Disquiet Junto Project 0725: Rack It

The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays.

Step 1: There is a concept in photography and filmmaking called “rack focus,” which can be understood as the process of altering depth of field so as to draw attention to one or another element.

Step 2: Record a track in which you apply the concept of “rack focus” to sound.

Approach: You might, for example, take a preexisting track for which you already have the various layers separated, and then at any given moment, put all but one through a low-pass filter. That’s just a suggestion.

Deadline: Monday, November 24, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0725

Disquiet Junto Project 0725: Rack It

An electronic sequence created using Pure Data with additional reverb and delay to produce two  levels, one with prominent sharp sounds and the other a fuzzy background with the impression of increased distance.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

Sharp and Fuzzy (disquiet0725)

sound art for disquiet0725.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

dandelion (disquiet0725)

I was having some fun with the "Booga" plug in from Hainbach and Audio Thing and figured that it would serve as a good vehicle for this week's assignment. I created six rhythmic tracks, which took turns being brought entirely to the forefront. With each such instance I inserted a short line from a film. The result is not quite right, but I ran out of time. But it was a fun project.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

disquiet0725

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

Filter Flying (disquiet0725)

Based on the true story of how I got my first synth, which was a Roland Juno, and my first gig, which was an epic disaster.

This week's Disquiet Junto prompt asked us to imagine the sonic equivalent of "rack focus", a film camera technique in which focus shifts between the foreground and background of a long single shot. For example, there might be a close shot of our brave heroine with the indistinct blob of a highrise behind her, but then her face blurs and the background comes into focus, and we see a dark figure looking down at her from a high window across the street.

This piece started out in a notebook. I drew a stack of three vertical planes, labeled "near", "mid", and "far". I assigned instruments to each of the three planes, with drums in the foreground, synths in the middle distance, and my vocals in the background. A two-stage reverb chain applied to the instruments in each layer simulated the three distances sonically within a shared modeled space. When I wanted to bring the vocals into "focus" for emphasis, I abruptly dropped the gain on the instrument tracks and applied a Haas Effect technique to snap the spoken track to the fore in space. (A 35ms delay between stereo channels does the trick.)

Gear consisted of the Moog Minitaur analog bass synthesizer, TR-08 drum machine, and the pièce de résistance, a Roland JU-06-- the tabletop boutique reissue of my selfsame old Juno synth. 

I had a blast making this piece and I hope you enjoy it.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

Back on the Rack (disquiet0725)

This is my submission to this week's Disquiet Junto assignment.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

251122 [disquiet0725]

[disquiet0725] Phase Cancel

This track was created for the disquiet0725 challenge. Production started with locating a bass line I recorded some time ago from the Typhon synth. Tracks were added using the Proclethya VST synthesizer, and a piano loop serves as the sound ramping up, and overtaking the arrangement. The movement over time as well as my predisposition for all things time travel inspired the title.

More on the 725th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Rack It — The Assignment: Change the “focus” of a track as it plays — at https://disquiet.com/0725/.

a time bridge crossed-disquiet0725

cat.rack (disquiet0725)

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.