Disquiet

[ September 5, 2008 / bookmark ]

Death-Ambient Carlos Giffoni MP3

Who says noise-makers don’t have a sense of humor? Prolific death-ambient figure Carlos Giffoni has posted the first track of his forthcoming album, The Absence of Essence 2×7 (Ann Arbor Records), as a free download. Titled “The Absence,” it’s five and a half minutes of white-noise onslaught, the thick industrial groan of some massive factory set on autopilot in the dark of night (MP3). Several listens are required for one to begin to hear through the noise — to discern the shapes that are buried in there, the way harsh slashings of sound and routinized thudding are just as much a part of Giffoni’s brutal work as is the thick haze of static in which they’re subsumed. And then, at the very end, the piece skips to a close, dropping down to a quiet buzz, providing not only a bit of relief but maybe even a smile. More on Giffoni, who has recorded with Nels Cline, Merzbow, Alan Licht, Lee Ranaldo and others, at carlosgiffoni.com.

[ September 4, 2008 / bookmark ]

Live Monolake-Deadbeat Duo MP3

It’s quite likely that Monolake, aka Robert Henke, couldn’t set expectations lower for the latest “Free Download of the Month” at his website, monolake.de/downloads (the track should be up through September). The recording, which features him and Deadbeat, was made live at a Spanish festival this year, and these are among the concerns that Henke details in his recent post:

He and Deadbeat, aka Scott Monteith, were due to perform solo, but the promoter billed them as a duo, so they felt a responsibility to do what the audience had been led to expect.

Despite a preference for performing in the center of the audience, they had no option but to perform on stage

The resulting recording is in mono. Writes Henke, “Nice deep reverbs and dubby echoes … — gone.”

Nonetheless, the two professionals persevered, performing in a tandem Ableton Live setup. And even if it is somewhat diminished to hear all that inherently reverberant music in mono — it’s like looking into the eye of a storm, instead of being surrounded by one –  the result is exactly the sort of percussive minimal techno you’d expect from these seasoned performers. It’s also almost a full hour long.

Henke posts these free tracks with certain rules, including an admonition against linking directly to the MP3 file, so just proceed to monolake.de/downloads.

[ September 3, 2008 / bookmark ]

Aaron McLeran’s Piano Transformation MP3s

There’s no datestamp to the entry, but up on the website of composer Aaron McLeran are examples of granular synthesis methods that he has applied to a sample of solo piano. The original is a slow, romantic piano piece (MP3). Following that are five digital etudes, each applying a different transformational technique to the original. What’s immediately striking about the five variations is the relative absence of that telltale sign of granular synthesis: those brittle, glitchy, abrasive micro-slices of sound that often seem like the sample has been shredded to pieces by some landmine, with virtually no resmblance to the source material.

Quite the contrary here — for example, version three (MP3) retains the shape of the unmediated version, but it sounds more like a more shrill rendition, as if played on some sort of alien glass harmonica. Likewise version five (MP3), which, again, follows the contours of the original, though the melody is now rougher, as if a DJ were muting it heavily and rapidly excising segments with a volume knob.

The research is evidence of work McLeran is doing at the Media Arts and Technology graduate program at UC Santa Barbara, with professor Curtis Roads and with Bob Sturm, a PhD candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering. More information and the complete list of files at mat.ucsb.edu/~amcleran.

According to the MAT website, mat.ucsb.edu, McLeran, Roads, and Sturm,  working with another professor, John Shynk, were recently recognized with a Best Paper award for work on “atomic decompositions” at the 2008 International Computer Music Conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

[ September 2, 2008 / bookmark ]

Maximalist Ambient Cello MP3

The cello-tronic rituals of reverberation that are the stuff, the modus operandi, the trademark of Ted Laderas’s OO-Ray get a thorough workout on his maximalist “If We Aren’t Blind” (MP3). It’s a sample cut off a forthcoming album, reportedly titled Magnifcations, and the result is less drone-like than it might at first appear to be. For all its extended tones, it really sways, if slowly, back and forth, with gently layered swaths of sound. What’s especially remarkable about the piece is how far a little vibrato, heard throughout, can go — how the technique adds density to simple wave forms. As mediated by Laderas’s bank of technology, the lone cello takes on a kind serene majesty — sustained, rich, formidable. More info at Laderas’s website, 15people.net, and at that of the releasing netlabel, luvsound.org, where the MP3 recently appeared as a “single of the week.”

