Episode 1 of the podcast visits the reef system of Lady Bay, exploring its underwater marine environment.

http://tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/

The FKISM Podcast - Episode 1: Lady Bay Reef

From the second floor of Hababusch hostel (Geleitstrasse 4, Weimar, Germany)  Recorded on an Sony MD MZ-NH700 with a Sony stereo condenser microphone.  Lots of passing conversations, cars idling, bicycles and the chiming of distant bells.  The hostel is in one of the areas of Weimar where the sound field is immediate and dense with human activity and reverberations.

Sounds from a window in Weimar, Germany - 1pm; 20 September 2008

On this second recording, we hear the soundscape of shoreline substrate rendered spatially in stereo by the two deployed hydrophones, separated several metres apart from each other. Similar to recordings made at Hog’s Bay in Kangaroo Island (October 2020), the recordings reveal the complexity of wave activity - crashing, swirling and roiling continuously at varying degrees. Amidst this, particles of sand, rock and shell are at once collected, spun and dispersed across the audible field.

FKISM: Sellicks Beach, substrate recording - March 2022

Disquiet Junto Project 0573: Float Mode
The Assignment: Add material atop a pre-existing beat to form a complete track.

Note: This week’s project is the second part of a two-parter, following up last week’s, but you don’t need to have participated last week in order to do this one.

Step 1: You will be adding musical elements atop beats created last week by other members of the Disquiet Junto. Select a beat. There are beats from 30 or so musicians in the SoundCloud playlist:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0572 5

=====================================================
Track notes:

Last week, Daniel Diaz's lovely jazz-oriented track stuck for me as something I'd like to rework.

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-diaz/2022wcgroove-disquiet0572

Without a really clear idea of where I wanted to take the track, I started by adding some sombre synth sounds over the top of Daniel's rhythm track and listening back to where things were going. I then listened to the harmonic aspects of the chord progression and reached out for my Telecaster, coaxing a kind of Bill Frissel meets Brokeback (via Tortoise) vibe...I think. Lastly, I added a little phasing to the rhythm track during the guitar solo and outro.

[Disquiet_Junto_0573] "Uncertain Road" (w/ Danial Diaz)

This is a 24-minute time compression of a four-hour observation made by an Open Acoustics AudioMoth that was deployed in a small seagrass meadow on Lady Bay reef from 23/12 to 31/12/22. 

The AudioMoth records in mono and was configured to record at 10-minute intervals for 1 minute over a 24-hour period. I have taken the individual audio files corresponding to the time span of 11am to 4pm and sequenced them together, adding a short crossfade so that the transition from file to file isn't too abrupt.

Based upon a bit of preliminary data analysis, the period of 11am to 3pm reflects distinct activity from within the seagrass environment, specifically the rich buzzing textures that can be hear from the 1-2 minute mark onwards. As the track continues, this sound undergoes changes in its overall pitch, intensity and texture. Around this, the sound of biotic life can be heard.

Though I haven't yet confirmed this, my understanding - at this stage and based on previous recordings made with hydrophones - is that the buzzing sound is likely attributed to the seagrass itself. Beyond this, I can't explain the 'why' just yet, though the grasses exposure to sunlight at low tide may glean some explanation behind the phenomena. More to come!

Lady Bay reef seagrass meadow (AudioMoth) Time compressed observation of 11am to 3pm, 24th Dec 2022

Disquiet Junto Project 0575: On Ice
The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:

Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

Track notes:

Happy new year all! 

For this year's ice challenge, I put about ten ice cubes in a large  wine glass and filled it with water. I placed an Aquarian hydrophone into it and routed it into my little modular skiff, using an ohcd LFO,  DLD(stereo delay) and Morphagene module.

Recently I'd been playing around with Karpus-Strong delay effects on the DLD, which is in essence 'resonance feedback', which is useful for generating plucked string sort of sounds from an incoming signal.

One of the things I like about experimenting with resonance feedback is how very transient and discrete sounds can become powerful (and unpredictable) impulses when used in conjunction with the effect.

With an ultra-short delay and high feedback threshold set on the stereo delay module, I rattled the ice in the glass and recorded the very end of the tail of the rattle to the Morphagene and used a couple of LFOs to control the CV of the sample's grain and morphology. 

