related tracks?” Among various responses, a Twitter interlocutor suggested [“pinwheel,”](https://twitter.com/OBrandNuMiranda/status/341375527975800832) which made me think of “carousel” — more the carousel that old-school slide projectors employed, not so much the carousels with the painted ponies going up and down. “Carousel,” more than any other term, seemed to get at what I was trying to get at: a format in which there was no strict, formal list of constituent parts, but in which things change as time progresses. I thought of art history professors in those pre-PowerPoint/Keynote days, their carousels of examples of paintings slowly changing from one semester to the next, one exemplary Bruegel exchanged for another, a Longo replacing a Basquiat, only for Basquiat to later on make a quiet return.

This iterative listening format became attractive to me when, over the past few months, I was working to focus on releasing a regular podcast associated with Disquiet.com. (Major thanks, by the way, to [Boon Design](http://boondesign.com) for having developed the three carousel logos, which are based on a logo Boon put together for the yet-to-be-launched podcast.) A funny thing happened on the way to the podcast. The podcast is still in the works, but in the process of considering what would constitute a solid podcast — a mix of music and sound, some commentary, a framing context, theme music, graphic identity, infrastructure for delivery and archiving — I spent a lot of time thinking about listening to music amid music. Because that is, ultimately, what distinguishes a Disquiet podcast from writing about music at Disquiet.com: how a podcast places a track in the context of other tracks. This “carousel”approach exists somewhere between the radio broadcast (ephemeral, with an ever-shifting mix of core and temporary track rotations) and the podcast (fixed, variable in length), with a fair bit of my dissatisfaction with the inherent one-track limit of [ThisIsMyJam.com](http://ThisIsMyJam.com) thrown in. The idea of a “set”has long been part of the SoundCloud offering, but only recently has it been the case that someone can create sets that include music other than one’s own. These sets also give me a format to focus attention on streaming-only audio, since the daily Downstream entries on Disquiet.com (which increasingly feature SoundCloud-hosted music) by definition only focus on freely (freely and legally, that is) downloadable music.

I remain interested in the podcast, and plan to launch it in the next month or so, but a podcast still strikes me as being a straightforward digital version of a pre-recorded radio broadcast — much like how a “netlabel” is, ultimately, a record label without the physical product. These “carousels”seem, in contrast, like a useful step forward, much as the collaborative efforts of the Disquiet Junto have been, in part, an attempt to nudge forward the idea of a record label.

Anyhow, the three carousels are live for anyone interested in listening: [Ambient Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/ambient-carousel), [Beats Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/beats-carousel), [Other Carousel](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/other-carousel).