Disquiets

Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start
The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music.

This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

Step 1: Choose a favorite book, or simply choose one at random.

Step 2: Read — preferably aloud — the first sentence in the book’s text.

Step 3: Make music that somehow reflects the line you read in Step 2.

Deadline: Monday, July 7, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start

My first contribution to Disquiet Junto, responding to the prompt "Know the Shadow".

With the reference to "The Shadow Knows" in the prompt, I had the idea to recreate an old radio program. I dug around in the Internet Archive and found recordings of 1930s radio from which I cut samples. Select samples were then arranged to tell the story I wanted to tell, of a mentalist named Professor Penumbra hypnotizing the listener through the radio.

The concept of a shadow is expressed in multiple ways: in the title, within the samples, with stereo imaging, with polyrhythms, and using high- and low-frequency EQ sweeps.

To fully experience the shadow, please enjoy with headphones.

About Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/2023/11/30/disquiet-junto-project-0622-know-the-shadow/

Disquiet Junto

Professor Penumbra (disquiet0622)

My second contribution to Disquiet Junto, responding to the prompt "A Fresh Pair".

The prompt invited me to consider two disparate influences and bring them together somehow. I missed the word "cultural" in front of "influences" and assumed musical influences. I immediately had the seed of an idea: Gary Numan 1978 vs Gary Numan 2018.

Please enjoy "Splintered Android" with headphones, and be kind to your electric friends.

About Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/2023/12/14/disquiet-junto-project-0624-fresh-pair/

Splintered Android (disquiet0624)

This week's contribution to Disquiet Junto, responding to the prompt "Noise Ceiling".

The prompt consisted of a photograph of a bare bulb light fixture on a roughly-painted section of ceiling. We were asked to describe how the space sounded.

It felt like a closet to me. So I took my stereo field recorder to the utility closet in my basement and recorded a CLAP, converted it to an impulse response, and then turned into a convolution reverb patch. Essentially, I created an aural simulation of that space, which lets me place any sound within that space.

The rhythmic breathing and kick drum are placed fully in that simulated closet space, to create a sensation of "close air". The background pads also migrate from a very spacious tone to the constricted space of the closet.

Ready your headphones for "Futility Closet".

About Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/2023/12/21/disquiet-junto-project-0625-noise-ceiling/

Futility Closet (disquiet0625)

A reflection on my past 12 months of music.

1. Who Not While. A discarded sketch that set this year's solo album in motion.
2. A raw recording of an ARP-2600 that I was able to play at the Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio. (https://mess.foundation) This synth part is used in the opening and closing tracks of the album.
3. You Dream You Die. This started as a purely piano composition, and I like the tension between the messy organic and the mathematical clockwork.
4. A Sensation of Nightmare and Stain. The album is well underway at this point. 
5. The Iconoclast. This year's Drone Day composition, which also marked my first live in-person performance since the 90s.
6. A Convincing Story of the Self. Experimenting with using AI-enhanced text-to-speech as a vocal element.
7. True Colors. I finally got around to finishing production of my tracks in the Cyndi Lauper cover I'm doing with Eloquent.
8. A fragment from a jam session with my friend Fred, who I am secretly recruiting for a Live Band Thing.
9. A fragment from a jam session with my friend Kevin, who I am also  secretly recruiting for a Live Band Thing.
10. Passions and Peculiarities. The title is taken from a sentence deep inside my partner's dissertation, and coincidentally this is their favorite song on the album.
11. Outside, Last Night. The last track I completed for "The Nine Doors", my first full-length Sudre's Violin album.
12. Professor Penumbra. My first contribution to Disquiet Junto.

You are twice as likely to be moved emotionally if you use headphones.

About Disquiet Junto: disquiet.com/2023/12/21/disquie…625-noise-ceiling/

Audio Journal 2023 (disquiet0626)

A response to Disquiet Junto 0627: Just Ice Society.

The vocals were created using AI-enhanced text-to-speech, using content adapted from WikiHow. 

Recorded and produced at NOSIGNAL Multimedia Labs, The Shambles, Chicago, IL USA.

About Disquiet Junto 0627: https://disquiet.com/2024/01/04/disquiet-junto-project-0627-just-ice-society/

Making Ice at Home May Seem Overwhelming (disquiet0627)

Step 1: Choose a favorite book, or simply choose one at random.
Step 2: Read — preferably aloud — the first sentence in the book’s text.
Step 3: Make music that somehow reflects the line you read in Step 2.