Because the sample captures the tail-end of the rattle, there's only a little movement interspersed with very discrete crackles, squeaks and pops.  

For recording this track, the dry/wet of the Morphagene was set to 50/50 so that the ongoing 'quiet' action within the glass is heard in conjunction with the granulated sample. At a couple of points, this develops dramatically, with some incidental ice movement, followed by a large crack. The final part involved me turning the Morphagene mix to 100% wet and attempting to break the sample apart, so that only vague traces of the original sample recording can be heard.

[Disquiet_Junto_0575] Ice Murmur

Disquiet Junto Project 0579: Memory Serves
The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music.

Step 1: The goal of this project is to simply perform and record again something you’ve performed and recorded previously. Think about something you’d like to revisit.

Step 2: Now rerecord the piece of music you decided upon in Step 1.

Track notes:

Something a bit different this week and certainly something I couldn't perform in SuperCollider! 

For as long as I've been seriously making music (25-ish years) I've written songs as part of that continuum. Sometimes the songwriting has become my primary activity and other times it's been consigned to the background. My 30s during the 2010's were pretty interesting in that regard. I'd started off not writing lyrics (let along performing) for quite sometime and then mid-decade songwriting and performing became my primary creative activity. That's where and when this song, "Queen Tide" first materialised. 

It's a song that's been hanging around for about 7 to 8 years now and I've never been able to settle on a structure that feels quite right. Initially, it fell square into a strummed acoustic folk idiom and I'd often perform it under my Garden Ruin moniker with my friend Tom accompanying on guitar. I've included a video of a live performance from back in 2017 that gives an indication of what it sounds like and how I've attempted to record it in the past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO0kNIsKyro

For whatever reason - and about 12 versions later - it just hasn't happened. As this year began, I realised I hadn't worked on songs in quite some time and thought it might be time to revisit some older material and see if it motivated me to work on some newer material. I was up super-early this morning and upon seeing the Junto prompt this morning my thoughts drifted towards revisiting "Queen Tide" and approaching it a bit differently.

Turning my thoughts to a song like "Queen Tide" could have also been the byproduct of the bizarre climactic interlude that has interrupted an otherwise straightforward summer here in Adelaide, South Australia. For the past couple of days, wind gusts have been huge, a cold southerly whipping from the Antarctic has dumped rain and the skies have looked volatile and foreboding. It's pure climate change stuff. "Queen Tide" is about climate change as well and is written from the perspective of wandering around my hometown of Normanville on the Fleurieu Peninsula in the aftermath of a climactic catastrophe.

One of the things I've always liked about the song is the use of an Em sus9 (or Em+2) chord in the main verse. My partner Lauren has often referred to this as the 'Twin Peaks' song, since the melody and structure does echo the TP theme a little bit. It's always sounded fine on guitar, but this morning I thought I'd change it up and find a way to replicate it on piano. I've been listening to a lot of John Cale's work lately as well, so I thought I'd drop the key by a few increments and sing it a bit lower.

So that's how it started and I spent a few hours on it with a few overdubs that turned into several. That was what became the 'kitchensink' version, completely with an 'iPad pedal steel' in the bridge and two simultaneous sets of algorithmically programmed drums. I've spared you of the 'kitchensink' version and presented a more sensibly austere version with a bit of additional keyboard accompaniment, restrained guitar and backing vocals.

[Disquiet_Junto_0579] Queen Tide (redux)

Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve

The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.

Step 1: You’re going to record a piece of music informed by evolution. Think of stages of evolution, perhaps choosing a specific animal or other life form that evolved over time.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that evolves as it proceeds, based on the patterns (phases, stages) you explored in Step 1. And yes, animals that went extinct are a potential subject.

===

Track notes:

I took my inspiration from the long evolution of insect species on the planet, considering the vast scale of evolution from primordial epochs up to the present, where insect species are front-and-centre in the Sixth Great Extinction of the late Anthropocene.

