Shows
Etheric CurrentsRadiant & Talking PicturesThis episode features Stellaterra’s great “Radiant” release — a loving tribute to Berlin School. We also will hear Mahorka’s “Talking Pictures” release, with contributions from many Mahorka artists, each taking a still from famous movies as a prompt.
We’ll round out the second hour with some extra tracks from Ether, Team Metlay, and Rinse, Repeat.2023-07-2700 min
Etheric CurrentsNumbers StationsThis show features tracks built on sounds from the CONET Project: recordings of “numbers stations”. These radio stations are coded messages to spies, alerting them as to what decryption keys they should be using.
On the surface, they are mysterious strings of numbers or letters in the international phonetic alphabet, recited by synthesized voices: excellent raw material for electronic musicians.
This episode features tracks from two releases from the PublicSpaces Lab netlabel:
Number Stations [PS015]
Number Stations Part II [PS025]
There’s also a short Equinoctal performed live in this episode!2023-07-2700 min
Etheric CurrentsThom Brennan’s “Aftermath” and Two Bump Foots (Feet?)We premiered (at least for our listeners) Thom Brennan’s Aftermath release, which came out the week before this episode was recorded, and rounded out the show with two releases from Bump Foot, the Fail EP from Drugstore, and the gnomic QX#55’s 6+6=12.
Thom has come through with his usual smooth, deceptively simple sequencer-driven melodies, and the other two contrast nicely with a bit more attitude and interesting explorations of timbre.2023-06-2700 min
Etheric CurrentsAway Space and Requiem for a Neural NetworkTwo Kahvi releases, one featuring 4T Thieves and Pandacetamol, and the other featuring various Kahvi artists. Lots of beats and a couple of great remixes.2023-06-2000 min
Etheric CurrentsExploring the EtherThis episode features tracks named (or containing) “ether”, bands whose names contain “ether”, and the whole of Comm’s great album, Ether.
There’s lots on ambience in the first half, and plenty of beats in the second.2023-06-1300 min
Etheric CurrentsDarwin and the 2600Originally, this episode was meant to be a feature of the ARP 2600, but the weekend before it was recorded, Darwin Grosse died. He was a friend of many of RadioSpiral’s DJ’s, a great force in musical education, one of the founding members of Cycling ’74 (home of Max), and an excellent musician, especially on the 2600.
We decided to feature Darwin’s music to remember him, so this episode features two full albums and a few tracks from a third:
Infernal Data Machine
2600.repast
Fresco
His podcast, Art + Music + Technology, is still up and a great resource for electronic musicians.2022-07-0400 min
Etheric Currents“Four Days” and “The Moodygoer”Tonight’s show features two new albums: a short EP from 4T Thieves (whose retirement from music seems greatly exaggerated) and a unique album from Konejo, The Moodygoer — filled with ambience from many, many movies — each excerpt about a minute of ambience from a movie, accompanied by an improvised soundtrack, plus a live Equinoctal, Stranger Around These Parts.2022-06-2100 min
Etheric CurrentsEquinoxesThis episode’s theme is equinoxes, a thing near and dear to Equinox’s heart.
The feature for this episode is Max Corbacho’s new release, Equinox, which is the first full hour and a quarter of the episode. The latter part of the episode includes a new five-part Equinoctal, Manhattanhenge, and Lucette Bourdin’s Crossing the Equinox to round out the episode.2022-05-3100 min
Etheric CurrentsIn Utera, Humafobia, Ambient BoxThis episode features three new albums:
In Utera, a new – and first! – album from AntiMonos. “His music is built from emotions, stories and experiments. Its objective is to take us to different worlds and to offer the listener to be at the center of this journey, to appropriate it to shape their own story.”
Obscure Matrix [Cyberwave Edition], a collaboration between Humanfobia, a “dark electronic, experimental, ghost computer music project from Rancagua, Chile”, and α Ori, a “glitch, noise, experimental project created by Julien A. Lacroix from France”. It’s a fantastic ambient techno album.
