rock bottom—
river stones form
gentle waves

haiku by Luke Levi https://www.lukelevi.com/

picture by Nadine Marfurt https://unsplash.com/@nadine3

For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

arch folk

halF rocK [naviarhaiku475]

video @ https://youtu.be/ZnmfVBkzXnc

misty daydream
Vikings land on the shore
of my childhood

haiku by Michael Dudley http://michaeljdudley.com

For more information visit http://www.naviarrecords.com/about/naviar-haiku

visuals (YouTube)

halF daydreaM [naviarhaiku484]

A remix of the drone masterpiece https://soundcloud.com/undermulden/triska-disko-refraction-with-pineyb-glitcher-disquiet0593 - which was Part 3 of a 3-way asynchronous collaboration, with:

Part 2: https://soundcloud.com/noodletwister/triskas-bunker-disko-disquiet0592?si=357c25b33eb44c42a77c8df5eb0bf1ce&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Part 1: https://soundcloud.com/pineyb/triskadisko-disquiet-0591

More on this 594th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Threemix (The Assignment: Remix an asynchronously produced trio), at: https://disquiet.com/0594/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0594-threemix/

collaboration

halF triskA [disquiet0594] with pineyb, Noodle Twister & undermulden

See the accompanying visuals @ https://youtu.be/pcGYPoWRkqw

This piece uses sounds recorded in the process of making a loaf with a breadmaker ... enjoy!

halF kaleidoscopE

More on the 676th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Sub Melody — The Assignment: Bury a slow melody deep inside a drone — at https://disquiet.com/0676/

more halF unusuaL

halF suB [disquiet0676]

Messing with a crystal bell ... !

slanting sunlight rays
a warm hazy afternoon
the forest to hear

Marc Sheridan is an ever-curious person who loves what is just around the corner: the unusual and the mysterious. Even everyday objects and scenes can always be viewed differently.

He is English but currently living in the US, and he always remembers what Ansel Adams once said, "You don't take a photograph, you make it." Marc believes that photography rewards him with a greater connection to everything around him.

Lately, Marc has been writing haiku, but he's not sure whether he illustrates his photos with haiku or reveals his haiku through photography.

He has been published in numerous magazines in the US and the UK and has exhibited up and down the West Coast of the US for the past 23 years.

Haiku by Marc Sheridan: https://bsky.app/profile/northernvoodoo.bsky.social

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF slantinG [naviarhaiku592]

Welcome to a little deep (haiku) space TidalCycles livecoding play! 😁😜

pulling light
from the other world . . .
the Milky Way

Yatsuka Ishihara (1919–1998) was a Japanese poet and co-founder of the journal Aki 秋 with Akira Matsuzawa. He also served as an advisor to the Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyōkai) and the Association of Haiku Poets (Haijin Kyōkai).

Haiku by Yatsuka Ishihara: https://www.brooksbookshaiku.com/MillikinHaiku/writerprofiles/JonesOnIshihara.html
 
To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF milkY [naviarhaiku601]

The "one sentence that in some manner describes your artistic practice", step two of this week's Disquiet Junto brief, is as follows:

I make music to explore sound and the boundary of what is considered ‘music’ … and I use chance so that, in turn, sound can explore me through the process, as well as, at best, anyone else who listens. 

Perhaps ironically, the SoundCloud algorithm doesn't consider this track 'music' enough to recommend to potentially interested listeners ... so it might actually be worth a listen! 😁😜

Great to be contributing to Musikfestival Bern again with this exploration!

More on the 707th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Practice — The Assignment: Make music from how you make music — at https://disquiet.com/0707/.

halF practicE [disquiet0707]

insect tremolo
soberingly cools the heat
of farmland roads

Kogetsu Eguchi (1825-1867) was a Japanese poet active in the late Edo period. Together with Kazan Watanabe, he authored the haiku book Tōke shunchō.

Haiku by Kogetsu Eguchi: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=ha011984281

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF tremolO [naviarhaiku603]

In spring sunlight
the rows of tea bushes
ripple like waves
 

Tōge Morita (1924-2013) was a Japanese teacher and poet from Osaka. In the early 50s, he started publishing his poems in the Katsuragi 葛城 magazine, later becoming its editor-in-chief and, in 1990, its editor.