[ September 1, 2008 / bookmark ]

Tandem Drone MP3 from Jerman and Menard

For close to 50 minutes, the Zen-cast tandem drone session “The Now of Sound” by Jeph Jerman and Tanner Menard puts the world on hold (MP3). The sound is that of some threadbare sine wave casting its shadow on a blank horizon. To the extent that it has any sonic substance at all is only hinted at toward the end when, for an admirably extended period, it comes to a very slow face; the result not only delays the piece’s close, but also emphasizes just how voluminous, in fact, the preceding seeming quietude had been. Kudos to the record label, Archaic Horizons, for informatively summarizing the duo’s recording process:

‘The Now of Sound’ was created from a synthesis of synthetic bells, written in Supercollider by Tanner, and of desert recordings from Jeph. This amalgamation was then projected with homemade equipment by Jeph, onto the resonant portion of a gong. The resulting frequencies were recorded with a contact microphone, then post processed with basic computer effects.

More details at archaichorizon.com. More on Jerman at jerman.littleenjoyer.com. More on Menard at his aptly named myspace.com/barelyaudible.

[ August 29, 2008 / bookmark ]

New Trio of Tech-Metal MP3s from Drumpcorps

The whole new-retail mode of “download for free, buy the snazzy version at a premium” isn’t restricted to the established likes of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead. Drumpcorps (aka Aaron Spectre), long a Disquiet Downstream favorite for his having located the exact sonic space where chaotically implemented digital noise is indistinguishable from the whiplash riffage of metal bands like Slayer, has now used the same Web 2.0 nu-capitalist system for his new 10″, Altered Beast.

The downloadable ZIP file (ZIP) collects all three tracks off the 10″, each a technologically enabled dissection and reanimation of death metal by the San Francisco-based band Animosity. (All three tracks originally appeared on the Animosity album Animal.) Meanwhile, the 10″ itself is an almost garishly beautiful object, a multi-colored picture disc that comes in such themes as “Cupcake Oil Spill” and “Cheese Streak.”

The beauty isn’t reserved for folks who fork up for the physical release; the free ZIP file includes a nine-page PDF of photos of the 10″. As for the music, each of the three tracks takes an Animosity recording and whips up the frenzy, inserting stop’n’start instances, warping noise into the ether, and emphasizing the pummel. One of the three tracks was previously included in the Downstream (disquiet.com), back on April 3, when it appeared as part of a mix on UK Channel 4 radio.

More info at aaronspectre.com/drumcorps.cc, myspace.com/animosity, and wearemanalive.com.

[ August 28, 2008 / bookmark ]

“Molotov” Cocktail MP3 from Bass Communion

Can something be searing and sedate at the same time? More to the point, can some single thing, a single slice of sound, be mistaken from a distance just as easily as one of those or the other? It’s certainly the case for “Molotov” (MP3), a free track off the new Bass Communion album, Molotov and Haze, the very title of which touches on the inherent duality between fire and cool, cacophony and calm. (It was released recently on Important Records.) The two and a half minutes of “Molotov” could be a bonfire of epic proportions, vast charges of energy unleashed in stop motion and melting everything in their path — or it could be the comforting undertone of some slow natural process, a cozy lull that fills your room with an artful rendering of white noise. The deciding factor may merely be a matter of volume. Turned up high, “Molotov” is a wanton force, akin to the sludge rock of the band Earth. Turned down low, it’s a subtle background pattern, a quiet composition that flavors your room without filling it. Bass Communion is a moniker of Steve Wilson. More info on the full release at importantrecords.com. More on Wilson at swhq.co.uk, where he describes the record as “Multi-layered (and sometimes very noisy) pieces generated from guitar.”