Ambient Box, by Rog (Roger Guerrero), which bills itself...2022-05-2400 min
Etheric CurrentsShepherd DriftTonight’s episode premieres Shepherd Drift, a new album from the Kahvi Collective. Shepherd Drift is the 2019 artists compilation, and is almost three hours of great music. We excerpted about two hours worth for this episode, with everything from drifty ambience to serious beats. As always, Kahvi comes through with another exceptional album!2022-05-1700 min
Etheric CurrentsLeftovers DayYou know those days when you come home and look in the fridge and realize you forgot to go shopping, and still have to make dinner? That’s today’s show, except our library is full of tasty things; we’ve got a random selection of whatever sounds good tonight, with Loren Nerell, Shalmaneser, grum-pé, those Thom Brennan tracks we didn’t play from last week, and a lot more.2022-05-1000 min
Etheric CurrentsTyphoon / Dymaxion Variations / MercuryThis episode features a new album from Thom Brennan, “Typhoon“, a very deep and complex ambient album from Oberlin, “The Dymaxion Variations” (so good our listeners insisted on staying late to have me play the track I’d left out for time!), and Faex Optim’s space-age “Mercury“.2022-05-0300 min
Etheric CurrentsMonotonik SamplerThis episode brings together a number of short releases from the Monotonik netlabel, from izmar, sleepy town manufacture, jiva, Akira Kosemura, bliss, planet boelex, lackluster, and Ollie Cram. More beats than usual tonight!2022-04-2700 min
Etheric CurrentsI Know You! (a personal tour of the RadioSpiral library)Tonight’s show is a little different; rather than featuring a number of tracks by the same artist, I’ve instead chosen to select tracks that vaguely follow my own history of people I’ve met over they years in electronic music, from the earliest days of email lists and Usenet newsgroups right up to the current day: RadioSpiral, Discord, and Second Life.
We’ll hear music from Team Metlay, CASSIEL, Thom Brennan, Loren Nerrell, Tantroniq, Cousin Silas, Mercaptan, Ozone Player, our own Gypsy Witch and ʞu¡0ɹʞS, and many more.2022-04-2000 min
Etheric CurrentsMonotonik, with Troupe and TatsuThis episode, we feature multiple artists from the Monotonik netlabel, and feature two full albums from Troupe (It’s Really Pretty Simple After All) and Tatsu (August). We’ll also have the albums Sound of Subnatura, Hexual Ceiling, Emotions in a Box, and several other albums.2022-03-2900 min
Etheric CurrentsDrums, Drums in the DeepNo balrogs this episode, but lots of percussion: your regular Western drum set, synthetic percussion, the good old 808, Middle Eastern percussion, …even the piano! Lots of different kinds of percussion this show.
Many different albums featured this episode:
Runi Graph, For I know that the view of a tree is not subjective
Various Artists, Our Lives in the Bush of Disquiet
Jaymuhsin, Designing the Inevitable
V, 23.56.04
Izmar, Stuff
Frank Molder, Tronik
Mossa, The Town Hall2022-03-2100 min
Etheric Currentsπ DayThis episode centers around π , circles, and irrationality — whether loving things irrationally, or irrational motives; circular motion, or music that feels circular. There were technical issues during the broadcast, apparently occurring somewhere between the broadcast machine and the streaming server — Gypsy Witch had to literally kill the connection before the show could be restarted – so the sections that were interrupted, restarted, or skipped were dropped from this recording.
Nothing like a little weirdness to go with an irrational number!2022-03-1500 min
Etheric CurrentsNew and found again: Heimferd and EventideThis episode, we feature two new albums: one from Kahvi, a theme and variations via remix of the title track, Heimferd, by HRYM, with remixes by 4T Thieves, Keiss, Mitoma, Murya, and Abdicant.
The second has an unusual and happy story attached to it: it’s a new release from Thom Brennan, Eventide, which was recorded in the early 00’s and lost in Thom’s archives. He found it while cleaning up earlier this year, and has released it for us, almost 20 years later; it’s still a fresh and lovely recording.
