More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Disquiet Junto Project 0294: Offline Status

This work for cello is derived from ideas associated with change ringing.

If one has, say, 6 bells, and one wishes to ring them in some sequence, then one has 720 possible sequences ("rows") to choose from.    Performing all the possible "rows" in some sequence constitutes an "extent" or "full peal."  A traditional desire consists of have every two consecutive "rows"  (or "change") in an "extent" differ only by swapping order of two consecutive bells.   So give any particular starting "row" of 6 bells, only 5 "rows" can legally complete the "change." 

That "extents," legal in this sense, even exist follows from non-trivial mathematical constructions, but these constructed extents tend to have a very mechanical character (and advantage for "method ringers").  

I (re?)discovered that one can make new extents from old by exchanging two consecutive segments AND time-reversing just one of them.  Call this a "twist."  "Twisting" one of the mechanical extents 2000 times (for an extent of 720 "rows") seems to produce reasonably random or organic "extents."   Philosophically these "twisted extents" lead double lives, being both highly structured and constrained, but given that, also as capricious as possible.

Four random "extents" govern this work.  Most simply, one "extent" controls the 6 dynamic levels in each row statement, one "extent" controls the 6 durations, and one "extent" controls the sequence within whatever the current collection of pitches.  

The final "extent" gets used go generate the pitch content.  Instead of ordering events, the permutations get used to order  the intervals 2/1, 3/2, 4/3,  5/4, 6/5 and 7/6, thus building up a scale (or perhaps a chord, depending on how you care to think about it).  So unlike actual bells that each carry a fixed pitch and collectively establish a fixed key, here each "row" of the 720 has its own "key."  Thus the music constantly modulates, and since each "change" modestly changes just one note in the scale (because consecutive intervals swap), the music manifests an emergent sort of voice leading, albeit a very distant relative from the voice leading of common practice music.

Simultaneously Follow Four Twisted Paths, for cello

Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at? // Closed Circuit Television // What are you looking at?

CCTV

Recorded live in Deptford Town Hall
Goldsmiths, University of London
March 2nd, 2022

Fernando Yada Rodrigues, piano
Jay Austin Keys, piano

Julius Eastman - Buddha

Julius Eastman - Buddha

burnt red

Eraserhead (1977), lady in the radiator song <3
Rest in peace, David x

In Heaven (Everything is Fine)

Recorded Circa 2005 for a Fall themed compilation- featurings songs from "This Nation's Saving Grace". I still get asked about it, so here it is.

Richard of Hume - Paintwork

Psychedelic adventures from all over the musical universe.

Nog Zone w/ Anthony Child: 5th August '25

date released. 18.08.2017

pure data

voice of Bassel Khartabil

I can't see you (disquiet0294)

Starting with the provided audio, I began the piece with the full audio clip, unmodified except for some reverb. I then added some piano (envelope and filter tweaked make it a little interesting) and some rhythm constructed from the audio. The piano plays a chord shifting from major to minor, and is then accompanied by a bell that plays the root (G#) but shifts in timing via a loop with an odd-numbered length. Done in Ableton Live and "performed" by turning clips on and off and shifting scenes, rather than constructing it.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/1

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

disquiet0294 darksnap (for Bassel)

©All rights in this music belong to W:I:L
my contribution also to the benefit album in honour of Bassel Khartabil
"A Future in Commons - A Tribute to Bassel Khartabil"
https://afutureincommons.bandcamp.com/
Closing song for my imaginative album "Spinning Wheel"

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

18.8.17 WI:L - Seven Seconds[disquiet0294]

This past week was not an easy one in the US, nor in Barcelona (one of Suss Müsik’s favorite cities). We seem to exist today in a space between anticipation and the mundane. We fear that a catastrophe that may never occur will cause our demise, but the height of anxiety is in the waiting. As Richard Wright wrote in his classic novel Native Son: “There was but a long stretch of time that was very short, and then — the end.”

The sampled quote by Bassel Khartabil is a greeting followed quickly by an apology. “Hello I’m sorry,” sang Michael Stipe in the late 80’s. Suss Müsik imagines that most interactions contain at least some amount of regret for what might have been. We like to hope that times of crisis bring about a cycle of affirmation, but that’s not always how things work out. Bassel’s life was too short; the wait for his release took too long. Cruelly, both ended in a single event.

For this short piece, Suss Müsik interpreted Bassel’s vocal inflections as a form of notation. Early in the sampled recording, one can detect the plop plop that an Apple MacBook Pro makes when the sound volume is adjusted. We replicated this rhythm and used it to form base tempo. We then built upon this spine with bits of binaural cello and phased piano polyrhythms. 

The piece is titled Fatra, which means “interval” in Arabic.

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Fatra [Disquiet0294]

Looped/ stretched/filtered audio, plus banjos. The banjo is tuned as it happened to be when I picked it up. Open strings plus two fingered. notes in rough imitation of the source audio's last two words, "see you"
Source audio at http://bit.ly/2vQ80Lm

More on this 294th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Offline Status: Pay tribute to the late Bassel Khartabil by turning his spoken words into music. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0294/

Thanks to Niki Korth, Jon Phillips, and Barry Threw for encouraging this project. More on Bassel here:

http://freebassel.org

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0294-offline-status/

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Hello Everybody And Sorry I Can't See You [Disquiet0294]

Structured improvisation piece featuring transcribed birdsong from the extinct Kauaʻi ʻōʻō for bass clarinet and flute. 
Performed with Breandán Knowlton

One Left

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.

Hello Everybody And Sorry I Can't See You [Disquiet0294]

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