Haiku by Tōge Morita: https://www.lucacenisi.net/2023/04/16/cinque-haiku-di-toge-morita/

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF cuppA [naviarhaiku604]

dropped glass -
its ring
outlasts the fall

SO happy that Naviar Records has chosen to run with one of my own haiku for this week's challenge! As you can no doubt hear ... I still very much ❤️ Sumu!! All the Madrona Labs plugins are such inspiring sonic creative genius! 👏🙏

halF unusuaL is "an evolving space inspired by play in the spirit of ‘hai’ (meaning “fun” or “unusual” in the word haiku). Here, improvisation connects the unexpected, mining the boundary between music and non-music to shape sound worlds that feel oddly familiar in their oddity."

You can find Darren’s music on Soundcloud and Youtube, and check out his website to find out more about his publications and merchandise.

Haiku by Darren Bourne

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF droppeD [naviarhaiku610]

Warning! ... This track is not 'music' enough for the SC algorithm to recommend it to potentially interested listeners ... You have been warned 😁😜

More on the 715th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Err Apparent — The Assignment: Make a mistake on purpose. Build something from it — at https://disquiet.com/0715/

halF erR [disquiet0715]

You can see an experimental video made to accompany this track at https://youtu.be/kjjs4dMyaec ... Enjoy! 🤗❤️

half-asleep eyes
open to a dreamlike world
of blossoms

Natsume Seibi (1749-1816) was the son of a wealthy Edo rice broker and was acquainted with a number of other famous poets, including Oshima Ryota and Kobayashi Issa. In addition to his poetry, Seibi left behind a number of fine examples of haikai prose. 

Haiku by Natsume Seibi

Notes from the Penguin Book of Haiku:

nebuki me o / hirakeba hana no / ukiyo kana

Ukiyo, the floating world of pleasure, specifically referred to the pleasure quarters with its various beautiful women (hana, literally ‘blossoms’) as well as to popular theatre and street spectacles.

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF dreamlikE [naviarhaiku611]

You can see the visuals that bring this audio to life on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/hPTeoPOjSnA ... Enjoy! ☺️

I stole the soundtrack to the video, posted here in its audio-only version, from the new band Dense Fog Advisory ... Hope they don't mind. I'm more than happy to pass over 100% of the money I make from it 😁

More on the 716th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Dense Fog Advisory — The Assignment: That’s your band’s name; now record something — at https://disquiet.com/0716/

halF advisorY [disquiet0716]

Enjoy the accompanying video at https://youtu.be/3GmrnYzEG-E ...

faring over the lake
drawing the light
an autumn butterfly

Yatsuka Ishihara (1919–1998) was a Japanese poet and co-founder of the journal Aki 秋 with Akira Matsuzawa. He also served as an advisor to the Modern Haiku Association (Gendai Haiku Kyōkai) and the Association of Haiku Poets (Haijin Kyōkai).

Haiku by Yatsuka Ishihara

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF butterflY [naviarhaiku612]

Enjoy this with the visuals on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/wkS2xkqAu-Y ... 

We recently unearthed a VERY rare set of tin cylinders with some of the creations from my unusually great uncle - dated 1910! I've taken the opportunity to riff on top of his proto-EDM - with sounds WAY ahead of their time! No way would they have found an audience in his lifetime ... Let's try again 😜

Family legend has it that my Great Uncle Crackleton P. Valve was not so much born as assembled! His crib rattled with loose copper coils, his lullabies were hummed through wax cylinders, and his first word was said to be a faint but distinctly glitchy “bzzzzzt” ...

By the turn of the last century, when most men were proud to own a sturdy hat, Uncle Crackleton was already soldering strange contraptions in the garden shed, where every evening the glow of red-hot valves spilled out into the hedgerows. He refused to play the piano “like a commoner,” preferring instead to hammer phonograph needles against tin cylinders until they shrieked, warbled, and sang with a peculiar beauty only he seemed to understand.

The neighbours swore they could hear his experiments late at night: a ghostly stutter of sound, like church bells melting, or a brass band tumbling downstairs. He called it Music of the Future, although others called it a dreadful racket.

It’s said he once built a mechanical echo chamber out of two bathtubs, a bicycle pump, and a dozen mismatched radio valves. When he cranked it up, it produced a looping hiccup that terrified the vicar's cats and made their milk curdle. Even so, he declared it his masterpiece.

Though none of his recordings were thought to have survived, until now (most cylinders were repurposed as makeshift candle holders), family lore insists that without him, modern glitch music would not exist. Every time a record skips, a tape warbles, or a speaker crackles, somewhere, faintly, Uncle Crackleton P. Valve is smiling.

