Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse

The Assignment: Make music that falls apart repeatedly.

Step 1: Part of what makes “Happy Birthday to You” an interesting song to listen to occurs when it is sung in a public place, meaning that people sing along who actually don’t know the name of the person whose birthday is being celebrated. The song gets to the moment when the person’s name is inserted, and then the sense of ensemble entirely falls apart. People mumble, or wait, or actually know the name and sing it, but no matter — because subsets of singers proceed to sing the final “happy birthday to you” starting at different points.

Step 2: Consider the way “Happy Birthday to You” has a tendency to fall apart, as described in Step 1.

Step 3: Write a piece of music informed by your thoughts that resulted from Step 2 — a piece of music that is designed to fall apart somehow. And consider repeating the motif a few times, so it falls apart repeatedly.

Deadline: Monday, November 10, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

Details: disquiet.com/0723

Disquiet Junto Project 0723: Do the Collapse

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0718: Planet Jam It. The Assignment: Record the sound of an advanced alien civilization.
Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0718 discussion thread on Lines:
This is posted for future reference. This audio is believed to be recorded music from an advanced civilization on an unknown planet. It was captured sometime in 2126, and transmitted back to Earth from a deteriorating research drone many years ago. Unfortunately, since Earth no longer exists, humans have never heard it. 

More on the 718th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Planet Jam It — The Assignment: Record the sound of an advanced alien civilization — at https://disquiet.com/0718/.

Lost Transmission [disquiet0718]

Disquiet Junto Project 0718: Planet Jam It. The Assignment: Record the sound of an advanced alien civilization.

This recording was made in 2126 as part of Krakenkraft Interstellar Inc.'s ARP (Audio Reconnaissance Program), and its significance is only now being fully understood. We are most probably hearing the dream singers of Yith, a mentally time-traveling civilization. Unfortunately, despite intensive AI efforts, the drone's engine noise could not be removed, for which they have apologized repeatedly. Unfortunately, we do not know what happened before and after radio contact was lost... 

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Drone sound credit: andreauomogatto https://freesound.org/people/andreauomogatto/sounds/545315/

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More on the 718th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Planet Jam It — The Assignment: Record the sound of an advanced alien civilization — at https://disquiet.com/0718/.

Discussion https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0718-planet-jam-it/73184/16

disquiet25

Rare Recording Of The Dream Singers Of Yith [disquiet0718]

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 comes from a groovy, slow-funk spy-thriller track— Fender telecaster and jazz bass, tenor sax, drums, synths, and percussion — originally written for a producer’s call that never made it through.

For this week’s challenge, I decided to destroy it.I kept just a few fragments — scattered guitar and bass phrases, some sax phrases— and rebuilt the track with ambient layers and unsettling textures from soft-synths fittingly called Thrill and Spooky Keys.And some distorted arpeggaitors barely heard.

What took a couple of days to construct only took two hours to tear down.I like the result: a dark, cinematic mood somewhere between spy funk and ambient noir.

Sax by Miguel Yanover
Photo by Stefano Pollio
The rest by me.

Project:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0722-spook-street/

@disquiet

Spooky Spy - 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

An electronic composition, sounds from various sources including Pure Data.

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/.







Spooky Doings (disquiet0722)

In this installment of Sound Advice, we are joined by global techno sensation Charlotte de Witte. Over the past 15 years, Charlotte has built her career from the ground up, rising from Belgium’s underground scene to become one of the genre’s most revered names today. In this exclusive interview, we speak with the DJ, producer and KNTXT record label founder about her dance music heritage, creative process and the making of her long-awaited, self-titled debut album. Charlotte also talks about finding your sound and staying true to it, offering valuable advice for emerging DJs and producers looking to build a lasting career in electronic music. For techno fans, this one’s a must.

Episode Show Notes: https://soundcloud.com/stories/post/charlotte-de-witte-interview-sound-advice
Follow SoundCloud Stories: @soundcloud-stories
Follow Charlotte de Witte: @charlottedewittemusic
Get Started With Artist and Artist Pro: https://artists.soundcloud.com/

Sound Advice: Charlotte de Witte

This was my contribution for Disquiet Junto Project 0722: Spook Street. The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film.

Here’s a copy of my post on the Disquiet Junto 0722 discussion thread on Lines:

Used a sample of the theme music from the classic spy film with the similar name as the foundation of this piece. It was pitched down in Ableton Live and altered using mainly Soundtoys effects. Additional tracks were added using Native Instruments PlayBox, Madrona Labs Sumu and Slate+Ash Choreographs. Hope everyone has a very frightful night…

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/.

The Ghost Who Came in from the Cold [disquiet0722]

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/.

Cops Cant Catch Criminals (disquiet0722)

Disquiet Junto 0722 asked us to create a spooky pairing of a spy and horror movie soundtrack. I had a lot of fun going back and listening to some classic spy movie music, taking notes on some of the tropes that I wanted to incorporate in my response. 

The brass was a huge stretch for me. I generally try to stay away from synthetic versions of a lot of acoustic instruments because of how impossible it is to accurately simulate their performance, so I don't have any experience with writing for horns. I found some helpful advice on various music composition threads, and I'm happy enough with the arrangement for a fun Halloween piece. 

But you know what's really scary about this piece? I spelled "exsanguination" correctly on the first try.

More on the 722nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Spook Street — The Assignment: Make music for a haunted spy film — at https://disquiet.com/0722/.

The Exsanguination of Agent 99 (disquiet0722)

The brief for this week’s Disquiet Junto challenge noted how the singing of ‘Happy Birthday’ often falls apart around the name stage … This idea of musical collapse immediately made me think of Anglican church services, when the organ - along with those who are confident of the hymn being sung - sometimes falls into desperately trying to pull everyone along, never far from falling apart. In this piece, a recording I made of a service I attended a while back (which has its own backstory) becomes the material for electronic mangling and rhythmic snipping for my take on the idea of repeated collapse. It’s VERY far from being in the same league, but parts of the result remind me a little of Jonathan Harvey’s extraordinary Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco (1980) - one of my all-time favourite electroacoustic masterpieces ... 


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

halF collapsE [disquiet0723]

I took part in a group vocal and movement improvisation at the weekend and from the recording of that I built this piece in Ableton Live. There was 11 of us and we had our eyes closed, so the improvisation - as fits with the @disquiet project this week - would align and then go wayward. I've tried to bring that out more in this rearrangement.

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

Do The Collapse (disquiet0723)

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)

A quasi-serialist electronic sequence interrupted at intervals with short clips from another track played in reverse. The basic sounds were created using Pure Data.

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

Hiccups (disquiet0723)

i used multiple instances of sting in ableton to trigger fairly standard repetitive loops, fed into driftmaker to create variable flux over time, also a load of randomised panning techniques. I guess its always teetering on collapse before at various intervals it totally does. in retrospect maybe more constant erosion rather than sudden collapse.

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

mirror tactics [disquiet0723]

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

klang (disquiet0723)

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.

klang (disquiet0723)

wasabicube

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