We round out our slightly-short second hour with a track...2022-03-0100 min
Etheric CurrentsFlagstaff Mountains, Wolfgang Nachahmer, and the first EquinoctalTonight we have a new album from Kahvi, Flagstaff Mountains by Escher Adams, and two by Wolfgang Nachahmer – Tryptychon and Nachtwache. We’ll also hear a pre-recorded (because I couldn’t get my hardware to cooperate) Equinoctal, Converted to Light. I hope to be performing more Equinoctals as time goes on.2022-02-0400 min
Etheric CurrentsMahorka: Encased in Amber, Virtually J, and VThis episode features three artists from the Mahorka netlabel: Encased in Amber, Virtually J, and V.
Encased in Amber’s album, Parallel Worlds, is a real treat! Beautiful timbres, excellent performances, and a great melodic sense.
Encased in Amber says about themselves:
The music of Encased in Amber tells it’s stories
through an intricate mesh of melodies and texture.
Described as downtempo, ambient, and dreamy, Encased
in Amber puts forth the concept that each time a piece
of music is written it crystallizes what was felt and
processed in that moment of time, like a fossil caught
in amber.
What...2022-01-2800 min
Etheric CurrentsFeature: The Pencil-Case and ChromadriftThis episode features a new-to-me artist, The Pencil-Case, who combine spoken word, electronica, and a whole lot of other influences into a unique sound of their own on their album, Euclidean Fractales, described as “a blend between electronica, breakbeat, ambient, [and] abstract-hip-hop, with a post-rock sensibility”.
Since this gave us only one hour of music, I’ve paired it with an album by Chromadrift, The Story So Far, to fill us out to the second hour.
Lots of beats, and a nice wind-down in the second half. Enjoy!
Podcast listeners, we’d love to have you join us, either in Orlov in...2022-01-2200 min
Etheric CurrentsFeaturing: 4T ThievesThis episode features the music of 4T Thieves — a great blend of electro beats and ambience.
4T Thieves (Nik Racine) is the founder of the Kavhvi Collective netlabel, one of the best places to find great electronica, and has been around since back in the Amiga demoscene in the ’90’s, with releases on Kavhi, Zenopolæ, Mahorka, Monotonic, among many. Racine has “semi-retired” from music making, concentrating on photography at the moment, but has produced a great catalog of releases; we’ll be listening to a selection from a number of different albums on this episode.
Kick back and let the beats wash ov...2022-01-1100 min
Etheric CurrentsAbandoned/Disremembrance/MonorailsThis week’s episode features three albums from the Bumpfoot netlabel.
Abandoned mixes sampling, electronics, and ethnic percussion into music that is reminiscent of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Based on a set of photographs taken in Vanatau in 2014, this EP (one wishes it were longer!) “…explores abandoned places and their broken dreams. The fractured beauty of abandoned places can tell wonderful narratives.” The artist is Timeofhex (Cissi Tang), and this is (so far) her only available release.
Second up is Kevin Bryce’s Disremembrance, a more traditional electronica album covering a wide range of styles, from Boards-of-Canada-like dreaminess...2022-01-0400 min
Etheric CurrentsKahvi: RingworldA short episode this week, only one hour, as Equinox had an early-morning appointment and had to stop early.
This episode features the new Kahvi compilation, Ringworld. It’s an eclectic mix of tracks, and the episode is a selection from the two hours plus of music. We’ve chosen mostly beat-oriented tracks, but there’s a little abstract electronica mixed in.
Pridefool – Dystopian
Ideall – Faex Optim
Avatar – Astrobotanist
South West – Andrew Gatenby
Unklar – Notstandkomitee
Endorphin – O.donm
Doppler Shift – Stellaterra
Mofo (Full Monty Mix) – Bassoniq
Mowk – 3 Mint
High Up in the Sky – Kunds
M.u.d – Tony and Eileen’s Wedding
Crying Dream – T2021-12-2100 min
Etheric CurrentsForrest Fang: Forever Cascades and MoreOn this episode of Etheric Currents, we’ll be hearing tracks from Forrest Fang, featuring his new album, Forever Cascades.