SuperCollider came to mind again as a tool for realisation, since I had ‘traditional’ forms of ‘computer music’ in mind - especially Bernard Parmegiani’s epic La Creatione De Monde (1984)

Now, obviously I don’t have a) a year up my sleeve; and b) the coding faculty in SC to pull off such a gargantuan feat, but I thought it might be a cool point of reference that I could fold into my current understanding (as a beginner) in the SC environment.

Recently I got to grips with buffering audio samples and using sequences to control various patterns - both melodic and percussive. I created a couple of dictionaries of short percussive samples (kalimba, woodblock and guiro) as well as instantiating a couple of Synth objects that produce pure waves. The percussive sounds turned out well when triggered, sequenced and manipulated and I liked the interplay with the pure waves.

My track is a bit longer than my usual submissions (~6 mins) but I thought I needed a decent span of time to realise a time compression of a few hundred million years of evolution.

For the realisation, I live-coded from the initial script (see GitHub link below) and then adjusted various parameters, arguments and variable throughout. The idea was to start amongst the matter of the cosmos and then gradually render a semblance of life on Earth. Eventually, an abundance takes form, before the insect population starts to diminish at the close. It not strictly a linear progression; rather, a fairly wobbly negative exponential progression. I’m still getting to grips with controlling instruments on the fly in SC, but I think I’m improving.

I was happily surprised when I saw the spectrogram of this track. Its progression of blobs, smears and flurries of activity over a time series seemed fitting!

https://github.com/TristanLouthRobins/Supercollider/blob/main/junto0580-evo_compressor.scd.scd

[Disquiet_Junto_0580] Evo Compressor (w/SuperCollider)

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map site:

~ Short version of field note: 

Recorded at the entrance to the Nulcoowarra (Granite Island) causeway, as waves crash on the shore and seagulls jostle for dominance. People pass bay and a bell chimes in the distance - an indication that the horse-drawn carriage is about to depart and take passengers across to the island. Before its departure, snippets of conversation are heard.

Read more at the Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map.
URL: https://tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/sites/VHR003.html

FKISM: Granite Island causeway w/ horse-drawn carriage, Victor Harbor - July 2023

You can find my notes on this track via this link at the Lines forum: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0612-drum-vector/64175/9

Disquiet Junto Project 0612: Drum Vector
The Assignment: Walk the listener through variations on the same percussive instrument.

Thanks to Mahlen Morris for having proposed this project.

Step 1: Pick a single percussion instrument.

Step 2: Record between 4 and 12 different short examples (roughly 20 to 60 seconds each) of playing that instrument. Imagine that each recording is by a different musician exercising a different aspect of the instrument. Make no deliberate attempt to match key or tempo or sonic quality between them.

Step 3: Imagine moving through space over the course of time, and encountering the sounds — overlapping somewhat — as you proceed. Arrange the recordings over the course of a track so that at least one and at most five of the examples are audible at any one time. To further the spatial movement, each could fade in at the beginning and fade out. They might, as well, move from position to position within the stereo field.

Step 4: If you wish, consider adding a noise bed underneath the entire piece to sew all of the pieces together, to provide a sense of the space one is moving through.

[Disquiet_Junto_0612] The Lure of Bells

You can find my track notes for this submission at the Lines forum here:

Disquiet Junto Project 0614: Alternate Route
The Assignment: Do something you often do, but differently.

This is a slightly different take on last week’s project.

Step 1: Think of something related to making music that you do a lot.

Step 2: Think of an alternate way to do it that challenges your habits.

Step 3: Make a piece of music using the approach you thought of in Step 2.

[Disquiet_Junto_0614] Diffuse

Disquiet Junto Project 0622: Know the Shadow
The Assignment: How do you depict a shadow in sound?

Step 1: Think about what a shadow is.

Step 2: Think about how a shadow might be expressed in sound.

Step 3: Record a piece of music employing the ideas that arose in Step 2.

The track notes for this Junto can be read here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0622-know-the-shadow/65114/5

[Disquiet_Junto_0622] Three Joo Chiat Rain Sound Shadows

Disquiet Junto Project 0638: Center (3 of 3)
The Assignment: Complete a trio begun by two other musicians.

