An experiment in genres cross-over(Ambient, Dub, Shoegaze, Post-Rock, Trip-hop?) reaching outside the realm of my usual creative practices.

Back to my roots - playing electric bass - and exploring baritone guitar, somewhere between floating ambient guitar-scapes soaked in reverb and uplifting dub. Both of which I associate with skies/flying/up.

A shoegaze dub? Ambient dub post-rock? anyway, it’s 4:30am, i need to catch some sleep.


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The Assignment: Record a piece of music that suggests something floating in air.

Step 1: Consider various music techniques you might employ to suggest (or imitate, or insinuate) that something is floating in air.

Step 2: Select one of the techniques you considered in Step 1 and experiment with it a bit.

Step 3: Record a piece of music built around the technique you focused on in Step 2.

Floating - Shoegaze Dub [disquiet0603] [Draft]

Orchestral Rainfall in Galaxy Fields(NaviarHaiku 510)

Samuel Beckett’s Ill Seen Ill Said describes the final, solitary days of an elderly woman. Written as a play, the work reads more like a stream-of-consciousness narrative with disassociated visuals symbolizing human frailty. 

Like much of Beckett’s work, not a whole lot happens in terms of action. The main character spends her time watching the evening sky, relating to the stoic loneliness of stones, and recalling fragments of a long life passed.

The opinion here is that truly haunting material succeeds in moments of anticipation. When viewing a horror movie, for example, we’re more anxious of what could happen rather than what eventually does. The following passage from Ill Seen Ill Said describes such a moment:

"All dark in the cabin while she whitens afar. Silence but for the imaginary murmur of flakes beating on the roof. And every now and then a real creak. Her company. Here without having to close the eye sees her afar. Motionless in the snow under the snow. The buttonhook trembles from its nail as if a night like any other. Facing the black curtain the chair exudes its solitude."

For this Junto piece, Suss Müsik used handmade sonic devices to manipulate sounds recorded from room ambience. Taking select attributes to their maximum created surprising effects. The result is a quiet yet creepy atmosphere in which nothing “haunting” actually takes place, allowing the imagination to conjure impending scenes of great disturbance.

The piece is entitled Ill Heard and was recorded live to 8-track.

More on this 617th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Haunt Scape (The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing), at: https://disquiet.com/0617/

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-0617-haunt-scape/

Ill Heard [Disquiet0617]

sound art for disquiet0617

sounds taken from a old pram found in the street. 
played with fingers and animal bones.
recorded with a contact mic.
no effects.

haunted pram (disquiet0617)

Disquiet Junto Project 0618: Burying the Lede
The Assignment: Turn old news into new music.

Step 1: Locate an old news article, the less dramatic perhaps the better, from roughly 50 years ago. Try to find something local to where you live now or have lived.

Step 2: Use a text-to-speech tool to convert the article to audio. There are numerous such software applications, and no doubt discussion in the Junto thread on llllllll.co 1 will yield suggestions should you require one.

Step 3: Set to music the voice recording that resulted from Step 2. A length of two and a half to five minutes is recommended. Use an article sufficient to that length — you may end up not using the entire text. As the piece goes on, have the voice slowly get subsumed by the music, until by the end the voice is no longer intelligible — perhaps not even audible.

Note: In case the word isn’t familiar, a “lede” is “the opening sentence or paragraph of a news article, summarizing the most important aspects of the story.”

Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0618” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0618” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co 1:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0618-burying-the-lede/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. It will largely be determined by the length of the text you select.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 2, 2023.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 618th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Burying the Lede (The Assignment: Turn old news into new music), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0618: Burying the Lede – Disquiet

About the Disquiet Junto: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet 1

Subscribe to project announcements: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co 1: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0618-burying-the-

Xwords - disquiet0618

Sinny: shaker, tambourine, cowbell, samboga blocks, rattle, hamper, iKaossilator and SpaceCraft apps, synth and xylophone programming

InspectorJ: rooster sample

More on this 618th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Burying the Lede (The Assignment: Turn old news into new music), at: https://disquiet.com/0618/

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-0618-burying-the-lede/

Pumpkin Poaching (disquiet0618)

This piece kind of deconstructs a samba rhythm. Kind of. 

Recorded, mixed & mastered 08-10 Nov 2023 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

Synths, drum samples, effects

This original version of "I Am As Dry As A Fish" was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0619: Beat Accrual. The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto
Project discussion took place at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0619-beat-accrual 
Artwork: Penn Station, NYC 17 Dec 2010, by Jim Lemanowicz

Look for me at patreon.com/blisterpop - patrons get my albums for free!

This track was originally released under the artist name "Smile Puppy."

Music & art - ©2010, 2023 Jim Lemanowicz

Patreon & Soundcloud - blisterpop
YouTube - Jimmy Lem
TikTok - jimmlem
Bluesky - jimmylem.bsky.social
Mastodon - blisterpop

I Am As Dry As A Fish (disquiet0619)

I play the drums so this disquiet assignment appealed to me. 

I decided that complex for me meant complex timing. I wanted to play something in odd time signatures, and I feel like the number 23 is underrepresented in music. Here was my process:

1. I improvised a 4 bar drum beat in 23/8 time (which I really counted as 8/8, 5/8, 7/8, 3/8), and recorded it in Ableton. 

2. I experimented with a few ways to “accrue” the beat, and decided to accrue by time rather than by part.

3. In Ableton Live, I edited the beat to repeat, but only play a section before repeating. I chose Fibonacci numbers for the length. For the first repeat only 1 8th note of the 4 bar 23/8 repeat plays. Second repeat, 2 8th notes. Third repeat, 3 8th notes. Fourth repeat 5 8th notes, etc until the entire beat is revealed. It took on the feel of a breakbeat.

4. For more accrual, I copied the original 4 bar beat to another track, and used a filter slowly introduce it beneath the Fibonacci cut breakbeat. They are not aligned at first, so there is a kind of beating that takes place between the two until the last full repeat where they are completely aligned.

broke beat

Broke Beat [disquiet0619]

From a simple start to a complex rhythm - this track slowly builds a complex beat from scratch - as suggested by the Disquiet Junto Project 0619.

There's no need for percussions to do this - the beat is mainly built with orchestral instruments, adding layer by layer, but electronic and other instruments also join in.

In my track https://soundcloud.com/rabmusiclab/deconstructivism-explained the process runs backwards, starting with the complete, complex rhythm and removing layer by layer to deconstruct it.

More on this 619th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Beat Accrual (The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch), at: https://disquiet.com/0619/ 1

About the Disquiet Junto: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet 1

Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/ 1

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0619-beat-accrual/

Constructivism Explained  (Disquiet0619)

Searching

RabMusicLab produces instrumental music of various genres from classical to electronic without shying away from excursions into pop or experimental music. The tracks are published for the pleasure, entertainment and inspiration of every listener.

RabMusicLab loves to participate in the Disquiet Junto Projects of https://soundcloud.com/disquiet to fuel his creativity . All tracks that have "disquiet" in the title were created as response to these projects. Further informations can be found in the respective track-information,

All images used are photographs by RabMusicLab, unless otherwise indicated in the track-informations.