My 33 1/3 book, on Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, was the 5th bestselling book in the series in 2014. It's available at Amazon (including Kindle) and via your local bookstore. • F.A.Q. • Key Tags: #saw2for33third, #sound-art, #classical, #junto • Elsewhere: Twitter, SoundCloud, Instagram

Listening to art.
Playing with audio.
Sounding out technology.
Composing in code.

tag: live-performance

Serrated Ambient Music

A live performance on one instrument by Tom Hall

[ August 13, 2018 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

This gorgeous, pulsing, lightly fractured, seven-minute video of serrated ambient music performed entirely on an Elektron Digitakt was posted by Tom Hall late last year. In it, rapidly cycling bits of noise turn from sharp slivers to lush texture, from harsh to comforting, and back again. The pace is either anxious or genteel, depending on where you ear focuses. Does it attach to the internal motion of these micro-moments, bits of noise and drone churning past each other, or does it fix itself on the underlying big picture, a peaceful tonal space in which stasis is the ruling structure?

This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. The video was first posted on Hall’s YouTube channel last October. More from Tom Hall, an Australian based in Los Angeles, at tomhall.com.au, instagram.com/tomhallsonics, and soundcloud.com/thall. His album Spectra was recently released on the French label Elli Records.

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Simulating Environmental Byproducts

A live performance by Dave Seidel

[ July 9, 2018 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

When occurring in the everyday environment, drones have a natural quality to them — natural, that is, much of the time, as expressions of the built environment. They aren’t natural like tree sap. They are natural as occurrences of, consequences of, human-made spaces, of HVAC, of wind tunnels, of electrical appliances, and especially as combinations thereof. They are hums of unclear origin, sounds whose qualities are experienced differently by different people, and that can be influenced by just a slight shift in the position, even a mere tilt of the head, from which you witness them.

Drones are quasi-natural effluences — environmental byproducts, really. In contrast, the conscious production of drones is something else entirely. It takes effort to sound like more than a sine wave. It takes skill to sound like more than a single tone on repeat. It takes nuance to have the sort of qualities that suggest deep fractal complexity. Those talents belong to Dave Seidel, who in this graceful performance (“Marwa in Centaur”) ushers a subtle, sumptuous drone from the displayed equipment. It is epic and modest, glacial and economical, all at the same time.

This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted to Seidel’s YouTube channel. More from Seidel, aka New Hampshire-based Mysterybear, at mysterybear.net and mysterybear.bandcamp.com. I wrote the liner notes to Seidel’s album ~60 Hz, released in 2014: “Even Waveforms Have Terroir.”

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Exposed Circuits and the Human Hand

A live performance video from Hainbach

[ July 2, 2018 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

The human hand is often of secondary importance in the videos I re-post to my ongoing playlist of fine live ambient music performances. Semi-automated machines, so often the foundation of electronic music, are more coaxed than played in many of these performances. The human sets the device or devices in motion, and then the human adjusts things as the device does what was intended, and occasionally stumbles on things that weren’t intended. At times the situation is akin to parental nudges keeping a toddler from wandering into the street; at others it’s like the mostly hands-off administer of a prototype self-driving car keeping the vehicle from hitting said toddler. In some of the most rewarding work, the self-correction surfaces as human-machine simpatico.

In this video, “Love Passes” by the prolific Hainbach, the main instrument is a Plumbutter, the wood-encased synthesizer from Ciat-Lonbarde, developed by Peter Blasser. Here it is processing sounds originating on that little keyboard below it, the OP-1 from Teenage Engineering. At the right of the Plumbutter is a module called the Deerhorn, a theremin-like spatial interface. It’s the gadget that shows exposed circuits on its generic green PCB board, a stark contrast to the rustic quality of the rest of the instrument (or more to the point, a different sort of rustic). Hainbach’s right hand influences the sound based on its relative proximity. It shapes the sounds, lending swells and glitches to the stately note sequence. There is also some irony to the fact that a performance in which the human hand plays an especially prominent role also happens to be a video in which that hand makes no physical contact with the instrument.

