More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0580: Evo Evol Evolve – Disquiet

More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

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Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0580-evo-evol-evolve/

Evo Evol Evolve

The Euclidean Chromaticon | Evo Evol Evolve - disquiet0580

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. 
——————
Because of this prompt I have been grappling more than usual with half-baked wonderings such as: how might individual-level agency, curiosity and desire eventually contribute to the sum total of evolution if even at all? What does it mean to think of mutations as risky miniature acts of selective rebellion? And how does it feel subjectively for each life form to find themselves as tiny unwitting participants within vast unfolding and unfathomable processes? 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

I decided that mainly I wanted to use the prompt as an excuse to try to take the perspective of an emergent proto octopus - I love that they are some of our most distant and mysterious evolutionary relatives. Well the resulting track is my emotional response to some of these vague, re-volving and unresolved themes anyway. It is perhaps one of the most amorphous things I have ever allowed myself to create so far.

Animoog Z was the only synth I used this time. Oh and I used some aquatic samples to modify a few of my timbres too. This was a fun feature to tinker with.

I dabbled with ZOA generative sequencer in iOS, and incorporated factors of 8 wherever possible, in an attempt to embed some kind of simplistic nod to evolutionary processes. I have also obviously tried to layer my sounds incrementally, to suggest emerging and merging mutations and complexity. But in the end this was all just a jumping-off point for something more intuitive and emotionally exploratory. I enjoyed this prompt, even though the results feel unfinished to me.

Image credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration & Research from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

More on this 580th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Evo Evol Evolve (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves), at: disquiet.com/0580/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…80-evo-evol-evolve/

Proto Octopian disquiet0580

An old master rediscovered and reworked today:
Synths, drum beat , vocoder.
Photo by Cerqueira


for: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0582-x-techno

Techno Bossa (disquiet0582)

Ανω ΚΑΤΩ (pronounced “ah-no KAH-to”) is a form of techno music that combines native Pontic Greek instrumentation with electronic dance rhythms. The name, often shortened into the more global term KATO, loosely translates into English as “messed up.”

KATO is believed to have formed sometime in the 1990’s, when a group of Macedonian sheep herders picked up the throbbing bass of a dance club located in the nearby valley’s urban center. Legend is that the herders attempted to play along with the beat on daouli drum, fife, and kemenche, forcing the musicians to actually play slower than the tempos to which they were accustomed. This adjustment resulted in new phrasing techniques that today comprise the subgenre’s sonic attributes.

The typical KATO techno track sits between 125 and 140 BPM and features arpeggiated notes performed on a kemenche, also known as the “instrument of the Black Sea.” The strings are bowed with a doksar made from an olive branch, double-bound to withstand the repetitive velocity needed to accompany loudly amplified beats. Glitch effects feature prominent in KATO techno, perhaps a carryover from the sketchy radio transmissions commonly heard on rural Macedonian mountaintops during KATO’s advent.

Suss Müsik owns a few KATO releases, all on compact disc and bought from the same record shop that unearthed this nugget.* Probably the best-known KATO artist is Matia14, whose track “Θα φας ξύλο” (“You Will Eat Wood”) was famously remixed by DJ Penmanship in 1999. The untitled track featured here is by a Thessaloniki group named αργό λάχανο, known as Slow Cabbage in English.

*https://sussmusik.com/2017/07/17/junto-project-0289-ancient-artifacts-repost/

More on this 582nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, X Techno (The Assignment: Make a new subgenre), at: https://disquiet.com/0582/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0582-x-techno/

Αργό Λάχανο [Disquiet0582]

I had two ideas for a new Techno subgenre: “Fibonacci Techno” and “Technoviking Techno”. The first would follow Fibonacci numbers as closely as possible. The second would sound like the first track in the famous Technoviking meme video (acoustics, not melodies or beats). The first I deemed easy to pull off, the second impossible. So to make a challenge out of this, I merged the two genres into “Fibonacci Viking Techno”. I followed the numbers as closely as possible, e.g. setting all values of instruments and effects to Fibonacci numbers (which musically makes little sense - but the concept asked for). The bass drum is on 8, most other things on 1, 2, 3, 5, 13 or 21. For effects I went up to 89 - wow! Then I tried to boost tone whole thing to Viking level, which I unfortunately did not reach. Kept it really short with lots of breaks, which is the norm in this genre.

More on this 582nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, X Techno (The Assignment: Make a new subgenre), at: https://disquiet.com/0582/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0582-x-techno/

Disquiet0582 - Fibonacci Viking Techno

Sometimes techno is all about the anticipation of the beat. So you have the evocative samples, the drone before the kick drum, the sampled female voices just prior to the high hat and so on. In this contribution to the week's Junto challenge I have created a track that is all about the anticipation before the beat. And when the beat finally comes, it is disappointing, disjointed and interrupted. Enough to clear the dance floor. Head to the bar. Or head for the door.

disquiet0582

Song from an imaginary subgenre of techno made on an airplane inspired by the clouds outside the windows and the droning wall of noise inside the plane.

Disquiet Junto Project 0582: X Techno
The Assignment: Make a new subgenre.

Step 1: You’re going to make a new subgenre of techno. Think for a moment about what makes techno techno.

Step 2: Choose a word and put it before “techno.” Those two words in combination are your new subgenre.

Step 3: Record a piece of music in the style of the subgenre you came up with in Step 2.

More on this 582nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, X Techno (The Assignment: Make a new subgenre), at: https://disquiet.com/0582/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0582-x-techno/

Photo by USGS on Unsplash

Disquiet0582 - Fibonacci Viking Techno

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