---

Track notes: "Lucky Link Village" from Creatures_Once/@miraclemiles (via @SinnySounds) jumped out at me straight away and got me thinking about a guitar accompaniment along the lines of Ry Cooder, Haruomi Hosono and Makoto Kubota. I recorded a simple fingerpicked acoustic guitar pattern which found its way around G tonic of the tuned percussion. I then added some slide guitar around this and affected both guitars with some phasing and flanging to give it a dreamy feeling. Then a field recording of the ocean lapping at the shore seemed entirely fitting.

[Disquiet_Junto_0638] Lucky Link Village Connect (feat. Sinny Sounds & August_Miles) (Centre 3 of 3)

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site, added in September 2024. Read more here: https://www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/sites/GRA004.html

The oddly named 'Bridal Spray' is a barrier constructed from large rocks which is located near the large breakwater that stretches out from the easternmost side of the island. It is from the south that the island receives the brunt of the ocean, where strong waves regularly lash the rocks, boulders and cliffs.

With a stereo mic rig deployed a couple of metres back from the barrier, this recording documents the loud roil of the ocean to the south, occasionally interspersed by the sound of waves striking the barrier, exploding with jets of white foam and dripping within the rocky crevices of the barrier.

FKISM: "Bridal Spray", Granite Island (Nulcoowarra), August 2023

**Disquiet Junto Project 0669: Phonosynthesis**  
The Assignment: Make music to help a forest regenerate.

A scientific research paper this month documented evidence that sound can help fungus grow. The conclusion: “Demonstrating a tangible impact on fungal activity, our findings suggest that carefully tuned acoustic parameters might be able to enhance ecological processes.”

Record music to help a forest grow. Imagine an array of solar-powered speakers is spread through a forest-in-need. Or come up with another deployment scenario of your own imagining. What sort of music would you play for the forest to encourage its regeneration?

===========

Track notes can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0669-phonosynthesis/69154/9

[Disquiet_Junto_0669] Forest Stimuli

**Disquiet Junto Project 0670: Right of Way**  
The Assignment: Music for turn signals.

Step 1: Record the sound of a car’s turn signal (or, alternately, use a prerecorded one, for example at [freesound.org 4](http://freesound.org/)).

Step 2: Improvise on top of the recording of the turn signal with as many or few layers of additional sound as you like, emphasizing rhythm (versus melody or harmony), and retain the original turn signal sound, so it is still audible for most if not all of your finished track

Background: This project is something of a callback to the 11th Disquiet Junto project, way back at the end of March 2012.

Track notes can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0670-right-of-way/69232/9

[Disquiet_Junto_0670] Exterior Cabin

Lines post can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0680-reverse-resolution/70376/21

**Disquiet Junto Project 0680: Reverse Resolution**  
The Assignment: Finish something (musical) you started last year.

This project has just one step: finish something you started last year, likely a piece of music you left unfinished.

#### Background
It's been a long time since I played anything on keyboard. For the last six months, my electric piano has been sitting up vertically against the studio wall, covered with a sheet and pretty much neglected. During my staycation (almost at an end now) I'd come into the studio, and just before I decloaked the keyboard, I'd get distracted or discouraged somehow.

I thought about the keyboard in relation to this week's assignment and recalled that I had a chord progression that I'd been meaning to do something with. So that's where this started.
#### Studio approach

The chord progression itself is very simple and revolves around a Bb Major 7th in second inversion (F-A-Bb-D) which occasionally resolves to a Dm7 and/or G7. This forms the scaffolding for the track, with degrees of improvisation after resolving to the Dm7.

I found a bass melody which could lead into these chords and played these on an electric (Rhodes-like) piano patch, with the chords played on the piano patch. Beneath this was a spare 3/4 click, which once the piano parts were in place, I used an ML-generated drum pattern with tweaked parameters.

An electric guitar largely compliments the piano chords and steadily opens up a bit, whilst a myriad of synth patches are introduced to provide a bit of atmosphere. Lastly, I included a field recording as a backdrop. This was a recording from new year's day in a national park on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

I guess I could sum up the mood of this track as 'wistfully pensive', much like my general outlook for this year.

