I really enjoy the drone waaaaay in the background...

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell

Soul Folk was created for the The Souling Project organised by Minerva Arts (a youth theatre group), funded by Arts Council England. As the selected artist for this venture, I was involved in the revival, revisiting and reinvigorating of Folk Dramas known as Cheshire Souling. For this project I was commissioned to create a new acousmatic work Soul Folk, which borrowed music from a historical source, the first verse of the Souling Song featured on The Soul Cakers of Cheshire: Field Recordings of Traditional Mummers Songs and Play Text. Borrowing musical material was essential for this project, as the folk legacy focuses on the oral tradition of preserving folk culture, through verbally transmitting and receiving folk material. This project also enabled me to work with the children of Astbury St Mary's Church of England Primary School, who created their own Souling song, which is featured in my Soul Folk composition. The children’s lyrical material featured was created in workshops run by me and composer Melissa Douglas. Soul Folk’s premiere performance was at Congleton Town Hall and was featured twice on BBC’s Merseyside Folkscene programme, once on their Women in Folk week.

Soul Folk

051722002 Venova Sax MDLR Norns HereThere

Unusual creatures

Bumblebells

23 Magam2.wav

Canadian artist Hildegard Westerkamp narrates her walk around Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia. She also delves into the process of how she treats the sounds in the studio to highlight elements, and imagines different sound dreams from them.

Things to think about:

Westerkamp says “I could shock you or fool you by saying the soundscape is this loud…but it is more like this” (1:40–2:00). What does she mean? What is the difference between the two versions of the soundscape she presents and how do you think she created the difference?
Do you see the images she describes in her dreams too? What kind of images or situations do they conjure for you?

Kits Beach Sound Walk (1989) by Hildegard Westerkamp

A sountrack inspired by the documentary, "The One Who Runs Away Is the Ghost." - a mixtape from Hainbach that laid the foundations for his score.

Full interivew: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/hainbach-the-monday-is-ok-mix/

@hainbach

FULL FEATURE AND IVW

Hainbach - The Monday Is OK Tape Mix

This work is an acousmatic single sound source work for water, which explores the transformation and trajectory of water. Using a single sound source creates a strong relationship between the sounds. Contrast is achieved by using both natural and sourced water sounds. By using these two types of water categories enables interesting textures to be created. Natural water sounds come from natural water sources created by nature including; fountains, fish movements, outside rain and dripping. Sourced sounds comes from water that has been tamed and domesticated by humans including; marinas, locks, docks, ponds, bathroom noises, garden fountains, fish tanks and rain on different manmade surfaces. This work experimented with Denis Smalley’s concept of ‘causality’ in a variety of ways, including cause and effect. Smalley’s concept allows the work to experiment with gesture as a formative element. There are moments of buildups, climaxes, attacks, releases, which create intensity and depth. This aids and helps the work transition into different sound worlds and spaces. 

Locks, Docks And Liquid Hydrogen (2013)

This is the inside of my bathroom, recorded on a Tascam DR-07 mkII. I edited the audio in ProTools 11. You can hear some cat sounds if you listen up!


More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

disquiet.com/forums/

Placid Cell - [disquiet0167-freebassel]

created March 2015
@ dead_shrine

paulstretch/Ableton

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More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/


for_bassel(2015)[disquiet0167-freebassel]

The first 2 seconds you hear my bathroom's door closing.
The next 10 seconds you hear the silence in my bathroom.
Then a heartbeat evolves, made of a reflection of the closing door.
The chords, the lead melody and the bass sound are all made using the same microsound, a very short loop near the end of the silent part.
A shaker-like sound is made out of some noise, maybe my breath because I was in the room during the recording.
I used Bitwig's sampler, a lot of filters, some delays and Verberate for the plate-hall.
It took me about 2 hours to get the whole track done.
So I hope you enjoy it.

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:
disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/
More on Bassel Khartabil at:
http://freebassel.org/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
disquiet.com/junto
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
disquiet.com/forums/

Bathroom Lullaby [disquiet0167-freebassel]

**Production Notes**

The most quiet room in our flat is a tiny walk-in wardrobe. I was just recording the sound of the door closing, when my daugher, which played Skyrim in the living room, cursed in frustration. 

I isolated that bit and mangled it with Ambient V_03 for a steady pulse. This treatment went into Reaktors Molekular-Effect-Plugin, which turns noises into sine waves. That’s where I got all the tonal bits from. 

Compressed, added a a bit of RC 48 Reverb... and that‘s not all....

... I really hope they free Bassel Kathabir. 

* * *

**Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell**


Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing.