He says,
“Though my walks near the San Francisco Bay were initially a way for me to clear my head, I also found myself drawn to the cycles and cadences of tides and aquatic life that shifted gradually from season to season. I was seeking a similar underlying cadence or pulse in these pieces that would evolve over time.”
He has also been publishing (on Facebook) a series of photos taken during his walks; if you’re on Facebook, I recommen...2021-12-1500 min
Etheric CurrentsElectro-cool: Nameless Dancers, Lavoura, and moreThis week’s episode is featuring music that combines many genres: jazz, electronica, latin, Bollywood, drum and bass, and whatever else the artists felt like into a nicely chilled mix that, for lack of a better word, I’m calling electro-cool.
In the first half we’ll be hearing from Nameless Dancers, Damare, Nienvox & 813, and Duis. Nameless Dancers features afro-beat percussion, tasty keyboards, a full-up brass section, and an outstanding drummer and bassist. Damare tilts more toward electronica, with excellent keyboard work, both electric and acoustic, and heavily manipulated samples. Nienvox and B13 conbines jazz and trip-hop into a dance-oriented mix, a...2021-12-1400 min
Etheric CurrentsMassimo Discepoli’s Nheap: Ambient JazzThis week’s episode features a new-to-me artist, Massimo Discepoli. Massimo wears a lot of hats: incredibly accomplished drummer, teacher, multi-instrumentalist. Nheap is the monickker under which he has released several CC-licensed albums, which allows us to play them here.
We’ll hear from the albums Skymotion, Clouds Under the Table, The Ambient Sides, Flying and the Silence, and Realight. All are available via Bandcamp, and can all be picked up for less than $5 US — a real bargain.
Nheap combines electronica and sophisticated jazz into a delicious package, with plenty of beats and a large helping of cool. I was stoked...2021-12-0700 min
Etheric CurrentsKahvi: Playing Guess-the-Synth with One Synth I and IIThis week’s episode has music from the Kahvi Collective’s One Synth and One Synth II releases, plus a few tracks from their Tangents release to make up the full two hours.
The One Synth releases have a gimmick: each track is done with a single synth, multiracked as necessary, and because we have a fair number of musicians (and a synth expert in the form of Mr. Spiral himself), we played a bit of Guess the Synth in chat and in Second Life, which you’ll hear a bit of in the voiceovers.
Gimmick aside, these are great tracks...2021-11-2800 min
Etheric CurrentsNetlabel space beats, on Wavelike, Dusted Wax, and KavhiTonight’s episode features tracks that evoke space, space travel, or spaceflight, from several different netlabels, some more obscure than others.
Since this was a themed episode rather than a “selected tracks” one, we have many more artists for you this week:
Geolm’s Waves of Tomorrow, on Wavelike
Fodor Balazs’s Astronaut Farmer, on Dusted Wax
Point’s Human Music II, on Digital Diamonds
Nøi2er’s Beyønd Reality (Vacuum) (LP), on Dusted Wax
Liminal Space – The Remixes, on Kahvi
Merlune’s Yellowstoned, on Dusted Wax
Shortforms, on Kahvi
Cosmic Lullabies, on Musictrade
Niteffect’s Nip in the Bud (self-released...2021-11-2100 min
Etheric CurrentsJuta Takahashi’s “Miyabi” and Dusted Wax ChillThis episode premieres Juta Takahashi’s new release, Miyabi. It is a patient meditation on repeating sequences, subtly orchestrated to change over time from one for to another, like seasons changing from winter to spring, and will give you time to settle in and be with the changes as they unfold.
Miyabi has its intense moments, but they evolve naturally as the music flows quietly and calmly, moving inevitably forward like time itself. Miyabi is available from Juta’s website, and I highly recommend picking up your own copy (support our artists!).
The second half of the show features two EPs...2021-11-0900 min
Etheric CurrentsCamomille: CyclesThe episode features the 100th release from the Camomille netlabel, Cycles. This is a big compilation, over 2 hours long and 57 musicians. The tracks are well-selected and hang together nicely in that Camomille headspace: a little abstract, a little beat, laid-back and quiet.