[Disquiet Junto 0680] Time Removed, Facing Backwards

These are three excerpts taken from separate recordings made with an AudioMoth in December 2024. Configured with a 15 kHz filter rolloff and sampling rate of 250 kHz, the ultrasonic vocalisation of grey headed flying foxes were recorded as they made flights from Adelaide's CBD into the suburban neighborhoods at dusk. These ultrasonic sounds occurs between the frequency range of 27 to 50 kHz and are thus inaudible to us. In order to make these vocalisations audible, the recording excerpts have been transposed down by 24 semitones (2 octaves.) No equalisation or gain staging has been used on these recordings.

Ultrasonic vocalisations of grey headed flying foxes in Adelaide, South Australia (December 2024)

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: 

Disquiet Junto Project 0690: Knot Bad
The Assignment: Interpret wood grain as a graphic score.

Step 1: Find a piece of wood, the grain of which captures your imagination.

Step 2: Consider how the shapes of the grain might be interpreted as a graphically notated score. (If you are not familiar with the concept of a graphic score, read up.)

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you interpret the grain of the wood you selected in Step 1 as a graphic score.

[Disquiet Junto 0690] Contin You'd Uhm

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0691-un-ravel/71303/7

**Disquiet Junto Project 0691: Un-Ravel**  
The Assignment: Make a recording of a string quartet fall apart.

Step 1: Download the first movement of the Ravel string quartet at this URL: [https://bit.ly/un-ravel](https://bit.ly/un-ravel)

The original source is the Internet Archive: [Capet String Quartet - Ravel (Col. D 15057-60) 1928 : Capet String Quartet : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/3-capet-sq-col-d-15057-60-ravel-1928-mov-3/)

Step 2: Listen to the track closely.

Step 3: Create a new piece of music by employing the provided recording as source material. The goal for your piece is that it should make the Ravel sound like it is falling apart — that is, like it is unraveling, or un-Ravel-ing.

[Disquiet Junto 0691] Liminal Maurice

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here:

[Disquiet Junto 0711] The Shape Of Honey (draft)

My track notes regarding the creation of this track can be found here:

Disquiet Junto Project 0724: Work It
The Assignment: The year’s almost over. Do that thing you’ve been meaning to do.

This week’s project is timely and open-ended. The year’s almost over. Do that thing you’ve been meaning to do.

[Disquiet Junto 0724] The Search (early draft)

Disquiet Junto Project 0726: Chord of Omnis
The Assignment: Make music with a browser-based Omnichord as your sole sound source.

Step 1: In the early 1980s, an instrument called the Omnichord was introduced by Suzuki. There is now a browser-based version at onlineomnichord.com.

Step 2: Make some music using only the online Omnichord as your sound source.

[Disquiet Junto 0726] Unfeigned Intoxication

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/http://www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/sites/HMT002.html

FKISM: Scrub ambience, Mount Billy Conservation Park - January 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LNG001.html

FKISM: Boreholes on Giles Road, Langhorne Creek - May 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LBY017.html

FKISM: Car park and scrub after a rainstorm, Lady Bay - November 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LBY016.html

FKISM: Lady Bay shore after a rainstorm - November 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LBY020.html

FKISM: Enclosed tide pool, Lady Bay reef (southern region) - December 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LBY021.html

FKISM: Lady Bay reef far extent (southern region) -  December 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…MTC001.html

FKISM: Mount Compass Oval with a cricket match in progress - February 2025

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…NOR001.html

FKISM: Hopgood Theatre car park, Colonnades - March 2018

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…NOR002.html

FKISM: Trollies near entrance of Colonnades - March 2018

A Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map (FKISM) site. Read more here: www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_so…LBY019.html

FKISM: Lady Bay reef at low tide (southern region) - December 2025

- Film canister
- Male RCA plug
- Audio cable
- Small piezo transducer
- Vegetable oil
- Cling wrap
- Lots of hot glue
- Rubber bands.

Dear old Bob. What I’ve done here is taken a small piezo connected to an audio cable (wrapped it in cling wrap sealed with a small rubber band) and housed it in a film canister filled with vegetable oil. The lid of the film canister needs to have a hole punched in it to allow the audio cable to pass through. Once this has been done, several sticks of hot glue are used to seal everything up. It looks pretty ugly, but you have to make sure everything’s absolutely watertight. At the end of the audio cable I’ve connected a male RCA plug for input to a portable amplifier. The amplifier’s a must (esp. with DIY equipment like this) as you’ll want to boost/balance the signal in order to get a good signal to noise ratio.