More on the 717th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Generation Gambit — The Assignment: Layer two eras of recordings, one of them imaginary — at https://disquiet.com/0717/

halF 1910 [disquiet0717]

The background to this is a 1,000 year-old church near Hereford, which has a wooden statue of George and the Dragon ... You can get a flavour of the place and enjoy the visualisation of this track at https://youtu.be/ogYz27JAOuE

You can also see the church in real life at https://maps.app.goo.gl/f9DGotayt1daEMcg8 ... it's worth a visit! 😎

The coming of autumn
determined
by a red dragonfly

Kaya Shirao was born in 1738 in Fukagawa, Edo, now part of Tokyo.

He ran a school in Edo during Spring and Autumn, but in Summer and Winter, he would move to the countryside to teach thousands of aspiring poets from throughout the Shinano province (now Nagano Prefecture). He's considered one of the first established haikai writers to help spread cultural forms from national to regional urban centers.

Haiku by Kaya Shirao

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF reD [naviarhaiku614]

What's the difference between 85bpm and 84bpm? I think you'll agree, that 1bpm makes all the difference! 🤯 Enjoy! 😁

For the eagle-eared among you, you'll notice the music is based on the Dali project which you can see on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1C3-wesgtec

More on the 719th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Riding on the Metronome — The Assignment: Play with and against a steady beat — at https://disquiet.com/0719/

halF metronomE [disquiet0719]

Those who follow halF unusuaL unusually carefully will recognise some of the elements in this piece come from an exploration of GRM Tools Atelier (which has just been released) and sounds you hear here are 'stolen' from that first little experiment you can see at https://youtu.be/Cj0mKQF2Cew ...

reminding me not to forget
a toad goes out
to the verdant world

Fusae Fubasami (1914–2014) was a Japanese poet from Tokyo. In 1944, she became associated with Dakotsu Īda and the haiku journal Unmo (雲母), later joining Yatsuka Ishihara’s group Aki (“Autumn”) in 1961.

Haiku by Fusae Fubasami

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

Visuals (YouTube)

halF reminD [naviarhaiku615]

Atelier Mini-Series YouTube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSKk9TL2TheyuTwqA-aZJTxQD81vCgUks

“This space between French and English is, for me, a perpetual torment…”

Philosopher Alain Badiou reflects on Beckett — and on the strange torment of thinking and speaking across languages.

In this halF unusuaL piece, his voice becomes a sonic poem: shattered, dissolved, and reassembled through GRM Tools Atelier.

A tribute to Musique Concrète, to the friction of thought and sound, and to an uncertain space between sameness and otherness.

— created in GRM Tools Atelier

More experiments in sound, language, and philosophy coming soon.

Watch the whole lecture - Alain Badiou. Theater, Poetry and Philosophy. 2003 - at https://youtu.be/p6SmRlSqFrM?si=V8XQwU_yX5vcxJ2Y

halF tormenteD

Update: An in-depth patch explanation tutorial video has just been released on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-7Sv6_Epr50 - if you're intrigued how this track was made, check it out 🤗

I wanted to see whether GRM Tools Atelier could do something a little more rhythmic ... It can! 😁 See the YouTube video of the patch (and an upcoming how it works) on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/aY6TNXLZYec

whenever we meet
it’s raining
green walnuts

Tanaka Hiroaki (1959–2004) was a Japanese poet from Osaka. A student of Hatano Sōha, he published many of his works in the journal Ao 青 (“Blue”), of which he became editor in 1979. In 2000, he founded his own journal, Yū ゆう.

Haiku by Tanaka Hiroaki (Italian): https://www.lucacenisi.net/2023/03/24/cinque-haiku-di-tanaka-hiroaki/

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

visual (YouTube)

halF meT [naviarhaiku616]

Watch this piece being created: https://youtu.be/Oe3l1F4mfaU
A live performance for the Disquiet Junto #0721, built from the same patch used in the recent Badiou x Beckett sonic torment piece: https://soundcloud.com/half-unusual/half-tormented?si=3390f301411545e0aac521e547afb785&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
This time, Badiou’s voice gives way to a thunderstorm I recorded in 2019 —
the same comb filtering and pitch clusters now sculpting rumble and rain into something more filmic and reflective.
A short meditation on resonance, weather, and thought.