[ August 25, 2008 / bookmark ]

Jon Wozencroft Field Recordings MP3 from Touch

For his entry in the Touch Radio series, its 33rd, Jon Wozencroft has compiled 15 archival recordings, ranging from train sounds he taped for a Neville Brody exhibition, to overheard conversation, to rain and birdsong, to a field recording of the coast of France mixed with a bit of cassette surface noise (MP3). The majority are real-world recordings, but there is the odd bit of analog-synth humor. Some of the samples receive a modicum of post-production, notably the looping of brief moments.

The “field” sounds heard here are somehow both delicate and earthy, refined and raw. They’re generally simple noises, the aural equivalent of casual snapshots, and it may require a certain amount of attention to discern individual elements. There is a surfeit of silence, within which a handful of footsteps, or a passing car, or a dash of thunder, might suddenly and briefly make its presence heard. Wozencroft has also made available a digital document summarizing the provenance of the various source material (PDF). More info at touchradio.org.uk.

[ August 22, 2008 / bookmark ]

Buddha Machine-Infused Tapol/Martig MP3s

This delicate collaboration between Aymeric de Tapol & François Martig has extended periods of held tones, like a phone call cut off or a distant foghorn. There’s one such moment early in the three-track EP’s final cut (”Ijslandgnol,” MP3) and on first listen it may seem static, but in fact it slowly — ever so slowly — gets louder, rising as a result in intensity, before more natural sounds emerge, small rustlings that suddenly emphasize the foreground. Such is the music on Nord/Est, which ranges from microsonic simplicity to lush, evocative drones, more like soundtracks to mundane journeys than like songs. Among the duo’s listed resources are computers, analog synthesizers and the Buddha Machine, the latter of which is less immediately recognizable here than in any previous re-use I’m familiar with. Get the full set at adozen.org, where it is the netlabel’s seventh release.

[ August 21, 2008 / bookmark ]

Kixly’s Tape-looped MP3s

It’s worth taking the title of Kixly’s new Cyan Recs EP release, Lossless Tape-loops in Pop Form, at face value. All six of its tracks appear to have been built from brief snatches of audio recordings, which are looped and gingerly layered to within humming distance of song form. The sound and title of the third track exemplify the album’s modus operandi. “Givers [On Danceable Rhythms] Morning Ritual [On Atmosphere] Band Hammer [On Bass] (Kixly R3M1><)” suggests three found elements each serving as a different segment of the song — and that is very much how it functions. There’s an opening chunk of apparent field recording that risks turning potential listeners away with its entrenched skipping-record looping. Then, about a minute and a half in, a rhythmic counterpoint enters, and later still there’s a kind of cash-register funk added. For many listeners, five and a half minutes of such a thing may be a serious test of patience, but once you give yourself over to Kixly’s restraint, it’s quite beautiful.

The modest materials on Lossless Tape-loops don’t necessitate rigor and asceticism. “Latidos de Familia (Fax Gaseosa Dub Mix),” on which the album ends, is downright lush, a nocturnal techno infused with slow waves of melody.  And “Hollow Trees and Bird of Woods” has a quiet, creaky groove that’s truly addictive. Despite the tape-loop source material, this is no lo-fi affair; all six tracks are encoded at a healthy 320kbps. The full set is available as an archive, including cover art and brief liner notes, from the releasing netlabel, cyanrecs.com (ZIP).

One note about design: The cover, which features a reflective sphere that’s either a Christmas-tree ornament or an Anish Kapoor sculpture (the color resembles Kapoor’s telltale pomegranate/plum), comes in two variations. There’s the one pictured above, as well as the same image with the song titles printed alongside. The one with song titles is labeled “print” while the one without, clearly intended to be viewed at a reduced size, is labeled “ipod.”