￼This project is the second time that the Junto gathered its resources to pay tribute to the wrongfully imprisoned Creative Commons advocate and coder Bassel. Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of Bassel’s incarceration in Syria.

In Bassel’s honor, this week we’ll make music by taking the loneliness of a small, closed room and making something beautiful and soothing from it.

Step 1: Go into the quietest room in your home and record the room’s tone. Also record the sound of the door being closed.

Step 2: Locate in that track a suitably quiet 10 consecutive seconds. Also locate the moment when the door is closed.

Step 3: Locate in those 10 seconds a handful of signature sonic events, moments, however small or subtle, that stand out from the general silence.

Step 4: Create an original composition that begins with the door being closed, proceeds through the 10 unadulterated seconds of room tone, and after which samples of those sonic events from Step 3 are transformed into something soothing. This being a project about isolation, you cannot add any external sound elements.

Step 5: Upload the combination of your accompaniment and the foundational track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between two and five minutes.

(...) 

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:
http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
http://disquiet.com/forums/

- end -

Thoughts [disquiet0167-freebassel]

This is my first published attempt at being a part of the Disquiet Junto project.

March 15th is the third anniversary of the imprisonment of Bassel Khartabil[0]. Marc's request was "to mark the third anniversary of his imprisonment, we’re imaging placid sounds emanating from solitude".

All the sounds were recorded in a carpeted room, using a Zoom H1, and the track was built with Audacity and Ableton Live. The original photo of Bassel used for the artwork was taken by Joi Ito[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassel_Khartabil
[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

A door being closed [disquiet0167-freebassel]

a minimalistic improvisation by:
mazen kerbaj / trumpet
the israeli air force / bombs

recorded by mazen kerbaj on the balcony of his flat in beirut,
on the night of 15th to 16th of july 2006.
© mazen kerbaj 2006

STARRY NIGHT (excerpt) 6.31 min

Cycle of Life (2016) is a miniature stereo acousmatic etude, which explores the concept of time. The sound material showcases sounds from time keeping devices, including metronomes, egg timers, analogue and digital clocks. It was a crucial compositional aesthetic to keep the original behaviours and acoustic quality of the sounds, as they maintain the character of time. The individual tiny ticks and tocks of clocks were fascinating sources, due to their short-lived acoustic nature.

The short resonate quality of the ticks and tocks influenced the main compositional technique and methodology utilizing micromontage. Micromontage is the layering of sound defined at its particle level. Composing with very short sounds gave more control over constructing gestural material, as each sound particle could be positioned precisely, into complex multiple sound clusters and groupings. Additionally the arrangement of the gestural material had the most control over the pacing and timing of the work. This occurs as the micro sounds were used to create new rhythms. These rhythms were composed in order to drive the music forward (accelerando), hold the music back (ritardando), or to slow down (rallentando) musical events.

Primarily Cycle of Life grew out of the poet William Butler Yeats’ (1865 –1939) text A Vision (1925), which presents Yeats philosophical beliefs through questioning ‘what is the cycle of life?’. Yeats’ cycle of life ideology explains how time travels in a circular motion. Yeats believed this circular motion created an endless repetitive wheel of living and dying. Cycle of Life represents this theory through its repetitive fragmented gestural nature, by using Denis Smalley’s ‘causality’ concept. This concept enables the listener to predict the musical outcome of the gestural activities, as one musical event causes the onset of another musical event.

Cycle Of Life (2016)

From Perihelion to Aphelion is a miniature stereo acousmatic etude, which explores the concept of space, both sonically and theoretically. This work takes the listener through a sonic space journey, where the listener experiences sounds produced by three different planet's atmospheres in our solar system; Uranus, Earth and Saturn. Each of the planets atmospheres forms their own section, which represents a different destination on the musical space journey.

From Perihelion to Aphelion begins with the high pitch gestural harmonic atmosphere of Uranus. Before traveling to the windy atmospheric atmosphere of Earth, which reveals small glimpses of the familiar, through field recordings of Earth’s environmental sounds including birds and traffic. The work concludes with atmospheric bass noises that develop the character of Saturn.

The initial concept of creating a space journey was inspired by a number of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sound recordings, as each recording has their own personal history, story, voice, life and energy. In particular NASA Voyager Space Sounds CD (2009) was an important influential tool, as each track provided a true insight into the sounds heard in space, which NASA recorded on their space voyages. In particular three tracks were significant to From Perihelion to Aphelion, including Rings of Uranus, Voice of Earth and Saturn's Rings, as they shone light on the different planets atmospheric characters.

From Perihelion To Aphelion

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.

Layers of piano, tape loops, samples, and noise.

A door being closed [disquiet0167-freebassel]

Stray wool

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