🎧 Performed entirely in GRM Tools Atelier

More on the 721st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Well Weathered — The Assignment: Play along with a storm — at https://disquiet.com/0721/.

halF storM [disquiet0721]

Watch the accompanying video: https://youtu.be/uavIwPGvL68

GRM Tools Atelier is brilliant for chaos, texture, and deliciously complex sound sculpture — but can it groove?

This unusuaL little experiment explores whether the Atelier slipper fits a more rhythmic footing ... Oh, yes it does! 😜 Still a little strange tho, still halF unusuaL 😉

Built in Ableton Live with:
🎠 raw samples from a hand-cranked music box
🌀 fragments from recent Atelier pieces (all born from that same box)
🧲 one wonderfully unruly bass from BEATSURFING Random

Enjoy! 😁😜

halF cinderellA [oh, no it's not]

Watch the accompanying video: https://youtu.be/qrWdyiw30bk

broken guitar —
in its hollow body
a whisper of C
(from the 2025 British Haiku Society Members’ Anthology)

A haiku, a generative patch, and a robot’s dream of music.
This piece begins with an improvised out-of-tune acoustic guitar recording — the same Atelier structure as the earlier music box patch, reshaped into something moody and oddly atmospheric.

The visuals? A robot trying (and failing beautifully) to play guitar — an AI imagining itself as musician, all bendy fingers and impossible strings. A perfect mirror for what generative sound really is: identity blinking between intention and accident.

🎶 built in GRM Tools Atelier
🎥 visuals generated + reinterpreted
📖 haiku by Darren Bourne (halF unusuaL)

✨ perhaps failure is the most honest play

halF whispereD

This turned out a bit more Hallowe'en than I was expecting, but given the date, maybe that's OK 😁💀🎃

an autumn nightfall
the skeleton of a huge fish
drawn back by the sea.

Saitō Sanki (1900 – 1962) was a dentist who discovered his passion for haiku poetry in his mid-thirties, when his colleagues at the hospital in Soto Kanda convinced him to write a haiku for a collection. Later, he became one of the most important exponents of wartime haiku: he was imprisoned in 1940 during the government’s World War II persecution of controversial artists, and was officially forbidden to write until the end of the war.

haiku by Saitō Sanki: https://www.littermagazine.com/2023/07/review-sanki-saito-selected-haiku.html

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF skeletoN [naviarhaiku617]

I LOVE creaky floorboards. ❤️ Always have. They’re the little confessions the world doesn’t know it’s making. How could it?

This particular set — oh, these sonic beauties — were discovered in a small museum in Lille, France. A place so very quiet you could almost hear the air move somehow. The curator said the building used to be a tailor’s shop. But the neighbours reckoned it had been an intelligence post during the war; the kind of place where secrets secreted themselves into the grain of the wood.

So I waited until closing time. Set up my recorder. And walked. Slowly.

Every step had its own personality — one a whisper, one a sigh, one a shriek like a door … perhaps remembering something it shouldn’t. Somewhere between the third and fourth creak, though, the air changed and tilted weirdly. You know that cold, coiled feeling — when you’re not sure if you’ve just been noticed by someone? But I was alone ... I WAS alone.

I kept recording.

Later, when I played the sounds back, there it was: a super faint shuffle beneath and between the creaks. A pause. Then two extra footsteps … that weren’t mine. Perfect rhythm. Perfect distance. Like a partner in a dance waiting years for the next cue, which had now arrived, years later.

So I built the track around that. A haunted duet between spy and spectre, each trying to decode the other’s silence.

Enjoy … if you dare. 🎃😈

More on the 722nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Spook Street — The Assignment: The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film — at https://disquiet.com/0722/.

halF spooK [disquiet0722]

Nearly 5 years ago, I uploaded a track called halF nutS ... https://soundcloud.com/half-unusual/half-nuts ... Who'd have thought I'd be going nuts again now! 😁

This is another GRM Tools Atelier noise experiment ... and you can see the accompanying visuals (as well as the original nuts recorded for mangling) on the halF unusuaL YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/At3lfc1nK6M

Oh, and you can see me turn into a sock puppet ... 😜 Weresock transformation around about 1:30 ... 🤫

halF nutS 2

Long time listeners may remember this little snippet of Birmingham market ambience used before for the Naviar Haiku Challenge number 480: https://soundcloud.com/half-unusual/half-heavenly-naviarhaiku480?si=b07fd7c2edbd4e95912344b2d2dc119e&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing ... That's more than two years ago ... but I still enjoy what it evokes in me ❤️

the harp player
moves under cover
market day

kjmunro cultivates poetry on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation & the Ta'an Kwäch'än Council in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. She founded & facilitates ‘solstice haiku', a monthly haiku discussion group in Whitehorse, & manages a weekly blog feature for The Haiku Foundation called Haiku Dialogue. She is the recipient of the 2023 Borealis Prize – The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, & her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019).