How’s it sound? Pretty good. It’s got a reasonably good response but has the tendency to be a bit unstable in heavy water motion (lots of clunks/clipping, etc). Here’s a recording I made off a small jetty in Milang.

DIY hydrophone test - "Bob" in Lake Alexandrina - May 2012

- Plastic pill box
- Male RCA plug
- Audio cable
- Medium piezo transducer
- Lots of hot glue.

Glorious Nance! This is a simpler design to Bob as it consists of just an enclosure, piezo, cable, RCA plug and a few less sticks of hot glue. I took my inspiration for this one from Leafcutter John’s Tin Can Hydrophone. It follows a similar principle and you could use practically any container to house to piezo providing it’s got a reasonable surface area for the piezo to sit (in this instance it’s been grafted to the base of the pill box with hot glue.)

I think I prefer this design to Bob as I’m able to get a more immediate and dynamic response. Here’s a recording that made with Nancy buried beneath a layer of sand on the banks of Lake Alexandrina (near Milang.) Hydrophones are used principally for recording in water but can be utilised in more unconventional ways! – as Chris Watson demonstrates in a video here

DIY hydrophone test - "Nancy" in Lake Alexandrina, beneath sand - May 2012

A FLEURIEU SOUND MAP SITE. www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/

Further details regarding this site can be found via this link:
http://www.tristanlouthrobins.com/fleurieu_soundmap/sites/SVF004.html

When this recording was made, this was the third occasion I've recorded in this general area of Second Valley Forest Reserve. This time around I ventured into the forest via the southernmost gate (MH2). The conditions were very calm within the forest (about 200 metres off from Hay Flat Road) so the discrete and transient elements of the environment could be heard very clearly - both foreground and peripheral sounds.

This audio track is derived from two recordings made in close proximity to each other - one facing east, the other south. Key sound events include a cow mooing from a distant paddock, its voice heavily modulated by the unique acoustic properties of the forest environment, almost rendering the sound completely indistinct from its original source. Later, in the second recording a pair of currawongs can be heard moving across the auditory field, evidenced by the beat of its wings followed by a series of cries to ward away a couple of lorikeets from their nest (located in one of the tall pine trees.) Although the wind was very light at the time, occasional breezes passing through the forest caused clusters of trees to sway gently, resulting in subtle creaks whilst the whoosh of pine needles accentuated the spatial characteristics of the forest environment.

FKISM: Second Valley Forest, Near Gate MH2 - September 2017

Recording made with a hand-held Olympus LS-100.

Located in the Flinders Chase National Park in Western Kangaroo Island, the Rocky River is one of the only protected waterways in Australia. 

In mid-October 2019 we hiked along the river on first day of the five-stage Wilderness Trail. There are two beautiful cascades along the trail, formed out of prehistoric glacier rocks. This recording was made at the second cascade, where the sound of the water cascade is punctuated by the call and response of banjo frogs (Limnodynastes Dumerilli.)

FKISM: Rocky River banjo frogs (Flinders Chase, Kangaroo Island) - October 2019

Disquiet Junto Project 0414: Mod Cons
The Assignment: Compose one or more sounds for an appliance/device/gadget of your own choosing.

Thanks to Junto member Iain Holmes for having proposed this project.

Step 1. You’re going to create sound for an appliance. Choose the appliance. Maybe it’s something you own, maybe something you don’t, maybe something that doesn’t exist and you made up. A washer, a game console, a microwave, an electric skateboard, a jetpack, whatever you’d like.

Step 2. Decide what sound or sounds you’re going to compose. Maybe it’s the start-up tone, or an alert, or maybe you want to come up with a whole suite of related sounds.

Step 3. Consider the environment in which the device from Step 1 is employed.

Step 4. Compose one or more sounds for the device you decided upon in Step 1, taking into consideration the context of Step 2.