Nice challenge!
I picked a book at random from a cardboard box filled with souvenirs from my years in Argentina. When I moved to Europe, I brought most of my belongings with me — but some heavier items (mostly old books, cassettes, and vinyl records) stayed behind. I'm gradually bringing those things — and memories — back.

The first book from that pile:
*Cuentos de dos orillas* (1971 edition)
I remember most of the short stories in it — I read them decades ago (at least 35 years). The one I truly love is the story by Borges.

For the music, I used an unused 2023 recording with Santiago Arias on bandoneon (I play bowed upright bass and Fender Rhodes). I added some synths to create an abstract soundscape.

This is the passage I read:

Funes, el memorioso
by Jorge Luis Borges
Lo recuerdo (yo no tengo derecho a pronunciar ese verbo sagrado, sólo un hombre
en la tierra tuvo derecho y ese hombre ha muerto) con una oscura pasionaria en la
mano, viéndola como nadie la ha visto, aunque la mirara desde el crepúsculo del
día hasta el de la noche, toda una vida entera. Lo recuerdo, la cara taciturna y
aindiada y singularmente remota, detrás del cigarrillo. Recuerdo (creo) sus manos
afiladas de trenzado. Recuerdo cerca de esas manos un mate, con las armas de la
Banda Oriental; recuerdo en la ventana de la casa una estera amarilla, con un vago
paisaje lacustre.

 @disquiet

Funes el memorioso (disquiet0705)

Music for / inspied by the first line of Crime and Punishment, which reads as; 
At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down on to the street from the little room he rented from some tenants who lived in Stolyarnyi Lane, stepped out onto the street, and slowly, almost hesitantly, set off towards the Kokushkin Bridge.

I picked that line, in part because its the beginning of July as I make this and also we've had a spell of hot weather. I read this book probably 25 years ago and read it again at the start of this year.  
For this track I jumped onto Freesound.org and got some street sounds from St. Petersburg and the horse drawn carriage sounds - this seemed to fit the 19th century feel. I new then the music and field recordings should merge together. I wanted tension and the sense of the character in the book being alone with the music I added - soft tension strings and ambient keys. 



Raskolnikov's Walk [disquiet0705]

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0705: Book Start. The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 07045 discussion thread on Lines:

“The girl and the elderly man descended the steep stairs to the channel's narrow beach and walked along by the water's edge. Several small fishing boats were moving out to sea, passing a freighter entering the bay, booms raised, a…” 

So starts the first story in a collection of fascinating and contemplative short stories in “The Infinite Passion of Expectation” by Gina Berriault. I randomly picked the book, which had been sitting on our bookshelf for years, having read it decades ago. The stories, which take place in or around San Francisco, remind me of a unique, and sometimes surreal time in my life when I lived and worked there. 

This was created in Ableton Live and was inspired by the opening lines of the story, the book itself, and my reflection of a time many years ago. Thank you, I really enjoyed this prompt, and the creative journey it sent me on. 

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

The Infinite Passion of Expectation [disquiet0705]

A response in sound to the beginning of 'The Iliad': 'The Wrath of Achilles is my theme, that fatal wrath which, in fulfilment of the will of Zeus, brought the Achaeans so much suffering and sent the gallant souls of many noblemen to Hades, leaving their bodies as carrion for the dogs and passing birds.' (version by Penguin Classics, translation by E.V. Rieu).
The track is a mix of electronic and recorded sounds.

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

Iliadic (disquiet0705)

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt asked us to use the first line of a favorite book as the inspiration for a piece of music. I selected David Byrne's "How Music Works", with the opening sentence "I had an extremely slow-dawning insight about creation."

I'm traveling this week, so away from my outboard gear, but I did bring along a mini keyboard and headphones so that I could still participate this week! Features several layers of software synths (mainly Alchemy) and a field recording made from the 3rd floor balcony of the flat we're renting while we're here.

I tried to keep this sparse (for me at least), following the idea of the "slow-dawning insight", while still capturing the chaos of the creative act. It's probably still unsettling, but I just can't help that.

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.


A Slow Dawning Insight About Creation (disquiet0705)

More on the 705th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Book Start — The Assignment: Let the beginning of a book help you begin a new piece of music — at https://disquiet.com/0705/. This week’s project was proposed by Neil Stringfellow.

SONG 107 - DisquietJunto0705 - Book Start

I create original experimental, postpunk, and experiential music from my studio in Chicago. The Hard Times described my work as "creepy, haunted, but also a little bit uplifting." Prolific.

A Slow Dawning Insight About Creation (disquiet0705)

Coraline Ada Ehmke