Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse

The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly.

Step 1: Part of what makes “Happy Birthday to You” an interesting song to listen to occurs when it is sung in a public place, meaning that people sing along who actually don’t know the name of the person whose birthday is being celebrated. The song gets to the moment when the person’s name is inserted, and then the sense of ensemble entirely falls apart. People mumble, or wait, or actually know the name and sing it, but no matter — because subsets of singers proceed to sing the final “happy birthday to you” starting at different points.

Step 2: Consider the way “Happy Birthday to You” has a tendency to fall apart, as described in Step 1.

Step 3: Write a piece of music informed by your thoughts that resulted from Step 2 — a piece of music that is designed to fall apart somehow. And consider repeating the motif a few times, so it falls apart repeatedly.

Deadline: Monday, November 10, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0723

Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse

live in wolkenkuckucksheim (r.s.stropharia + th.garbe + claudi) 27.07.2024

Space Cowboy

levetatha

Yesterday I flew with my wings, I remember it well

2025-09-23

after the rain

we know their dream enough - #4301 (94R82 percent 235 left) by chair house 250923
(again, William Butler Yeats from May 22, 2025) 

*** NEW CATCHPHRASE FOR PIANO TEN THOUSAND LEAVES ***

" Gentleness, carried on 4,536 leaves of sound "

*** "PIANO TEN THOUSAND LEAVE" COMPLETE WORK ALBUM SERIES START ***

Now begins a new challenge:
to compile all 4,536 pieces into 91 albums
and deliver them to the future.
Just as "Ten Thousand Leaves ( Manyoushu ) " carried
the hearts of lovers across a thousand years,
we hope these piano pieces will reach
people a thousand years from now.

===================
VOLUME1-4
===================
*** youtube full video:
https://youtu.be/a77YDMMgv7o
*** spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/album/3mISdsZNVdEAD2BMxCE0ku?si=2l36hot_TsyV_kCVnKwLBg
*** Apple Music:
 https://music.apple.com/jp/album/the-complete-works-of-piano-ten-thousand-leaves-vol-1-4/1840586819
*** amazon Music:
https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B0FRMNGD1K?marketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&musicTerritory=US&ref=dm_sh_mFt4isWbmtWKlgKqqHDbRNiff
*** all music streaming services:
https://linkco.re/m0nqEtsg?lang=en

===================
VOLUME1-3
===================
*** youtube full video
https://youtu.be/ue7KsUBdLME?si=5UbdJelOAPjqboiJ
*** spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/album/6BAV5XloL6HDGboFeiE3VF?si=e4E-3zI0RqCt8aQNrnMHrQ
*** Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/jp/album/the-complete-works-of-piano-ten-thousand-leaves-vol-1-3/1834912123
*** all music streaming services:
https://linkco.re/8RNRdEa3?lang=en

===================
VOLUME1-2 
===================
*** youtube: full video of 50 pieces 2 hours
https://youtu.be/fBmIMLpM10g?si=MQmAdF95M7GCm4Ve
*** spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/album/1KDM283kVS8x7fO9q79w2v?si=iIJ4sZidSqWW8ah59Y_a1g
*** Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/jp/album/the-complete-works-of-piano-ten-thousand-leaves-vol-1-2/1832629621
*** all music streaming services:
https://linkco.re/VeA0UreQ?lang=en

===================
VOLUME1-1
===================
*** youtube: full video of 50 pieces 2 hours
https://youtu.be/YERNF74cvKw?si=6FiU67TOdybggkQk
*** spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/intl-ja/album/12vCnNiO4EfBz6eVPGhvOr?si=P3cL7RZSTV-87jeswyI8BA
*** Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/jp/album/the-complete-works-of-piano-ten-thousand-leaves-vol-1-1/1831717286
*** all music streaming services:
https://linkco.re/Y9VNVN23


we know their dream enough - #4301 (94R82 percent 235 left) by chair house 250923

Themes From Forgotten Films Vol 2:Vilniaus Arkikaredra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPybOeg0vzw

Table Guitar Part One (Let's Blow It All!!)