TRACK NOTES:

Thanks to Iain and Marc for this week's prompt!

This year we replaced our old microwave with a sleek black thing manufactured by LG. It looks like a cross between a hotel safe and small flatscreen monitor. Aesthetically, it's quite imposing and seems to always be judging us when we walk into the kitchen. My partner and I utterly loathe the upbeat melody it plays whenever it finishes a cycle. It sounds like dystopian whimsy of the most depressing kind.

For a while we've - quite honestly - thought of attempting to hack its IC and integrate something a little easier on the ears/heart/soul. The outcome of this week's assignment I suppose, could be regarded as a potential prototype. 

Now before you get excited, I haven't wired up an Arduino to the microwave. Rather, I've taken an impressionistic approach to imagine a new voice for the microwave.

I made a recording of its wretched melody on my phone, then isolated each of the notes. In Max, I used a polybuffer~ object called by a random object to create a sequence of the notes (w/ original durations). In order to bevel the harshness off the square wave tones, the signal is routed through a pitch/delay object, so that the notes cascade a little over each other, whilst sounding like they're decaying a little. 

In the audio clip, I've presented the microwave's original melody, followed by five variations created in Max. The fifth one is probably my favourite. My partner Lauren is convinced the first four variations sound 'Christmas-sy', which I suppose is appropriate.

[disquiet0414] LG microwave: subverted variations

Disquiet Junto Project 0473: Placebo Effect
The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete.

Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the second in a sequence intended to encourage and reward asynchronous collaboration. This week you’ll be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0472 3). Note that you aren’t creating a duet — you’re creating the second third of what will eventually be a trio. Keep this in mind. Leave space for what is yet to come.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to the pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are tracks by 68 musicians in all to choose from, 62 as part of this playlist:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0472 4

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2, and leave room for an eventual third piece of music. When composing and recording your part, don’t alter the original piece of music at all, except to pan the original fully to the left if it hasn’t been panned left already. In your finished audio track, your new part should be panned fully to the right. To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours.

Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because it will be used by someone else in a subsequent Junto project.

Step 5: You can contribute more than one track this week. Usually Junto projects have a one-track-per-participant limit. You can do up to two total. For the second, it’s appreciated if you try to work with a solo that no one else has used yet ( look at the project’s post on Lines, linked to in these instructions, or to the project playlist, which will be posted here once tracks start coming in). The goal is for many as people as possible to benefit from the experience of being part of an asynchronous collaboration. After a lot of detailed instruction, that is the spirit of this project.

Track notes: 

I selected a track at random and landed on Lake Forest Sound Machine's track consisting of splattering rhythms and coarse tones. I thought I might compliment it with a similarly choppy structured feel, albeit with harmonious blurs swooshing around. I used my usual modular set-up to accomplish this, with the new addition of the (frankly) astounding Make Noise Morphagene, which just arrived yesterday. It cost a small fortune and its purchase was an opulent early-40th-birthday-present-to-me, because blowing nearly a grand (AU) on a module needs some kind of exceptional justification.

[disquiet0473] Robo Dub & Dodgy Smudge

Here's edits from four long hydrophone recordings made on Lady Bay reef in late January 2021. The recordings were made within an approximate 50m radius about 200m out from the shore. The tide was very low, so I was able to reach the furthest parts of the reef system to the south of Lady Bay. I feel that these are some of the most interesting hydrophone recordings I've ever made, since the four locations present strikingly different soundscapes, suggesting  remarkable biodiversity within these areas. The four locations are as follows:

All are stereo recordings made with Aquarian hydrophones.

1) immersed in dense forests of seaweed and seagrass. 
2) a vast pool (~ 0.5m deep) filled with a variety of plants.
3) a tidal inlet at one of the furthest points of the reef.
4) a larger, deeper pool (~ 1m)seculded from the previous tidal inlet.

I can't for certain identify certain sounds within these recordings, but some of the clicks, pulses and scrapes certainly point to fish, crabs and other species present in the reef. If you have any idea, please let me know! 

Longer versions of these recordings will appear on the Fleurieu & Kangaroo Island Sound Map in the near future.

Lady Bay Reef: four locations - Jan 2021

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).

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