Dissensus Blogs

[mvuent]

@mvuent is Joe Meek an audio animator?

considered including him but not really, imo, although he has his moments. the uncanny alien voices on "i hear a new world" stand out. tbh there may be little to no overlap between music i'd put under the "audio animation" banner and music that's part of your usual listening. so if you do slog through the whole series waiting for it to shed some new light on grizzly bear or indian ragas you'll probably be disappointed.

 

[mvuent]

theres something pleasantly, pantheistic or nature worshippy ab this thread of places having attitudes towards us, landmarks and landscapes as entities (the environment is an agent, angel, aghast, aglow, agon &c).
the ambient/immersive music distinction is also on point, while reclaiming ambient music for "music about ambience" rather than "music setting a preconscious ambience".
itd be nice if "backrooms" stuff was more about this - interminable expanse of once lived in, now emptied prefab spaces. rather than "also a monster is chasing you", which really is quite infantile.
i see a picture of the backrooms and all i want to do is go back there.

some excellent prose reserved for vektroid! -

"if this feeling was somehow preserved and reached another world many years later, a message in a bottle. Despite the tongue in cheek connotations, the promise of the title is genuine: if you listen you’ll be trained in, initiated into the cult of the subterranean. "

i think this paragraph gets at the... emotionally tortured colors and "clandestine game of signifiers" facets of NDL Initiation Tape exceptionally well

very happy to find some consilience w/ you on these points.

i also screenshotted your dhomont "cycles of sound" writeup so that i remember to listen to, with your notes to hand also

it's crazy. it's like a year 3000 reimagining of the european symphonic tradition. which may or may not appeal, obviously. but it's exemplary of a certain vision of what electronic music could be (which i like a lot).

 

[other_life]

also only comment on the audio animation piece which was read #2 yesterday is that it's the strongest piece yet next to "the unvoice" (read #1) and feels like it represents a kind of ~phase shift~ in the bigger idea youre developing

 

[catalog]

very true. if you made a substack and started copy and pasting all his best dissensus posts on it you'd have a very strong body of work.

But why does he need substack when he's got dissensus?

 

[mvuent]

But why does he need substack when he's got dissensus?

to bring the pearls up from the seabed

 

[craner]

thinking about how much talent Version has and he wastes spends it on Dissensus

The number of times I have told him this...

 

[Clinamenic]

The number of times I have told him this...

...is non-zero?

 

[craner]

I've always meant to.

 

[catalog]

to bring the pearls up from the seabed

He did start a blog didn't he, but then he deleted it.

He likes the ability to remove/edit.

The discursive space of dissensus is clearly more useful to him than the more solo blogging game, I guess.

What say ye @version ?

 

[mvuent]

i remember his blog, was only thinking aloud that "selected dissensus posts 2018-2024" as compiled by me or another member of the version fanbase could be a fun read

 

[sus]

He did start a blog didn't he, but then he deleted it.

What was the URL by chance?

 

[mvuent]

forgot he actually did include a few dissensus posts

Revealing the Map

The gradual uncovering of the map in Red Dead Redemption 2. The thought of it all just sat there, unmarked but accessible… It’s a relatively new mechanic, but it’s managed to worm…

olympicmess.wordpress.com

Fallen sparks. Fragments of vessels broken at the Creation…

Over the years I’ve noticed a tendency to find the snippet and fragment more endearing than the whole: radio rips, sections of old sets and mixes, certain elements and sounds, specific scenes…

olympicmess.wordpress.com

 

[mvuent]

Someone archived it a few times,

Reducing the Input: Gaddis and Beckett

Recently read Beckett’s Molloy and, after reading something of Marshall McLuhan’s son, Eric’s, on the role of art in human survival, can’t help but think of the two of them …

web.archive.org

 

[william kent]

"And yet, as the second phase progressed, it did recover a certain freedom of movement. The production of motorik exoskeletons continued. But these transport vehicles became more and more complicated. Even in the early to mid 80s, when the electric body was at its clunkiest—the slashing sound-arcs generated by scratching brought an otherwise absent flexibility of motion into the mix."
-- AUDIO ANIMATION (A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY)

The emphasis on motion jumps out, partly because of my recent re-reading of Eliot and his repeated references to it and partly because of revisiting 'Morphosis' and considering our range of movement relative to the music's.

You can posit an inverse relationship between the physical movement of the composer/producer and that of the music as technology's progressed. What once would have had you moving round the studio from component to component can now be done from a single point with a mouse and keyboard, and what can be done sonically from that point is more expansive than ever.

 

[william kent]

"The attacks are what cause the garden to grow."
-- GOD GAMES

There's a connection here with the mushroom book I've been reading. You often hear conservation-minded people talk about leaving nature to its own devices and the author describes her surprise at meeting someone in Japan who views human interference in the forest as a positive. In fact, the mushroom the book follows only appears where the forest's been disturbed.

 

[mvuent]

The emphasis on motion jumps out, partly because of my recent re-reading of Eliot and his repeated references to it

any specific quotes?

 

[william kent]

any specific quotes?

He often stresses motion in opposition to something or being absent from something, so you get lines like this...

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

... and this...

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

... from The Hollow Men.

And this from Part I. of Choruses from 'The Rock'...

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

And this from Part II of 'Burnt Norton' in Four Quartets...

The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.

 

[mvuent]

reminds me of the emphasis on motion you get in pound's "vortex" ("maximum energy" "toward which perception moves" "directing a certain fluid force against circumstance" etc.)

there's a passage in the tuning of the world where schafer praises his attention to the color and sound fluctuations of the mediterranean sea (contrasting it with f. scott fitzgerald's lack of descriptive discernment of the same subject)

 

[Benny Bunter]

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Need to get round to reading your blog mvuent, looks great