Tonight’s tracks:
Délusions circulaires – Muhr
Daddys Sailboat Down The River – Blisaed
Just a thing from yesterday – Mikael Fyrek
A possible – Vim
citrate de bétaïne – kaneel
Dauphin’s Flag – Talve
Halftone Patterns – The Open Directory Project
Innere Leer – Beatslaughter
Sleever – Seathasky
the knak – imtech
After pi trak – Lackluster
shimmer – transient
Libertae – Mikael Fyrek
Rebirth – MigloJE
telluric – epoq
Hotel Walls – M...2021-11-0200 min
Etheric CurrentsThe Camomille NetlabelThis week’s episode features music from the Camomille netlabel. Camomille was founded in 2002 by Vincent Fugère “out of the love of ambient music, camomille tea and as a representation of what inspires him to do music”.
Camomille has (or perhaps had — there have been no releases for a while!) a very specific sound: “naive, idm electronics mixed with new age and emotional hip-hop”, which fits very well with RadioSpiral’s combination of ambience, beats, interest, and beauty.
The episode features a sampling of tracks from a number of releases:
“Sanctity”, from Benefit of the Boomerang’s Legend of the Final Thread
...2021-10-2600 min
Etheric CurrentsPiambient: Piano-based electronicaThis episode uses the piano as a touchstone — tracks from both the RadioSpiral Library and from Creative Commons releases. We will have a little more ambient music, as fits the title, but there are still some gentle beats for those looking for them.The criterion for selection was that the track at least starts with a piano interlude, whether acoustic or electric. Some tracks are piano alone, and others are piano as part of a larger ensemble.The tracks from Appro, Kai Engel, Kevin Bryce, Mischa Dioxin, and Ketsa are all from the Free Music Ar...2021-10-201h 57
Etheric CurrentsPiambient: Piano-based electronicaThis episode uses the piano as a touchstone — tracks from both the RadioSpiral Library and from Creative Commons releases. We will have a little more ambient music, as fits the title, but there are still some gentle beats for those looking for them.
The criterion for selection was that the track at least starts with a piano interlude, whether acoustic or electric. Some tracks are piano alone, and others are piano as part of a larger ensemble.
The tracks from Appro, Kai Engel, Kevin Bryce, Mischa Dioxin, and Ketsa are all from the Free Music Archive, and are only a se...2021-10-1900 min
Etheric CurrentsNu-Jazz and Post-Rock on La BélIn this episode, we’ll be hearing tracks for several engaging nu-jazz and post-rock artists. These two genres are deconstructions and recombinations of their base genres with influences from others, sometimes far outside the originals. We’ll be listening to some folks who have integrated ambient and abstract electronica sounds and feels into jazz and rock.
We’ll start off the the artist Springtide, from Tokyo, Japan, and segue into tracks from releases on the La Bél netlabel, listening to a selection of tracks from several artists there – the Italian group Another Brick, with trumpet, bass, and Ableton Live/Push; yky...2021-10-1200 min
Etheric CurrentsTerrible Name, Great MusicTonight’s episode on Etheric Currents is “terrible name, great music”, because we’ll be hearing music from the Ogredung label. Pause to let that sink in. Or not.
This label is an Italian one, and released from 2001 to 2007. It’s
is a very eclectic label — everything from straight melodia to ambience, dark and light, to absolute mind-ripping noise. We’ll stay on the melodic end this evening, with some side trips to abstraction, beats,
and the less-noisy end of their spectrum with a sampling of tracks from their more than 80 releases.
It’s a a wild trip from gentle melodies through...2021-10-0900 min
Etheric CurrentsBerlin RecessTonight we’ll be hearing some excellent Berlin-School tracks from a band by the name of Klangwald. In 2012, they released two EPs and one full album on the Kreislauf netlabel:
Tomato Juice and Ginger Tea (EP)
Tolerance and Courage (EP)
Stressless Life (full album)
We’ll be hearing all three in full tonight, with a few tracks from Different Skies and Chromadrift to fill the time out to two hours.
