Disquiets

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

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)

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 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.

The Center Cannot Hold (disquiet0723)

Coraline Ada Ehmke