../melody in chaos
“Creating is living doubly.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
This was the third Disquiet Junto project that revolved around Bassel Khartabil Safadi, a coder, artist and free-expression pioneer wrongfully jailed by Syria, his home country, for “harming state security.” In October, he was transferred to a secret location, and his whereabouts as of this writing are unknown.…
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Brilliant remix by the ever-engaging and prolific sound artist S/H/A/R/R/P/S (Jessy Kendall, founder of the letterfounder craft studio in Lewiston, ME) of my and Utrecht artist Olaf Wisselink’s respective Junto 0189 contributions. S/H/A/R/R/P/S layers dialogue snippets from 80s episodes of the soap opera Santa Barbara over a combination of both tracks for a whacked out trip suffused with mystery and suspense.…
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Today I Am Not Turning On The Radio from Westy Reflector
with the kentile sign coming down, figured i’d revisit this lo-fi vid from 2011. shot w/ a nikon d90 during that year’s reconstruction of the smith/9th subway station from a manhattan-bound f-train. the video runs in reverse. coney-island bound is the other side of the tracks.…
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This New York Post headline (“I Could Have Saved Him”) screamed at me from a newsstand on 5th Avenue and 9th Street in Brooklyn a couple days after receiving this week’s challenge, and I couldn’t shake it. As the weekend closed, I looked at the front pages of all the other papers in town with this challenge in mind, including a couple hyperlocal rags (NY Times, NY Observer, NY Daily News, Brooklyn Eagle, Park Slope Courier, etc…), but no other story stuck with me like this one, falling lock-step into the context of this Junto challenge celebrating the 100th birthday of William S.…
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background track: “(i believe) this sounds like me” – recorded 02.24.2013
hey, world. this is westy reflector,
(i believe)
coming at you from brooklyn, new york, planet earth.
(this sounds like me)
my real name is dave.
i write songs.
(i believe this sounds like me)
i try to keep my songs simple.…
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PROCESS:
Samples stretched, pitch preserved, with noise, harmonic and/or binaural processing. These went into the DAW and were combined with the original recording snippets in various ways. Further effects included delay, resonance, vibrato, distortion, EQ and amplitude modulation.
12 words. 12 tracks. Three 48-second parts.
Anger | Vulnerability | Elation
Title taken from “Words” by Missing Persons:
“What little filters through is giving you the wrong impression
It’s a sorry state I say to myself…”
Rig: Samples (see link below), Paulstretch for Windows (stand-alone software), Ibanez DMD2000 Digital Delay, Line6 POD-XT, MOTU 828mk-ii, Sony Acid DAW
PROJECT:
The 57th disquiet.com…
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Dance break!
Kinda off my beaten path, so have a laugh with me on it. Did not use a guitar this time (honoring a promise to @all-n4tural).
PROCESS:
Sentence 1 (from Tom Sawyer):
“I dare you to step over that and I’ll lick you ’til you can’t stand up.”
Sentence 2 (from Sherlock Holmes):
“A shadow of a doubt as to my conduct would bring the matter to an end.”…
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…sliver of sky
where planes streak
birds fly
guide me to my dreams
hvac hum
rainfall drum
basement guitar practice strum
white noise cardboard pillowface flashes in windows,
light strobes and mortar shadows
in an updown walldance
as homework ends,
as bills are paid,
as security makes rounds,
as embraces lead to encounters.