After releasing these works under a Creative Commons license, they released a few more albums on the Stereo Poems and Digital Kunstrassen labels, eventually choosing to start their own label, Klan...2021-09-2800 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Partially Erased [disquiet0507]I decided to pull out one of my old favorite techniques for this one: using Paulstretch with unconscionably long windows (5 seconds, 10 seconds, 40 seconds...). This takes a sample and moves it from a musical gesture to a long harmonic drone.
I started out with the ukelele track, and stretched it 2.5x with a 5 second window. I stretched the accordina 2.1x with a 10 second window to get the primary melodic and chordal motion. Both developed a melody within the drone as the stretch was done.
I then stretched the piano 1.1x but with a 30 second window, then copied it, reversed it, and...2021-09-1701 min
Etheric CurrentsStays Crunchy – Milk and Five MusiciansThis episode’s music comes from the Finnish netlabels Milk and Five Musicians.
Five Musicians was the earlier of the two, and specialized in distributing music from the demoscene – music composed using trackers, specialized programs that did sample playback, controlled by scores written out as text files. Demoscene music was often distributed on floppy disk through physical mail.
Five Musicians tends toward uptempo pieces with quite a bit of swing. We’ll start off with several tracks by the artist Necros, including a very unusual live performance with an actual band and a collaboration between Necros and Basehead. We’ll then hea...2021-09-1400 min
Etheric CurrentsBacktrack, Dewtone, OneTonight’s show is a selection of tracks from the Backtrack, Dewtone, and One netlabels, all of which briefly flowered in the early 2000’s and then disappeared.
Backtrack lived for two years, from 2004 to 2006, but put out some really excellent music. The two albums featured, Crepuscular by Troupe (released when he was sixteen and already a damn fine musician) and ::micromania:: by vitax are excellent uptempo electronica.
Then we switch over to Dewtone, in existence from only 2004 to 2005, but which put out a lot of nice tracks. We’ll hear from (val)liam’s “early reflections”; transient’s “rotation” single and a track of the...2021-09-0600 min
Etheric CurrentsRound and RoundThis show (the first official Etheric Currents) features tracks about round things: circles, rounds, and spheres.
All tracks are from the RadioSpiral library, but some are from artists we don’t play as much, and some are seldom-played tracks from artists we play a lot of.
Tonight’s show runs more ambient than not, and more abstract than beaty.
Note to podcast listeners: we cut short a track, Eric Peter Schwartz’s “Hex Circle”, because it was distorting unpleasantly. Rather than subject everyone to the distortion and the chopped-off song, we’ve omitted it entirely.2021-08-3000 min
Etheric CurrentsJust One TrackThe premiere episode of Etheric Currents! Equinox plays tracks from artists who, for one reason or another, only have a single track in the RadioSpiral library.2021-08-1800 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Stridula [disquiet0494]This started as a Ripplemaker Krell patch; I added a lot of feedback and intermodulation to achieve the trill texture, then tweaked the wavefolding and FM slightly to get some variation in the trill.
Recorded in AUM, uploaded via AudioShare, downloaded, and trimmed to 20 seconds in Audacity before re-uploading (I missed the 20-second requirement on the first go-round).2021-06-1900 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Operating Manual for the Muon Field Polishing and Quantum State Rotation Device [disquiet0467]This track is a combination of old and new tools that I have been using and refining lately. Over the last few months, I've been moving more and more to modular and semi-modular synths. I've become very enamored of the West-Coast, Buchla-influenced sound and techniques, in particular the Krell patch.
I've always found "self-playing" setups fascinating and attractive, and I happened upon a Krell-like patch for MIRack that I have been extending and tweaking over the past few months, saving various versions to overlay and mix in AUM on my iPad. I also picked up Ripplemaker, which is essentially the...2020-12-1505 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Under the Blankets (for Roland) [disquiet0464]The hidden track is a canon by Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594); since it itself is essentially a layered loop, I decided that I'd play it out once in Garageband, build out the canon in four voices, and then find loops in the loop library that worked with the harmonies in the canon. That turned out to be a jazzy bass, two trip-hop pads, and a bossa-nova piano. I built out the "cover" loops first, then brought in the canon, dropping out cover toward the end to get one full four-layer version of the canon as the voices finished up.
