Marc Weidenbaum's Blog

The graffiti/tag-style Post-it additions to hip-hop albums at Amoeba Records here in San Francisco do not disappoint

Another fine 15-minute slice of ambient modular synth from the appropriately named Modular Ambient station/channel/account/ethos/vibe on YouTube, all shimmering tones and light glitch that throbs and pulses, shifts and drifts, in accordance with the lights of various bits of kit. It’s been a while, for whatever reason, since I added a video to my massive YouTube playlist of (currently 225) live ambient performances, but this one made it immediately.

I don’t often go to the movie theater these days, but when there’s a new Steven Soderbergh joint, you can bet I’m gonna do my best. I really dug The Christophers, in no small part due to the director’s renewed collaboration with the excellent composer David Holmes, who also scored Soderbergh’s Black Bag, from last year, but prior to that the two hadn’t worked since 2017’s Lucky Logan. Holmes’ second professional film score was Out of Sight, in 1998, and a few years later he famously set the tone for Ocean’s 11, and returned for the two sequels. The score in The Christophers was particularly prominent, in part because of the numerous sequences that otherwise silently surveyed various artists’ homes and studios. Also prominent: a certain considered debt to Radiohead.

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ Electric guitarist Eivind Aarset’s quartet is a gift that keeps on giving. The two drummers (Erland Dahlen, Wetle Holte) are so tight with drummer Audun Erlien that it sounds like a much more compact group than it is.

▰ The saxophonist Chris Potter assembled a remarkable ensemble, featuring Bill Frisell (guitar), Nate Smith (drums), Burniss Travis (bass), Rane Moore (clarinet), Zekkereya El-magharbel (trombone), and Sara Caswell (violin), and on top of how great they sound together, the video does a solid job of introducing them one at a time in a manner that slowly exposes how much is going on sonically.

▰ This live video of KMRU performing solo in Milan, Italy, dates from 2022, but appears to have only just popped up on YouTube. It’s 45 stellar minutes of drones and noise, lightly glitched, and atmospherically entrancing.

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

Been pretty low-level on social media since I got back from New York.

▰ Today in barbershop music: “Get Ready” by the Temptations. Usually there are more songs, but the barber who selects the music was on a lunch break for most of my time there, and the other barber enjoyed the temporary reprieve.

▰ Happy Earth Day. Open a window and listen. What do/did you hear?

▰ I usually read during lunch, but Tortoise on Amoeba’s What’s in My Bag? series on YouTube got 12 of my minutes immediately.

▰ Read a bunch, finished nothing, but wrote a lot, again, and that makes it O-K.

Most weeks, a given Disquiet Junto music community project essentially runs itself. Nearly 15 years into the process, the scenario is set: I post the prompt shortly after midnight, Pacific time, on Thursday, and folks who see it online or receive it via email have until the following Monday at 11:59pm to post a track in response to the prompt. As of this week’s project, we’ve done it 747 times in a row, week after week.

The one time a year I have to keep a close watch on things is when we do this current “trios sequence,” which is the one where someone posts a solo, and then the next week someone adds to it, and the week after that someone completes the piece as a trio. Except it’s more than one solo, one duo, one trio. The first week there are dozens of solos, and the second week there may be multiple duos based on individual solos, and so on the third week with the trios based on various duos. To facilitate the process, I maintain a close watch on the tracks as they’re added, and I regularly update a public matrix of the activities, a detail of which appears below.

This year I’ve added something to the matrix, which is that alongside the track URL, which is usually on SoundCloud, I share the message board link for the Lines (or llllllll.co) BBS, where discussion takes place. Those Lines posts are where there is often additional information about a given track, such as key, BPM, chord changes, and instrumentation. More details on this week’s project at disquiet.com/0747.

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0747: And a One (1/3)
The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.

Please note: While this project is the start of a semi-annual three-part sequence that will unfold over the course of three consecutive weeks, you can participate in any or all three of those parts. 

Step 1: This week’s Junto project is the first in a sequence intended to encourage and reward collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being. Your part will be done, but more will happen. Read on.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music using any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive the piece as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in. (Keep in mind that your piece resulting from this week’s project will be panned to the left in the second and third weeks of this sequence.)

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly two to three minutes in length, as described in Step 2. 

Step 4: This is important: be sure to make your track downloadable because it may be used by someone else in the next Disquiet Junto project, and the one after that.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0747” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0747-and-a-one-1-3/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is usually up to the musician, but for this one, please, per the instructions, keep it to roughly two to three minutes in length. Thanks.

Deadline: Monday, April 27, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 747th weekly Disquiet Junto project, And a One (1/3) — The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio — disquiet.com/0747.

This paragraph appears in the Disquiet Junto email newsletter that will go out shortly after midnight, Pacific time, via juntoletter.disquiet.com

The short version of this is that if you have subscribed to this email list for some time and have yet to do a Disquiet Junto project, then this one, the one starting on April 23, 2023, is one to consider doing. The gist is this: this week you record a solo piece of music, not a complete piece, but a piece that will be added to, potentially, by other musicians over the following two weeks. Next week, many if not most of the tracks recorded this week will become duets, thanks to the additions by musicians other than yourself — again, with space left intentionally. Then finally two weeks from now, other musicians will add something else, completing a trio. The process can feel magical, especially when the same solo becomes numerous duets, and the same duet, multiple trios — which does happen sometimes. But what really happens is simpler: by recording music that leaves room for other music, you learn something about constraints, and listening, and sharing. And when you fill that space in a subsequent week, you learn the same things, from a radically different perspective.

Stoked to be part of this latest series of Hilobrow essays, all about “analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Seventies (1974–83) sci-fi novels and comics.” I wrote about Rudy Rucker’s foundational cyberpunk classic Software (1982), the first of his four-novel (“tetralogy”) Ware series. These Hilobrow essays are being posted one at a time. Mine will be up down the road. What great company to be in. Deb Chachra, Douglas Wolk, Seth, and so many more. Details and the first few at hilobrow.com.

A tableau on my walk