The prompt for Disquiet Junto 0632, "Shear Wind", instructed us to take that awful wind-blowing-across-the-microphone sound and make it useful.

I live in a notoriously wind-swept city and the weather was cooperative, so I recorded several minutes of wind shear in my back yard with a stereo field recorder. I brought the recording into my DAW on three tracks, one reversed, and executed some glitch maneuvers to make them rhythmic. On top of everything is a Cmaj7 drone using a few layers of custom sampler instruments.

REMEMBER: Headphones are antennae, like an insect's, that pick up the thoughts of the composer.

More about this week's Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/0632/

Recorded at NOSIGNAL Multimedia Labs, The Shambles

Disquiet Junto

A Picnic on a Cliff (disquiet0632)

This week's Disquiet Junto suggested a drone made for the daytime. 

I started with a field recording from my front window. I took the first clean 4 minutes of that, and discovered a lone cicada singing around the 3:30 mark. This is the first cicada I've heard in the neighborhood this year. I supplemented that field recording with some crows that I captured in Virginia a few years ago.

The drone was recorded in a single take on a slide steel guitar with ebow and a collection of pedals. Underneath it all is a sample of a ceramic drum.

The title is taken from the Wikipedia entry for cicadas, describing them as being able to blend in with their surroundings. You can experience this for yourself with a good pair of headphones.

More about Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/0647

Most Cicadas are Cryptic (disquiet0647)

Disquiet Junto 0657 was an invitation to compose a pice out of overlapping tones that start and stop suddenly.

I created multiple layers of synth pads, each holding a single note of random duration in the key of Am. Next I bounced the audio, slowed it by 75%, and reversed it to create abrupt stops in each tone. I blended that audio back into the mix to provide a low aural foundation. On top of this I recorded a couple of additional pads with held tones, chopped up with a grain stutter plugin. To wrap it up, I improvised a couple of wandering leads with "broken" synths in Cmaj/Amin.

I worked hard on the spacial mix, so headphones or a good pair of stereo monitors are recommended.

More on this week's Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/0657

Tails on Tones (disquiet0657)

Disquiet Junto 0663 was an invitation to compose music to accompany a spinning-platter hard drive. 

I thought I would miss this one, as I was traveling abroad these past two weeks without any gear, not even a pair of decent headphones. But inspiration struck at the kitchen table in a rented flat in Manchester UK and there was no ignoring the impulse. This piece was recorded off the tempo grid, the notes were painted in a piano roll, and the automation was done with a trackpad. A very different creation experience and set of constraints for me! 

I like a little percussion with my drones, so I used the new stem splitter feature in Logic Pro to extract a few isolated samples of the hard drive chitter to establish a rhythmic foundation.

You will experience the song differently played through computer speakers vs headphones, and I can't say which way is the right way.

More about Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/0663

The Lake Shore Drive Incident (disquiet0663)

Perhaps Another Time

Music Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om-1-AW0zeo

Lyrics: 
this is the passage of flying winds
this tunnel sings a duet with you and a red bird
something looks from the other side
you look from the other side
i look from the other side
it is an illusion that it is out of reach
i am alive
you are alive
we were never quite alive
so we will never die

a little birdie told me
to listen when I would speak
and to speak when I would listen
so i will say what i want to hear
i love you
our time together matters

i caress the hollow spaces
your organs are the skin of a darkening mountain
we know the azure tear of the sky
listen to the tunnel speak
speak, the tunnel listens


passage of flying winds

Under Tangled Silence

Galaxy In Silence

Love me, love me, love me, say you do Let me fly away with you

Dedicated to those who oppose.
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Analog bass synthesizer, fretless acoustic bass guitar, unsynchronized loops, two tube amps, breaking glass. Field recording at a demonstration in Berlin, July 2025. All sounds, mixing, and production: Velvet Something Superdark. Image: Police officer using a pain grip during an arrest, Berlin newspaper photo from July 27, 2025, edited by VSS.
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More Resistambient: https://soundcloud.com/velvetsomethingsuperdark/those-were-the-days

La Police

"Speed it up until it begins to break down" was the directive for Disquiet Junto 0709 Overclocked. I can do that!

I work a lot with samples from old radio programs and movies, and one of my other projects has me working with the audio track from the Vincent Price classic "House on Haunted Hill". Since it was handy I started this piece with a chunk from that movie. When I'm done with file prep and ready to start cutting samples, I sometimes start with an audio app called Fission that has an auto-slicing feature. You set a db level and silence width, and it cuts things into neat words and phrases.

"Speed it up until it begins to break down." I took several passes at the source audio, dropping the volume sensitivity and reducing the silence width, getting finer chunks of words and eventually syllables. I loaded three sets of these into sampler instruments, and set out making MIDI patterns for sample triggering. The tempo climbs in 5bpm intervals as the whole thing turns cacophonous. 

Sped up until they started to break down: Roland TR-08 drum machine and Moog Minitaur bass synth.


None of the Murders Were Ordinary (disquiet0709)

Aerene

Experimental Noise Music and/or Sound Collage

passage of flying winds

ghostamongherbs

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