I...2020-11-2003 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Malka Older – The Divided – Part 4/9 Disquiet0400 (Analysts Mix)I decided that I really wanted to play around with rhythms in the speech for this Junto. I listened to the track by itself first, then in the context of the story, and decided I still wanted to stick with that first idea.
I pulled three copies of the whole track into Live, and then processed one copy with multiple beat repeat processors (Airpusher and Semisubtle), followed by Puremagnetic's Driftmaker plugin, with Parse and Drift cranked way up). The second I used only Driftmaker on, with Chop and Drift pushed to their max).
I then experimented with various offset triggerings...2019-09-0301 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Buchla Bent(o)[disquiet 0381]I started out trying to use the NI Bento Box and found it opaque. I couldn't get gates, routing was not transparent, and I just wasn't happy working with it.
Marc suggested setting up a VCVRack patch for people who didn't want to install the Native Instruments software. I picked out the modules that I could find that were as close as possible to the ones in the Bento Box; some were not quite as functional (the Bogaudio S&H needed an external noise source, as opposed to the built-in one in the Bento Box S&H, and the Bento...2019-04-1906 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Despite Myself, It's Funky [disquiet0375]“The Assignment: Make a piece of music that sounds as unlike you as you can accomplish.”
Not ambient/beatless/experimental - check
No careful editing and processing of the track - check
Produced as fast as possible with no edits - check
Not using a traditional instrument - check
Not using anything I’m comfortable with - check
No programming or planning at all - check
Using Launchpad, completely not my kind of app at all - check
Spent less than 15 minutes total instead of agonizing over it for hours - check
One take no edits - check
Pretty happy with i...2019-03-0805 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Ceylon Batu Biru [disquiet0305]Disquiet Junto 305: Three Princes
I started listening to all of the tracks; when I heard the intro to "Surathal Ranwan Samanalayo" I stopped. Birdsong, cool, got it, two more to go...and then I hit Suralo Sapa De with the beautiful call-and-response at the beginning - and I knew I was done. And going to break rule 2!
I extracted and looped the birdsong track because I had to have it as the bed to lay the other loops over, then I pulled the three call-and-response phrases and created three out-of-phase loops with those, using Audacity's tempo altering plugin to make...2017-11-0502 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)A Path of Totality [disquiet0292]I decided to go back to an old tool for this Junto: Scape. This is a graphical composing program which runs on the iPad, and which lets you assemble generative scenes -- "scapes" -- from a large set of graphics with attached sounds and behavior. You can then create playlists that move from scene to scene, with control over how long a given scene plays and how long it takes for old objects to be removed and new ones added, but the objects themselves do what they do.
Because the individual parts interact with one another, and the parts behave...2017-08-1005 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Ada Kucing Pada Gamelan [disquiet0235]Translated: "There's a cat on the gamelan."
In a complete departure for me, I decided that this challenge - many different random number checks, careful timings, and so on - were much better suited to automation than trying to run them myself, so instead of an improvisational approach, I decided that I'd program this instead.
I decided that I'd use ChucK for this - it's well-suited for dynamically adding and removing layers and programatically arranging and synthesizing music.
I started out by stealing bits from the modal-o-matic example; this is a program that randomly plays different configurations of the ModalBar...2016-07-0306 min
Equinox Deschanel (Joe McMahon)Tired Hexhead Mutilato [disquiet0234]I listened to the first thirty seconds of each of last week's submissions, and ended up picking "Tired Machines", "Hexhead", and "Il trio mutilato" as my sources, and I decided that I'd use Hexhead's signature motif as the focal point for my track.
I clipped off the first thirty seconds of each source track in Fission, and further snipped up the Hexhead and Tired Machines clips into two and three smaller clips, respectively, to capture the specific musical gestures in each.
I then tossed these into the shredder with Forester, doing several takes until I got some source materials I...2016-06-2402 min