This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at Hainbach’s YouTube channel. More from Hainbach, aka Stefan Paul Goetsch, who is based in Berlin, at hainbachmusik.com and hainbach.bandcamp.com.

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Out of Body

The sleight of hand of Hatis Noit's live looping

[ June 29, 2018 / Department: downstream / Comment: 1 ]

There’s nothing like the moment when the disconnect appears between action and effect. It’s a moment that happens with live looping and live processing, when the audience becomes aware that the concept of cause and effect has shifted, sometimes subtly, sometimes aggressively. This uncanny valley of live electronically mediated performance varies by musician, technique, and instrument. In his early work with processed guitar, you could watch Christopher Willits play something you didn’t hear — and then wait for it to surface in the mix. Turntablist-watchers are used to distinguishing between when the DJ is playing and when the DJ is cueing something yet to be played.

This video shows Hatis Noit, the Japanese vocalist, in an excerpt from a longer performance on the music platform NTS. Noit records for Erased Tapes, which earlier this year releaed her recent EP, Illogical Dance, featuring a fantastic Matmos remix. In this video, she starts off elegantly insinuating vowel tones. At 12 seconds you see the sync between lips and sound. Some 20 seconds later, the sync is no longer self-evident. (Later still, a minute and a half in, the camera shows where Noit’s downard-cast gaze has been looking — at a pedal-controlled looper at her feet.) That moment at 20 seconds is the signal of intent. From there the vocals layer further. Noit moves from tone to melody to spoken to something nearly operatic. It all coalesces into a single piece, a performance that is both recorded and live in the same moment. When Noit plays with twin microphones held in her extended, intertwined arms it is a bit like the sleight of hand employed by sidewalk magicians. She is also telling the audience something: “There are several of me present.”

The video itself is edited in a manner that emphasizes the asynchronous matter of her style. The short gives an additional atmospheric, out-of-body nudge because the video opens with shots of her doing things that don’t involve performing at all, just lingering in a window with Erased Tapes founder Robert Raths, though all the while we already hear her voice.

Video originally posted at YouTube. More from Hatis Noit at hatisnoit.com.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0338: Imaginary Quartet

In collaboration with Naviar Haiku, make a four-person band from the provided four live solo recordings.

[ June 21, 2018 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, June 25, 2018. This project was posted around noon, California time, on Thursday, June 21, 2018.

Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0338: Imaginary Quartet
In collaboration with Naviar Haiku, make a four-person band from the provided four live solo recordings.

Step 1: First, major thanks to Neil Stringfellow (aka Audio Obscura) for proposing this collaboration between the Disquiet Junto and the Naviar Haiku series, and for the support of Naviar’s Marco Sebastiano Alessi. We’ll be making music based on segments of recordings by four musicians from the May 25, 2018, Naviar Haiku Fest. Get the four recordings here from the Zip file:

http://bit.ly/juntonaviar

Step 2: Having downloaded the four tracks (by Ikjoyce, Audio Obscura, Subsepai, and sevenism), listen to them. Each is a single minute from longer solo performances. Imagine how they might work together.

Step 3: Create a new track employing material from all four (and no other external sound sources, though processing is OK) that suggests the existence of a quartet performing live.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0338” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0338” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0338-imaginary-quartet/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, June 25, 2018. This project was posted around noon, California time, on Thursday, June 21, 2018.

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0338” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

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 online, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 338th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Disquiet Junto Project 0338: Imaginary Quartet / In collaboration with Naviar Haiku, make a four-person band from the provided four live solo recordings.) at:

https://disquiet.com/0338/

Major thanks to Neil Stringfellow (aka Audio Obscura) for proposing this collaboration between the Disquiet Junto and the Naviar Haiku series, and for the support of Naviar’s Marco Sebastiano Alessi. The audio employed as raw material in this project is from live recordings by Ikjoyce, Audio Obscura, Subsepai, and sevenism. More on the Naviar Haiku at:

http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0338-imaginary-quartet/

There’s also a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet to join in.

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