haiku by kjmunro: https://kjmunro1560.wordpress.com

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF marketeD [naviarhaiku618]

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/.

halF collapsE [disquiet0723]

🎉 Ten years of halF unusuaL on YouTube! Here's a soundtrack for your next birthday party! 😁 Check out the visuals: https://youtu.be/clpyDqbWqM8

From the first visual experiments and glitch loops to hand puppets (real and imagined), music boxes, and all kinds of sonic oddities — the halF unusuaL YouTube channel has become the visual twin to halF unusuaL’s sonic world, rooted here on SoundCloud.

To celebrate, here’s a birthday tune like no other:
🎵 a real music box plays “Happy Birthday” — wound and fed on-screen — while a well-meaning sock puppet battles with birthday candles in true unusuaL fashion.

Created using VideoSync 2 this piece marks a decade of curiosity, rhythm, and the joy of not quite knowing what will happen next.

Huge thanks to everyone who’s watched, listened, commented, or stumbled into this strange corner of the internet over the years.
Here’s to the next 10 … and to whatever weirdness lights up along the way. 🧦✨

📺 Subscribe: https://youtube.com/@halFunusuaL

halF BirthdaY! 🎂

almost black
deepening purple
ripe grapes

Regarded as the father of contemporary haiku, Masaoka Shiki was a poet and literary critic during the Meiji period Japan.

He advocated realistic observation by “sketching” (shasei) poems and going out into nature with notebooks, thus abandoning the traditional subjects of haiku of the time. His advice for an aspiring poet was, “Use both imaginary pictures and real ones, but prefer the real ones.”

Haiku by Masaoka Shiki: https://mypoeticside.com/poets/masaoka-shiki-poems

To find out more and participate, visit https://www.naviarrecords.com/haiku-music-challenge/

halF deepeninG [naviarhaiku619]

I’ve been meaning for ages now to make a track using only one single suite of plugins … and this week’s Disquiet Junto brief has finally inspired me into action! ALL of the sounds you hear in this track are courtesy of wonderful Sinevibes plugins, and it’s been really fun to explore more of what these genius little plugins can bring … with plenty more exploration to be had! @sinevibes

This track uses Torsion as the main synth source, with Diffusion also providing sounds from its wave shape modelling synth engine. As you can hear, I’ve gone slightly mad on the effects front! I’ve made use of Sinevibes’ Emission, Hexonator, Inertia, Luminance, Multitude, Cluster, Drift, Droplet, Octagon, Array, Zap, Albedo, Atom, and Dispersion …!

Enjoy! 😁🤗 It's been enjoyable, and there could easily have been a 20 minute version of this! 😂

More on the 724th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Work It — The Assignment: The year’s almost over. Do that thing you’ve been meaning to do — at https://disquiet.com/0724/.

halF vibE [disquiet0724]

See accompanying visuals @ https://youtu.be/H_Bwdd2KUMQ

Spoken word: Michael Finnissy - Music Matters, BBC Radio 3, 9th April 2016

Listen to the whole episode on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0769hbg

halF fivefortysiX [featuring Michael Finnissy]

A deep listening mission to isolate and really appreciate the relief of the repeated phrase ...

halF hiddeN

Welcome tσ th!s εvσlving space … inspired by thε playful sp!rit of hai (meaning “fun” or unμsuΔl, like in haiku) …

I dig around thε edges t0 uneΔrth non-mμ§ic musics — sliding into nσ!§ε, glitch, chΔnce, Δ$MR, and σther soundwσrlds that feel oddly familiar in their oddity …

✨👂 L!§†εn cΔrεfu!l¥ … 👀 εxplσrε dεεpl¥ … 🎵💫

And for the full hΔlF unμ§uaL trεΔ†ment for your eyes Δs well as your εars, check σut the Yσutubε channel… ░▒▓█ ᵒ(≧▽≦)ᵒ ░▒▓█▒░

Thanks f0r joining thε journey! Your support kεeps this all afloat — HUGΣLY Δpprec!Δted 🙏🥰

(o≧▽≦)o ♪ ♪ ░░▒▓█▒░▒▒░▒▓█

halF unusuaL

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