Disquiet Junto Project 0404: Seven (St)ages
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that follows the arc of Jacques’ “All the world’s a stage” speech from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It.

Step 1: This project is inspired by a famous speech from William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. The speech is the one that begins “All the world’s a stage,” and is spoken by the melancholy character Jacques.

Step 2: Familiarize yourself with the speech, in which Jacques lists the “seven ages” that people move through over the course of their lives, should they lead full and long ones: the infant, the student (“schoolboy” in the play), the lover, the soldier, the justice, old age, and the final decline (likened to a “second childishness and mere oblivion”).

Step 3: Consider how those seven ages might be explored in musical terms. Consider concepts in the original text, such as how in old age “his big manly voice, / Turning again towards childish treble, pipes / And whistles in his sound.”

Step 4: Record a piece of music that occurs in seven stages, following the seven ages of Jacques’ speech. One possibility is to have seven related pieces of music, as i na suite, that represent the ages. Another is to have one consistent source audio throughout, but to treat/filter/process it in accordance with each successive (st)age.

Track notes:

Since I'm currently on vacation at the moment, I felt like throwing a bit more into this week's challenge - such as the proverbial kitchen sink. I worked out a few little sections based on an acoustic guitar tuned to Modal G tuning (CGDGBE), then once that was in place , I fired up Logic and went for broke channelling a bit of Richard Thompson, Jim'O Rourke, Andrew Tuttle and a general indulgent racket.

Where the source material is concerned, I was intent on channelling a feeling of innocence, whimsy and foreboding in equal measure, with seven sections in total. The whimsical section is reprised before things get a bit dark and then eventually subsume into the cold, muted embrace of oblivion.

Thanks for the challenge! I had a blast putting this together over a few hours in the studio. Now I'm in need of a lie down and maybe a drink. :)

[disquiet0404] - in a blink

Tristan Louth-Robins is a South Australian artist working principally in the medium of sound art and field recording. Ideas of sound and its signification are key elements in Louth-Robins' practice, traversing the space between the visual and aural his work is realised through the mediums of recordings, installation, visual art and performance. He is interested in sound and its associative implications - including its relationship to objects, technology, urban space, memory and the natural world. 


Since 2005, Louth-Robins has presented work in Australia and internationally as a solo artist, whilst also collaborating with artists, writers, researchers, musicians and performers. 

Working across a vast array of activities encompassing composition, sound design, installation art, field recording and workshops, his work has been featured in events such as the Adelaide Festival of Arts (2006), The National Regional Arts Festival (2012), Mildura-Wentworth Arts Festival (2013), Fairfax Festival (2013) and Adelaide Fringe Festival (2014); and selected works exhibited at galleries including The Australian Experimental Art Foundation (2009), SASA Gallery (2012, 2015), Light Square Gallery (2012) and FELT Space (2015). His audio works have been broadcast on radio including Radio National, Classic FM, The BBC (UK), Acoustic Frontiers (USA) and RBB (Germany).

Welcome to halF unusuaL, 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. Listen freely, explore deeply, and for the sounds to live for your eyes as well as your ears, please stop by the YouTube channel. Thank you for joining this journey! Your support helps keep this afloat ... and is HUGELY appreciated 🥰

Ambient/drone/experimental, live coding, EDM, Nixon.

Formerly Cagey House, kid feardive, Howdy Persephone, and Figment Bean; currently Tristis Carmina

Curly Compositions from a German Composer.

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.