Week 2, Beat 2

Latest in new series by Philly's Arckatron

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Continuing what he plans to be a weekly, 52-part series of original beats — “52 weekz, 52 beetz. every wedz” — Philadelphia’s **Arckatron** laid down the second of them today. It’s a much more placidly paced entry, following last week’s [“ks: Oddknox(ious).”](https://disquiet.com/2013/01/05/arckatron-starts-2013-with-a-banger-mp3/) This time around Arckatron offers up “7th: human,” the beat playing out at seemingly half the speed of its predecessor. The more sedentary sensibility suits the project well, providing a more widely welcoming introduction. It’s a rate that also lets the idea of a shuffle slip in; “7th: human” is sly where “ks: Oddknox(ious)” was stentorian, compelling where its predecessor was commanding. The word “beat,” of course, is cover for a multitude of beats, beats that in combination form rhythm. Here the beats themselves range widely, from flangy slaps to heart-beat pulses to tonal clusters.

Keep up to date with the series at [arckatron.us](http://arckatron.us/album/52pickupbeetz).

Dub and Its Online Echo

An hour-long document of an early-January performance by wndfrm

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The temporal proximity of live music performances to their release online as audio documents, whether streaming or downloadable, creates a peculiar shift in the relation between audience and performer. For a long time, such a document was just that: a historic record of an event. But when just a few days pass between the live event and the dispersed recording, it feels more like the record is itself part of the event, that it’s less a recording than a distant echo, that it’s less an accounting of the sound and more of an emanation of the sound. To bask in that echo, to listen to it so shortly after the fact of the initial event, is still a form of participation. That image of a digital-media echo is especially appropriate for this set by **wndfrm**. A dub- and techno-infused performance he did on January 3 in Vancouver, British Columbia, it’s a prime example of grid music, a slight moiré of gently shifting rhythmic figures, barely a handful of beats heard in a slow, relaxed sequence of changes. There is a period, around 45 minutes into the 54-minute performance, when a tiny clank, like the chirp of some small bird, adds a side beat to the underlying lattice. It’s a moment of techno Jenga, as one more element is added to the existing structure. To wndfrm’s credit, the structure holds.

Live recording originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/wndfrm](https://soundcloud.com/wndfrm/wndfrm-live-bonzai-vancouver-bc-jan2013). More on/from wndfrm, who is Tim Westcott of Portland, Oregon, at [twitter.com/wndfrm](https://twitter.com/wndfrm).

Here, for reference, are the two tracks that wndfrm cites as source material for his set:

Robert Hood’s [“Detroit: One Circle”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH7u1ZeRK34):

Autechre’s [“Goz Quarter”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpAymeHiiI):

Deeply Fuzzy Tonal Manipulation (MP3)

A new live performance by New Hampshire's Mysterybear

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130107-seidel

Almost everything that the New Hampshire”“based musician **Dave Seidel** releases was recorded live, and “The Limits of Control” is no exception. And as always, the work is credited not to Seidel directly but to his **Mysterybear** moniker. It’s a nearly 14-minute drone of deeply fuzzy tonal manipulation. More than many tracks, it sounds like its waveform looks: like a thick singular object twisted this way and that. (Waveforms are always on display for tracks posted, such as this one, on SoundCloud.com.) One particularly fascinating thing about the track is how it has as its foundation exactly the sort of buzzing, droning sound that would be annoying to a musician under most circumstances. It would signal a troubled wire or a broken piece of equipment. Here, though, it isn’t a source of frustration but of bliss.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/mysterybear](https://soundcloud.com/mysterybear/the-limits-of-control). More on Seidel/Mysterybear at [mysterybear.net](http://mysterybear.net). The above image was associated with the track by Seidel; it is “Nowhere in Spain” by swizzled and was borrowed from [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com/photos/riadd/3749820/) under a Creative Commons license. It’s hard not to imagine that the track’s underlying buzz in some way correlates with those towers — are they for communication, or are they electrical, or both? — that he posted to accompany the music.

New Year, After the Break (MP3)

Dense shimmer from Chicago's Cinchel

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s arguable that the first week of the new year is best spent as yet another week in an ongoing sequence of weeks. Better that than an attempt to plan for a year of unfettered expectation, or as a means to somehow make up for the previous. But the holiday break in particular makes it difficult not to feel like the simple change of one digit at the end of a four-digit number is significant. As 2012 becomes 2013, most of us come back from some sort of break, and we find ourselves doing things for the first time in some time — cooking, writing, cleaning, going back to work, seeing friends after time with family, and on. The first-ness is a heady thing, especially for creative acts. The tools have gathered dust, and the muscles are less limber. At the same time, distance frees us of old habits, if only for a moment. **Cinchel**, who’s based in Chicago, Illinois, has posted what he calls his “first setup of the new year.” It’s a four-plus-minute expanse of dense shimmer, committed to tape on his guitar with a host of effects. It’s a slo-motion rager, packed with intense, glistening chords and tremulous, syncopated reverberations.

Track posted for download at [soundcloud.com/cinchel](https://soundcloud.com/cinchel/first-setup-of-the-new-year). More on Cinchel at [cinchel.com](http://cinchel.com).

Arckatron Starts 2013 with a Banger (MP3)

Part of a new weekly series from the Philly beat strategist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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The first **Arckatron** release of 2013 starts the year off with a banger, an ecstatic loop of split-second soul. It’s a rapid, short-duration cascade of horns and vocals and percussion that for one full minute loops the way a CD does when it’s caught on a hairline scratch — or how one’s memory does, when it’s distracted by the need to identify something familiar yet of tantalizingly uncertain origin. Such is often Arckatron’s modus operandi, as like many crate diggers he searches for less appreciated bits of antiquated recordings; unlike most of his peers, though, he seeks the abstractions implicit in the populist source material. In this case — track title:
“ks: Oddknox(ious)” — he’s made pure blipvert r&b. Around the one-minute mark there’s a brief drum figure that’s like the loop itself needs to catch its breath, and shortly thereafter it expands into a fanfold of longer but still delectably trunctated snippets.

Track originally posted for free download at [arckatron.us](http://arckatron.us/album/52pickupbeetz).