This week's Disquiet Junto prompt challenged us to a duel with a metronome: record a piece of music that weaves in and out of a steady beat. 

I assembled a trio comprising the Moog Minitaur (lead and bass), Roland Juno (pads), and Waldorf Streichfett (strings). I improvised a meandering chord sequence and spent a lot of time mixing multiple layers of analog pads to bring it to life. Against the steady backdrop of a simple percussion pattern, I recorded the lead performance on the Minitaur. Since this synth doesn't sync to the MIDI clock on the computer, riding the LFO controls manually let me improvise the swirling/cycling/beating patterns that dance within, against, and without the beat. 

About the vocals: When I was listening to the mix earlier today, I heard a momentary audio artifact that sounded like a muffled voice. This inspired me to add a vague vocal part for way back in the mix, so recorded myself reading an excerpt from "A Vision of the Night" by Ambrose Bierce.

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/.

Legend of the Moon People (disquiet0719)

sound art for disquiet0720.

More on the 720th weekly Disquiet Junto project, One from Two — The Assignment: Combine a pair of your recent tracks — at https://disquiet.com/0720/.

dyad (disquiet0720)

Disquiet Junto prompt 0720 asked us to take two separate works in progress and realize that they work better together. 

My WIP drawer is pretty full but I couldn't easily find two pieces that wanted to talk to one another. Finally I took several recent piano sketches and dumped all of their MIDI performance data into a single project in Logic. I tend to record left and right hand parts separately to facilitate revoicing, so I had a good collection of chunks to play with. I started stacking, rearranging, muting, soloing, and transposing different combinations of parts until I found a pair that sounded interesting. I ended up doing very minimal editing to stitch them together, and the two parts are not even in the same key, but I think that the tension and dissonance work somehow. 

Finally I wrapped the whole thing in a little pastiche of two friends sitting at a piano having fun gluing the pieces of a song together. 

More on the 720th weekly Disquiet Junto project, One from Two — The Assignment: Combine a pair of your recent tracks — at https://disquiet.com/0720/

Dancers on Pins (disquiet0720)

Recorded, edited, mixed & mastered on 23 Oct 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa, USA.

Synths, field recordings, effects

This piece incorporates a recording by Philip Goddard - https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/817001/

Photography/Art - Jim Lemanowicz, 23 Oct 2025, Midtown, NYC, NY, USA

Music & art © 2025 Jim Lemanowicz

This original version of “Roll A Frozen Teenager Under Your Foot” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0721: Well Weathered. The Assignment: Play along with a storm

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

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

Discussion - https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0721-well-weathered

Roll A Frozen Teenager Under Your Foot (disquiet0721)

Disquiet Junto 0721 invited us to provide musical accompaniment to a storm. 

This one made me think of my grandmother. She and I would sit in her glassed-in porch and drink tea while the storms of the Atlantic coastal summer raged outside, wind throwing sheets of rain against the windows, the sky purple with flashes of white, the thunder making the ground shake. 

She helped me understand the difference between awe and fear.

In recording this, I tried to be respectful of the storm as it happened. I did very little editing. I tried to give the storm plenty of room to move around in, saying what I needed to say in the spaces between the peals of thunder. 

Vintage Korg M3R synth over a field recording of a storm I made here in Chicago last July.

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

Tea and Tempest (disquiet0721)

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/.

more halF unusuaL

halF spooK [disquiet0722]

This is part of Disquiet Junto Project #0722: Spook Street. See more at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0722-spook-street/73313/5.

Escapism 10

i've been watching a lot of twin peaks lately and wanted to record something inspired by its jazzy incidental cues. all on my eurorack system, some layering/tweaking in post. 

--

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/.



disquiet0722 - chasing ghosts across a chevron patterned floor

Disquiet Junto 0723 suggested making a piece of music that structurally falls apart.

I've been spending time with my Make Noise 0-Coast semi-modular synth lately, watching tutorial videos, exploring different patch configurations, and recording everything "just in case" as I always do with analog gear. 

So for this week's response I challenged myself to center the 0-Coast.  Although I had intended to start with a drone patch, a happy mistake led me to a heavy brass-like sound, which I connected to the random step function for pitch. Add lots of reverb, and we have hell's own horn section. The 0-Coast also eventually gave it the drone I had in mind at the start. This was the only synth used in the piece. No MIDI was involved, as the patches were completely self-playing.

The pizzicato was recorded live, 4 tracks, on my electric violin, which my violin instructor is going to be over the moon about. The vocal, featuring Yeats's "The Second Coming", was captured on a shoebox cassette recorder. There's a little digital piano sprinkled in as well.

More on the 723rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Do the Collapse — The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly — at https://disquiet.com/0723/

The Center Cannot Hold (disquiet0723)

Recorded, edited, mixed & mastered in 1996, & on 04 Nov 2019 & 14 Nov 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa, USA.

Tape, time & effects

Photography/Art - Jim Lemanowicz, 02 Oct 2009, microscope, Massapequa, NY, USA

Music & art © 1996, 2009, 2019, 2025 Jim Lemanowicz

---

This original version of “Audio Hog Rubber” was submitted as part of Disquiet Junto Project 0724: Work It The Assignment: The year’s almost over. Do that thing you’ve been meaning to do.

More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/

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/.

Audio Hog Rubber (disquiet0724)

Artist and non-musician making sound art with found objects.

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 ♪ ♪ ░░▒▓█▒░▒▒░▒▓█

My music asks listeners to be like dreamers uncovering hidden patterns in passing clouds. Support me @ patreon.com/blisterpop

I create original experimental, postpunk, and experiential music from my studio in Chicago. The Hard Times described my work as "creepy, haunted, but also a little bit uplifting." Prolific.

New tracks tagged #disquietjunto