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The Drone & the Drone
Radio Free Ul-quoma is the somewhat imposing name under which Andrew Gladstone-Heighton of Gateshead, England, posts his material at his soundcloud.com account. Perhaps the “Ul-quoma” part is intended as a reference to Ul Qoma, the twin city of Besźel in China Miéville’s great novel The City & the City. Gladstone-Heighton’s most recently uploaded track, “Codeine,” … Continued
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Drone Month at AudioMo
There’s a month-long audio challenge in June called AudioMo (more at twitter.com/AudioMo and audiomo.net). The intention appears to be to get music-makers making music, along the lines of National Novel Writing Month and February Album Writing Month. Here’s a description of AudioMo from its website: AudioMo is a month long audio challenge, normally held in … Continued
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Reworking “Radiophonic Satie”
Larry Johnson has again done me the honor of reworking something I posted, in this case my ukulele-modular piece “Radiophonic Satie,” which he has extended into a stretched ambience of unearthly qualities. He calls it a “Halo Remix,” a choice that I interpret to mean he’s taken my project description at its word and made … Continued
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Tangents: Visualizing Reich, Seinfeld x Conet, Tortoise Nostalgia, …
Tangents is an occasional collection of short, lightly annotated mentions of sound-related activities. Stunning Phase: Alexander Chen has posted at this visualizaton of Steve Reich’s 1967 composition “Piano Phase.” It’s not just a lovely rendering of the original, but it connects to the notion of a graphic score, and also assists in appreciation of the … Continued
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Anderson’s Studio 360 and Schaefer’s Soundcheck Praise Disquiet Junto Tracks
The winning entry — well, one of two tying winning entries — in a blues-song cover challenge launched by Kurt Anderson’s Studio 360 radio show was the work of a Disquiet Junto regular, and the result of a Disquiet Junto project. Back on May 8, Studio 360 announced its “1914 Blues Challenge,” in which listeners … Continued
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Create a Composition by Altering an Ongoing Loop
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group 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. This project was published in the evening, California time, on … Continued
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“Radiophonic Satie”
This is a recording of fake, Radiophonic space-age Satie that I attempted with a combination of my ukulele and the modular synthesis kit I’ve been slowly experimenting with. The short version is I’m trying to use the modular synth as a realtime processing unit, taking in the sound of the ukulele and making something of … Continued
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Write a Score to Accompany a Short Piece of Text You Wrote a Year Ago Today
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group 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. This project was published in the early evening, California time, … Continued
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Score to a Drone Battle
The track is “-” — just a hyphen — by the Teapot. The initial crunch has the foreboding intensity of a robot army slowly making its way through thick snow. It’s a rough, scratchy white noise that comes in deep, mechanical clusters. If I could draw, I would draw a story that “-” suggests. There … Continued
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sound.tumblr.com
This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve taken a fresh start at my sound.tumblr.com account. This time I feel — as I suppose I have each time, for varying lengths of time — like I’ve finally sorted out how to manage it, what use to make of it. I’m pretty unsatisfied by simply reposting … Continued
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Making Music from “Making Waves Make Waves”
Larry Johnson, whose music is often credited to L-A-J, has taken the nascent modular synthesis experiment that I recently posted, “Making Waves Make Waves,” and reworked it into something considerably more nuanced and complex, for which I am quite thankful. I’ve had field recordings reworked by others in the past, but this is the first … Continued
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On June 15 Join in to Discuss Daphne Oram’s 1971 Book ‘An Individual Note’
A proper online discussion forum was recently introduced on Disquiet.com. The implementation is still in beta, but it seems to be functioning well. One of the things the forum will support is an occasional book club. After much deliberation, the first book we’ll be collectively reading and talking about is the out-of-print volume An Individual … Continued
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Record the Beeps of a Library — and Maybe Make Something of It
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group 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. Tracks by participants will be added to this playlist as … Continued
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“Making Waves Make Waves”
I continue to explore modular synthesis, with my nascent Eurorack (small format) setup assembled, and then expanded thanks to some loaner modules from a friend. The above track is the first thing I thought was vaguely upload-worthy. It’s titled “Making Waves Make Waves” because it’s an early attempt at using waves as both sound and … Continued
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Deep South Ambient
Ambient music can have an unfinished quality, because it leaves so much space open. “Three Aimless Clouds” by Michael Ash Sharbaugh is less aimless than much such music, though, thanks to several qualities, key among them a rising, siren-like tone that marks the opening of the track, and a melodic insistence that trails throughout. The … Continued
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8-bit Bossa Nova
There is a lot of intriguing music streaming in the feed of the São Paulo, Brazil–based musician who identifies as Asvfuks on the SoundCloud service (and on Instagram, among other places). The track “A Divisão Do João,” by way of example, seems to be based on a snatch of music by João Gilberto, the bossa … Continued
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“Så Kan Det Gå” (A Glitchy Swedish Puzzle)
“Så kan det gå” by the Swedish musician Alveola Ämting lays a tremulous vocal amid a light shimmer of broken static. Her granular sounds, a gentle if brittle smattering of nano-sonic fissures, give way as time passes to her halting, slow-paced intonation: I was not looking for trouble But I got caught by a siren … Continued
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Disquiet.com/Forums
This is a notification that there’s a new spot on Disquiet.com for discussing music. It’s an open forum, hosted at disquiet.com. The forum went live yesterday, May 29, and is in public beta. That means: please feel free to join in, but don’t be surprised if not everything functions. The design has not yet been … Continued
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Tangents: Data Immersion, the Tuning of the Internet, Superloops, …
Tangents is an occasional collection of short, lightly annotated mentions of sound-related activities. Data Immersion: Characteristically breathtaking video of a new work by Ryoji Ikeda, perhaps the leading installation poet of data immersion. This is of his piece “supersymmetry,” which relates to his residency at CERN, the supercollider. More at supersymmetry.ycam.jp: In an interview he … Continued