Pagan chant lyrics from The Goodly Spellbook - 'The Bagahi Rune'

'The Bagahi Rune' is an old witches chant derived from ancient Basque language - a call to gather for the harvest, feast + celebration.

Bagahi laca bachahe,
Lamac cahi achabahe,
Karrelyos.

Lamac Lamec bachalyos,
Cabahagi sabalyos,
Baryolas.

Lagozatha cabyolas,
Samahac et famyolas,
Harrahya.

Translation:

The feast in November, the feast,
I shall transport thee there myself,
And without the aid of a sieve, 
To scour the plates and dishes with sand,
Work which must be done with those plates and dishes,
We  shall meet our friends, ready for the drinking-cup,
If they shall go to the feast, their bellies full with,
Quaffing from the drinking-cup.
O' sons of the master, with your families,
Shout his praises with the  cry,
HURRAHYA!


The Bagahi Rune

The brief for this week’s Disquiet Junto challenge noted how the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ often falls apart around the name stage … This idea of musical collapse immediately made me think of Anglican church services, when the organ - along with those who are confident of the hymn being sung - sometimes falls into desperately trying to pull everyone along, never far from falling apart. In this piece, a recording I made of a service I attended a while back (which has its own backstory) becomes the material for electronic mangling and rhythmic snipping for my take on the idea of repeated collapse. It’s VERY far from being in the same league, but parts of the result remind me a little of Jonathan Harvey’s extraordinary Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) - one of my all-time favourite electroacoustic masterpieces ... 


More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/.

more halF unusuaL

halF collapsE [disquiet0723]

I took part in a group vocal and movement improvisation at the weekend and from the recording of that I built this piece in Ableton Live. There was 11 of us and we had our eyes closed, so the improvisation - as fits with the @disquiet project this week - would align and then go wayward. I've tried to bring that out more in this rearrangement.

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/.

Do The Collapse (disquiet0723)

Disquiet Junto 0723 suggested making a piece of music that structurally falls apart.

I've been spending time with my Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synth lately, watching tutorial videos, exploring different patch configurations, and recording everything "just in case" as I always do with analog gear. 

So for this week's response I challenged myself to center the 0-Coast.  Although I had intended to start with a drone patch, a happy mistake led me to a heavy brass-like sound, which I connected to the random step function for pitch. Add lots of reverb, and we have hell's own horn section. The 0-Coast also eventually gave it the drone I had in mind at the start. This was the only synth used in the piece. No MIDI was involved, as the patches were completely self-playing.

The pizzicato was recorded live, 4 tracks, on my electric violin, which my violin instructor is going to be over the moon about. The vocal, featuring Yeats's "The Second Coming", was captured on a shoebox cassette recorder. There's a little digital piano sprinkled in as well.

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/

The Center Cannot Hold (disquiet0723)

A quasi-serialist electronic sequence interrupted at intervals with short clips from another track played in reverse. The basic sounds were created using Pure Data.

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/.

Hiccups (disquiet0723)

i used multiple instances of sting in ableton to trigger fairly standard repetitive loops, fed into driftmaker to create variable flux over time, also a load of randomised panning techniques. I guess its always teetering on collapse before at various intervals it totally does. in retrospect maybe more constant erosion rather than sudden collapse.

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/.

mirror tactics [disquiet0723]

I imagined a couple of musicians, all given the same score, but who decided to not listen to each other and instead interpret things at their own pace. Hence we have one player with a sequence warbling happily along, until the groove is lost and then found, a drummer who can never get past hitting just a few pieces of his kit at random, a noodling pianist who is forever lost in his ambient haze, some dude who just discovered granular synthesis and an unnamed character who wandered in off the street with a Synthi who has no desire to listen to anyone. This is what I imagined, in any case. The track itself was created using just one midi sequence, sent to different instruments with a few effects here and there, mainly panning and reverb. 

disquiet0723

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.

disquiet0723

Andreas Kitzmann

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